While Hurricane Irene falters along the East Coast, an unforgivable nonchalance toward climate change continues to smother Washington.

The attitude is nothing new. In fact, the downward spiral began last year when bipartisan talks over energy reform failed after Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, called it quits because of a procedural dispute over — no kidding — immigration reform.

More recently, the Obama administration has been trying to distance itself from its soaring campaign rhetoric, such as the declaration then-Senator Obama made upon securing the Democratic nomination: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Far from it.

The State Department indicated last week that it was seriously considering a proposal for the construction of a massive 1,700-mile pipeline that would carry diluted bitumen — one of the dirtiest forms of petroleum — from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to Texas’s Gulf Coast oil refineries.

Approving the pipeline would not only be foolish. In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, whose wake of damage is covered with the fingerprints of climate change, such a move would also be damn well irresponsible.

Of course, climate change did not “cause” Hurricane Irene in the strictest sense. Hurricanes have been ravaging coastal areas since the dawn of time, mostly due to moist tropical air, the spin of the Earth and differential pressure fronts.

But there is no denying that climate change was a contributing factor to Irene’s severity.

Hurricanes normally lose their strength long before they approach Virginia, where ocean temperatures are not warm enough to sustain hurricane-force winds. This year, however, has been one of the warmest on record with ocean surface temperatures of 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above historical averages — enough to sustain a hurricane all the way up to the New England states.

Record temperatures, coupled with rising sea levels and growing amounts of moisture and energy trapped in our atmosphere, are all adding fuel to the destructive potential of natural disasters like Hurricane Irene.

Now that the worst of Irene has passed, we all ought to be grateful that damage wasn’t as terrible as some models predicted. But we can’t rely on luck or the whims of nature forever. How long will it be before the hurricanes of tomorrow, strengthened by warmer waters, begin to batter their way even further up the East Coast? How long before New York turns into New Venice?

Contemplating these possibilities is a sobering exercise. But any hope that Washington would be jolted to action by Hurricane Irene would be sorely misplaced.

As the East Coast recovers from Irene, Washington continues to dither on vacation and the prospects of a lasting solution to climate change grow increasingly dim as the warnings of mild-mannered scientists are drowned out by the talking points of oil company shills masquerading as politicians.

The list goes on and on, but instead of picking at the low-hanging fruit — the marginalized Dennis Kuciniches of the GOP, if you will — let’s examine the anti-science chatter of two leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination.

Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried to poach some of the loony vote from his rivals by calling climate change “all one contrived phony mess” before explaining how the hoax had been perpetrated by greedy scientists seeking to expand their research budgets.

And then there was the ever-quotable Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who is standing by her claim that Hurricane Irene was a message from God to cut spending, a curious position given that natural disasters are always accompanied by sharp spikes in emergency federal spending.

Amid this dysfunctional political climate, it’s no surprise that progress on climate change has been frustratingly slow. We have Democratic spinelessness and a large dose of Republican obstructionism to thank for that, not to mention the difficulties of governing in a presentist country that rarely pays attention to long-term risks until it is too late.

As Nicholas Kristof lamented on Twitter: “If only the century-long threat of climate change would arouse as much mobilization as the day-long threat of #Irene.”

We can — and must — do better than this.

Over the last several days, Hurricane Irene has given us a haunting glimpse of what our future could look like if we don’t take the needed steps to overcome the gridlock in Washington and fight climate change: shattered cobblestones, split trees, waterlogged streets and evacuated coastlines — all in some of the most densely populated areas of our country.

We might not see this future in our lifetime. Our kids might not even see it in theirs. But, as disasters like Hurricane Irene become more frequent and severe, we must all ask ourselves one important question: Is this the sort of world we would like even our most distant descendants to inherit?

_Jason is a senior in Engineering and Business._