Afterword: The Hurricane and the Nation

.~ NE\V ~IAP of the TERRAQUEOUS GLOBE accordmQ" to the lateu Difcoveries and moft Dtvilions of It into CONTINENTS and OCE.AN5 Map I:Y Edward *115,1700. Courtesy of Rare Hlistorical Map Collection, G3200, Archives, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. AFTERWORD ~rhe Hurricane and the Nation WAI CHEE DIMOCK It does not take much to make a hurricane: a cool, damp atmosphere , a warm ocean surface, the presence of trade winds, and a Hpreexisting weather disturbance ... far enough from the equator (at least 300 miles) so that the rotation ofthe Earth amplifies the rotation ofthe storm." These are ordinary enough ingredients. What turns them into a meteorological monstrosity is the temperature of the water over which the storm passes. The higher the water temperature, the more fuel it provides for the storm, which pulls heat from the ocean and accelerates its spin. The heat an average hurricane releases can match the electricity the United States produces in a full year. I Katrina itself, initiallyjust a tropical depression, strengthened to a category five hurricane when it was passing over the Gulf of Mexico, where the surface waters were unusually warm, about two degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal for the season.2 Ocean temperature, the key player in hurricane formation , is suddenly front-page news, recognized as such by the nation's media. 3 Global warming is no longer a fantasy conjured up by environInentalists and the Kyoto Protocol. It has become real, physical, even visceral, burning into our eyeballs with those horrendous images from the TV screen. And what we see with shame the whole world sees as well. "Globalism" of this sort, long ridiculed by the Bush administration, and seemingly unconnected to the day-to-day lives of Americans, has come home to roost. In retrospect, the warning of MIT elimatologist Kerry Em.anuel seems almost eerie in being so comESQ I II. 50 11ST-3RD QUARTERS I2004 223 WAI CHEE DIMOCK pletely on target. In the 31 July 2005 online edition of the journal Nature, ETIlanuel reports that hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific have becoTIle TIluch TIlore ferocious since the TIlid-I970s. Both their duration and their wind speeds have grown by 50 to 60 percent over a sornewhat longer period, since I949, correlating with the rise in ocean teTIlperatures. "My results suggest," ETIlanuel writes, "that future warTIling TIlay lead to an upward trend in [hurricanes'] destructive potential, and-taking into account an increasing coastal population-a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twentyfirst century."4 ETIlanuel is a professor in MIT's DepartTIlent of Earth, AtTIlospheric, and Planetary Sciences, a departTIlent dedicated to the study of the planet as an integral unit. For these sciences ' no phenoTIlenon can be adequately studied outside a systeTIl-wide network. No phenoTIlenon is discrete or isolated, for even a tiny increTIlent in input can lead to exponential (which is to say, "nonlinear") effects aTIlplified and redistributed across the entire systeTIl. Local conditions are the results of nonlocal forces. CliTIlatology is probably the best exaTIlple of this cOTIlplex play between the local and the globaL a COTIlplexity sOTIletimes called the "butterfly effect," a dynaTIlics of input and output that shuttles back and forth between the seeTIling trivialness of the initial condition and the TIlagnitude of the eventual outcOTIle. The planet is an integral unit in just this sense. And the oceans-a single body ofwater, only nOTIlinally divided-draTIlatize this deep integration. "Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's," Melville writes in Mo~-Dick, reTIlinding us that the planet is TIlore water than land, a COTIlltnOn fabric, woven on "the LOOTIl of TiTIle," with the "threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning , unchanging vibration, and that vibration TIlerely enough to adTIlit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own."5 It is this terraqueous globe that we invoke for this ESQspecial issue. Where does the nation stand in this paradigTIl? What is the relation between territorial borders and the cOTIlplex weave of wind speeds and ocean teTIlperatures? To ask this question is to realize with a shock that the nation, so central...