For many years we have been living in a dream. In that dream, we have been told there is no alternative to the financialization of everything; that shareholder returns and growth were more important than considerations like sustainability or resilience; and that climate change was a long term issue or not true. In the dream, we didn’t agree but we couldn’t seem to disagree. Are we awake yet?

It’s been known for some time that New York was a hurricane disaster waiting to happen. Now that it has happened the response has been so familiar. Too slow from officials, except where wealth is concentrated. Amazing from individuals and organizations locally, wherever there is need. The trick this time is to make sure that the energy and connectedness does not dissipate once the dryout is over and the power is back on. It’s still too soon to say we woke up but we are waking.

Here was one of the many wake up calls. It came last February from Nature, the top science journal, written by MIT and Princeton scientists:

NYC is highly vulnerable to storm surges. We show that the change of storm climatology will probably increase the surge risk for NYC; results based on two GCMs [Global Climate Model] show the distribution of surge levels shifting to higher values by a magnitude comparable to the projected sea-level rise (SLR). The combined effects of storm climatology change and a 1 m SLR may cause the present NYC 100-yr surge flooding to occur every 3–20 yr and the present 500-yr flooding to occur every 25–240 yr by the end of the century.

Like I’ve been saying, like so many climate Cassandras have been saying, but with the data for New York, what just happened can happen every three years or so now. It might not happen for another 20. But they are using a very conservative model of sea-level rise. And you might have heard, the Greenland ice sheet melted over 90% of its surface this year, which is the primary source for sea-level rise.

Courtesy Occupy Sandy

Signs that perhaps we are now waking up: the amazing and beautiful response to people’s need in NYC. I was down at the Occupy Sandy center in Brooklyn today at 520 Clinton Avenue, just off Atlantic near the Barclays Center. Special needs for:

• heavy outdoor cleaning stuff and contractor-style clean up bags
• diapers, wipes and all infant stuff/twine, rope and other such.

Open tomorrow, closes at 4pm). There was just a torrent of people volunteering and bringing the things needed. They have so many clothes they don’t need any more.

As I walked back over this evening, I saw a smaller, although decent sized, group of people doing a call center for Obama. In 2008, those centers were so packed you could hardly get in or find something to do. That’s exactly how the mutual aid project was today, perhaps some of the same people. Many were young but people with vehicles were at a premium to get out to the Rockaways and Staten Island.

Back in the day in the park, Occupy became NYC social services, providing food, clothing and bedding for those who had nothing. It’s happened again and it shows that there really is something to be said for the idea that Occupy is in itself a disaster response, as Rebecca Solnit has suggested. Its issue last time was how to connect to communities. Done this time. Now how do we build that?

Sign number two: people don’t want the financialized “aid” being offered by FEMA, a.k.a. more loans. In Red Hook last night, CNN reports that local businesses had no use for the long-term 4-8% loans being touted by FEMA:

“Most of us are deeply overextended as it is,” said Monica Byrne, the co-owner of local restaurant Home/Made. “We’re all shut down. We have staff we can’t pay. We really need some support that’s not about loans.

Because loans require repayments, and an 8% interest rate is a lot, as any student can tell you. Federal loans can’t be bankrupted or negotiated. It’s time for debt abolition after Sandy.

Although we’re not going to be able to target individual loans because of the weird way the defaulted debt market works, The People’s Bailout will do just that: buy medical and educational debt that people have had to default and abolish it. Please come! The financialized world is broken. The future is ours together: we are drowning in debt and we need to bail each other out, just as we are rescuing each other from the storm.