There must be some silver lining to this nasty storm which has befouled so much of the TriState area, and I mean more than the Stan-and-Ollie sight of President Obama and NJ Governor Christ Christie strolling the shores of the Atlantic together like old mates, the Walrus and the Carpenter.

The initial we-can-do-this vibe of downtown Manhattan has given way to a more fatigued sense of “Does no one see this is happening to us?” anger among many who find themselves, perhaps for the first time, truly powerless. Yesterday I sent a story (beating my deadline by a day) to the editor of well-regarded national magazine published downtown, assuming their offices were closed. To my surprise the editor wrote me back immediately — to say he had no power in the office of his apartment and I just happened to catch him charging his laptop at a friend’s house uptown…

This is New York’s Katrina moment, with Anderson Cooper trawling the streets of Hoboken as if it was the Ninth Ward, albeit with more hipsters. (Though really, is there anyone hipper than Fats Domino, whose house was destroyed when the levee broke in NOLA?) What can such a disaster, guaranteed to recur in the next year or two, get the well-educated young professionals of water-level NYC to do that they haven’t done before?

Talk about infrastructure and climate change, maybe. Three cheers for NY Governor Andrew Cuomo for leading the charge in the wake of the hurricane. “Part of learning from this is the recognition that climate change is a reality,” he said between visiting disaster sites Wednesday. “Extreme weather is a reality. It is a reality that we are vulnerable… “There’s only so long you can say, ‘This is once in a lifetime, and it’s not going to happen again.’ ”

That the topic has gotten no mention in the presidential debates, and less and less in the media in general, is shameful. But political attention is paid when people demand it. For all those who decided that the topic was passe after Al Gore won an Oscar, think again. The dirt words are less filthy than what’s floating in the water of the playground where you toddler used to swing. Tweet about it. Start a flash mob after the next flash flood.