via ThinkProgress by Brad Johnson on 12/31/11
The headlines of 2011 were driven by global warming disasters and the popular uprising against the powers-that-be who have accumulated profit at the expense of the future of humanity. The United States faced the most billion-dollar climate disasters ever, with 14 distinct disasters costing at least $53 billion to the U.S. economy. Stymied by the election of the science-denying Tea Party Congress, the Obama administration failed to pass climate pollution or oil and coal safety legislation in response to the disasters of 2010. The administration fought back attacks on investment in renewable energy and stopped the rush to build the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, spurred by mass protests.
A torn American flag stands in the wreckage of a church in Joplin May 24. (Robert Ray/Associated Press)
Cars are abandoned on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive during the “Snowpocalypse” in February. (chicagotribune.com)
Hurricane Irene approaches the east coast. (NOAA)
The vast tar sands surface mines of Alberta are among the most destructive industrial projects in human history, having already transformed more than 260 square miles of wetlands and forest into a post-apocalyptic moonscape. (Garth Lenz)
A weed grows out of the dry cracked bed of O.C. Fisher Lake on July 25 in San Angelo, TX. The 5,440 acre lake which was established to provide flood control and serve as a secondary drinking water source for San Angelo and the surrounding communities is now dry following an extended drought in the region. The lake which has a maximum depth of 58 feet is also used for boating, fishing and swimming. The San Angelo area has seen only 2.5 inches of rain this year. The past nine months have been the driest in Texas since record keeping began in 1895, with 75 percent of the state classified as exceptional drought, the worst level. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Smoke from the Wallow Wildfire surrounds trees in Eagar, Arizona, June 7, 2011. (Joshua Lott/Reuters)
A man sits in front of a destroyed apartment building following the Joplin, Missouri tornado. (Reuters)
Mihag Gedi Farah, a seven-month-old child, is held by his mother in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee in the town of Dadaab, Kenya. The baby has since made a full recovery. (AP / Schalk Van Zuydam)
Billy Stinson comforts his daughter Erin Stinson as they sit on the steps where their cottage once stood on August 28 in Nags Head, N.C. The cottage, built in 1903 and destroyed by Hurricane Irene, was one of the first vacation cottages built on Albemarle Sound in Nags Head. (Getty Images / Scott Olson)
A woman hangs onto a street sign in chest deep water along the flooded streets in Rangsit on the outskirts of Bangkok on October 24. (Getty Images / Paula Bronstein)
An aid worker using an iPad captures an image of a dead cow’s decomposing carcass in Wajir near the Kenya-Somalia border on July 23. (Reuters / Barry Malone)
A Buddhist monk walks in a flooded street in central Bangkok October 24, 2011. (Reuters/Damir Sagolj)
Joseph Mwangi, 34, sits in a state of shock after discovering the charred remains of two of his children, at the scene of a fuel explosion in Nairobi, Kenya. A leaking gasoline pipeline in Kenya’s capital exploded, turning part of a slum into an inferno in which scores of people were killed and more than 100 hurt, Sept. 12, 2001. (Ben Curtis/Associated Press)
Thai motorists travel through a flooded street during a heavy monsoon downpour in Bangkok. Dozens of people have died in northern Thailand over the past few weeks in floods that have also affected over a million people, Sept. 3, 2011. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images)
A mother comforts her son in Concord, Alabama, near his house which was completely destroyed by a tornado in April. (AP / Jeff Roberts)
Partially-submerged vehicles sit stranded in floodwaters at a roundabout in the Thai ancient capital city of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok, Oct. 16, 2011. Flood defenses protecting the Thai capital held up on Oct. 16, but the advancing waters that have swamped the inland still threaten to engulf Bangkok in a disaster that has claimed 300 lives. Thailand’s worst floods in decades have inundated huge swathes of the kingdom, swallowing homes and businesses, shutting down industry, and forcing tens of thousands of people to seek refuge in shelters. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images)
Somali refugees who recently crossed the border from Somalia into southern Ethiopia cluster between two food tents as they wait to be called to collect food aid at the Kobe refugee camp on July 19. Ethiopian authorities and non-governmental organizations have accommodated almost 25,000 refugees at the camp since it was set up less then three weeks ago. Thousands of Somalis have fled in recent months to neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya in search of food and water, with many dying along the way, as the region suffers what the UN has described as the worst drought in decades. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
A Thai boy holds aloft banknotes while he swims in the floodwaters in Nonthaburi province, suburban Bangkok, Oct. 15, 2011. Thailand fought to hold back floodwaters flowing toward Bangkok as a spring tide hindered efforts to protect the city of 12 million people from the kingdom’s worst inundation in decades. (Parnchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images)
