Jesus Hernandez guides his granddaughter Angelina via a container through a street flooded in the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Batabano, Mayabeque province, Cuba, on Thursday, 26 September 2024. Photo: Ramon Espinosa / AP Photo

Our dystopian climate isn’t just about fires and floods. It’s about society fracturing.

By Bill McKibben 9 October 2024 (The Guardian) – Even as the good people of Florida’s west coast pulled the soggy mattresses from Helene out to the curb, Milton appeared on the horizon this week – a double blast of destruction from the Gulf of Mexico that’s a reminder that physics takes no time off, not even in the […]

A resident helps free a stranded car as Hurricane Helene strikes Boone, North Carolina. Photo: Jonathan Drake / Reuters

I wasn’t prepared to be a climate refugee – A climate advocate learns firsthand the price of climate change in our lives and calls for voters to head off future disasters – “My daughter is still having nightmares”

By Melissa Hanson 4 October 2024 (Scientific American) – I wasn’t prepared to be a climate refugee. Not after relocating my family from drought and wildfire-prone California to the “climate haven” of Asheville, N.C. But less than two months after we moved into our delightfully wooded, mild-weather community, we were forced to leave. Even before […]

A rescue team paddles down the Swannanoa River after the remnants of Hurricane Helene caused widespread flooding, downed trees, and power outages in western North Carolina, 29 September 2024. Photo: Travis Long / The News and Observer / Reuters

Asheville tragedy shows there are no climate change safe havens – North Carolina city once viewed as a safe haven for climate refugees – “Climate change is a pervasive issue that is going to affect communities all over the world – not equally – but definitely it will impact everyone, everywhere in some way”

By Kiara Alfonseca 30 September 2024 (ABC News) – Asheville, North Carolina, has been called a potential safe haven for climate refugees by real estate researchers, praised for its temperate mountain weather, distance far from the coast, experiencing less extreme heat and fewer wildfires. The city of around 95,000 people was believed markings of a place where those escaping […]

A drone view shows a flooded and damaged area following Hurricane Helene in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, 28 September 2024. Photo: Marco Bello / REUTERS

Climate “abandonment zones” are coming to the American South – Whole counties across Florida and Central Texas could begin to see their total populations decline

By Abrahm Lustgarten 2 October 2024 (The New York Times) – When Hurricane Helene, the 420-mile-wide, slow-spinning conveyor belt of wind and water drowned part of Florida’s coastline and then barged its path northward through North Carolina last week, it destroyed more than homes and bridges. It shook people’s faith in the safety of living […]

Charles Alexie and Gerald Tom near visible coastal erosion that encroaches on Newtok village in Alaska, on 16 August 2024. Erosion and melting permafrost have largely destroyed Newtok, eating about 70 feet (21.34 meters) of land every year. Photo: Rick Bowmer / AP

Climate change destroyed an Alaska village. Its residents are starting over in a new town – “Alaska Native economic, social, and cultural ways of being, which have served so well for millennia, are now under extreme threat due to accelerated environmental change”

By Rick Bowmer and Mark Thiessen 28 September 2024 MERTARVIK, Alaska (AP) – Growing up along the banks of the Ninglick River in western Alaska, Ashley Tom would look out of her window after strong storms from the Bering Sea hit her village and notice something unsettling: the riverbank was creeping ever closer. It was […]

An abandoned home sits across from a vacant lot Wednesday, 22 May 2024, in Hannibal, Missouri. Photo: Jeff Roberson / AP Photo

For shrinking Mississippi River towns, frequent floods worsen fortunes – “Everybody’s gone. This is a ghost town.”

By Michael Phillis, Jim Salter, and Camille Fassett 11 June 2024 WEST ALTON, Missouri (AP) – Devastating flooding, driven in part by climate change, is taking an especially damaging toll on communities that once thrived along the banks of America’s most storied river. Flooding has pushed people out of their homes near the Mississippi River at […]

A drone view shows the flooded plantations, houses and streets of the Integracao Gaucha settlement in Eldorado do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, 17 May 2024. Photo: Amanda Perobelli / REUTERS

Flooded Brazil “ghost town” a climate warning to world, UN advisor says – “It was underwater for almost 40 days. There wasn’t even any rats running around. Everything had died.”

By Jake Spring 26 June 2024 SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Record floods that killed over 170 people and displaced half a million in southern Brazil are a warning sign of more disasters to come throughout the Americas because of climate change, an official at the United Nations’ refugee agency said on Tuesday. Roughly 389,000 people, opens […]

Aerial view showing houses destroyed by rising sea levels and coastal erosion associated with climate change, in the community of El Bosque in Nuevo Centla, Tabasco state, Mexico. About 700 people once lived in El Bosque, which sits on a small peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico. According to environmental group Greenpeace, El Bosque is the first community in Mexico to be officially recognised as displaced by climate change. Photo: Yuri Cortez / AFP

Submerged homes and heatwaves fuel Mexico climate angst – “We hear about climate change all the time but we never thought that it would come to us”

28 May 2024 (Al Jazeera) – Waves wash over abandoned homes in a Mexican village slowly being swallowed by the sea; a symbol of the climate change effects being felt by the major fossil fuel producer. The school where Adrian Perez used to attend classes in the community of El Bosque in the southern state […]

Satellite view of severe flooding on the Rufiji River in Tanzania on 2 May 2024. Photo: NASA

Climate change and rapid urbanization worsened the impact of East African rains, scientists say – “We’re likely to see this kind of intensive rainfall happening this season going into the future”

By Carlos Mureithi 23 May 2024 NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The impact of the calamitous rains that struck East Africa from March to May was intensified by a mix of climate change and rapid growth of urban areas, an international team of climate scientists said in a study published Friday. The findings come from World Weather Attribution, […]

Map showing April 2024 mean temperature in South Asia. The blue outline shows the region with the most extreme heat. Graphic: World Weather Attribution

Sweltering heat across Asia in 2024 was 45 times more likely because of climate change, study finds – “Heat is now among the foremost risks in terms of personal health for millions across the world as well as nations’ economic development”

By Sibi Arasu 14 May 2024 BENGALURU, India (AP) – Sizzling heat across Asia and the Middle East in late April that echoed last year’s destructive swelter was made 45 times more likely in some parts of the continent because of human-caused climate change, a study Tuesday found. Scorching temperatures were felt across large swaths of Asia, […]

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