After a tornado struck, Faye Hyde sits on a mattress in what was her yard as she comforts her granddaughter Sierra Goldsmith, 2, in Conord Ala. (Jeff Roberts/The Birmingham News/AP)
A butterfly hovers over a flower as smoke rises around the Lee Valley Recreational area in the Apache National Forest during back burn operations as the Wallow Fire continues to burn June 12 in Big Lake, Az. The wild fire crossed the border into New Mexico, destroying over twenty structures, the majority in the resort town of Greer, and threatened thousands more. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
Cars stand submerged in overflow water from the Wolf River on McMiller Road in Memphis, Tenn. May 10, 2011. After weeks of rising to historic levels the Mississippi River reached a crest just shy of the forecast 48 feet at the Memphis gauge. “It’s going to meander around that level for the next 24 to 36 hours,” meteorologist Bill Borghoff said. “We’re going to pretty much hold onto the crest for a while.” (Mike Brown/Associated Press/The Commercial Appeal)
On July 5th a historic dust storm, or haboob, approaches downtown Phoenix, AZ. The wall of dust, which was estimated to be 70 miles long and over a mile high, moved at speeds of 35mph and had gusts up to 60mph. (Mike Olbinski Photography)
A man lifts an elderly woman after she deboarded a passenger bus on a flooded street in Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand’s worst floods in more than half a century continued to creep into Bangkok, Nov. 3, 2011. (Altaf Qadri/Associated Press)
Chinese students make their way across a flooded school compound June 18 walking along a row of chairs, in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province. More than one million people in China have been evacuated following downpours that have raised water levels in rivers to critical highs, and triggered floods and landslides. Summer rains have left at least 168 people dead or missing so far, and weather authorities warned that flood-hit areas across the southern half of China would experience a fresh round of heavy rainfall. (AFP/Getty Images)
An owl perches in front of Greenpeace activists who were arrested for raising an inflatable model of a wind turbine in front of Congress in Brasilia. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
Coffins containing bodies of landslide victims rest on the ground at a cemetery in Nova Friburgo, Brazil on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011. Nearly 14,000 people are now homeless, 759 are reported to have been killed and another 400 remain missing in Brazil’s worst-ever climate disaster. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Ty Shupe, 3, looks over his shoulder at the approaching Wallow fire as his family prepares to evacuate to Phoenix, June 7, 2011. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
Rescue workers remove a body from a collapsed house after a landslide caused by heavy rainfall in Seoul July 27, 2011. A total of 76 landslides of different severity struck after the most intense rainstorm in Korea in the last century. (Kim Ju-Seong/Yonhap/Reuters)
A village boy sits on the banks of the swelling Daya River, near Pipli village, about 25 kilometers from the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneshwar Sept. 9. The flood situation in Orissa state worsened with the release of more water downstream from Hirakud dam, according to a news agency. A high alert has been sounded in 11 districts of the state. (Biswaranjan Rout/Associated Press)
A resident carries his son while crossing on waist deep floodwaters brought by Typhoon Nesat, locally known as Pedring, that hit the Tanza town of Malabon city, north of Manila Sept. 27. Typhoon Nesat crossed the Philippines main island leaving behind at least 7 dead after it lashed crop-growing provinces and brought the capital to a near standstill as it flooded roads and villages and cut power supplies. (Reuters)
Family members, displaced by floods, use a tarp to escape a monsoon downpour while taking shelter at a make-shift camp for flood victims in the Badin district in Pakistan’s Sindh province Sept. 14. Floods this year have destroyed or damaged 1.2 million houses and flooded 4.5 million acres, according to officials and Western aid groups. More than 300,000 people have been made homeless and about 200 have been killed. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
Vehicles are piled on top of one another on muddy ground after Typhoon Talas caused flash flooding in the town of Nachikatsuura, Wakayama prefecture, in western Japan on Sept. 5. Typhoon Talas cut across western Japan late on September 3, leaving at least 31 people dead and 50 missing after heavy rains and fierce winds. (Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)
Flood water covers the roadway Sept. 9 in Bloomsburg, Pa., after remnants from tropical Storm Lee continued to produce heavy rain overnight. (Mel Evans/Associated Press)
Katlyn Wilkins works on securing an American flag in a tree as she deals with the destruction caused by a massive tornado that passed through the town killing at least 139 people on May 29 in Joplin, Mo. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A high school student participates in White House protests against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline on Aug. 24. Hundreds of arrests were made in the largest action of nonviolent civil disobedience against climate change in history. Months later, the Obama administration delayed approval of the pipeline. (Josh Lopez)
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