Climate change is going to leave millions of people on the move, and when you start unpacking what that means it is quite complicated.” “They haven’t really thought through what that means, why people would leave, where they would go and under what conditions. “People sometimes talk about climate refugees, but in very general terms,” Ferris said. could be underwater with four feet of sea level rise, a scenario that scientists say is looking more and more likely by 2100.Įven today, most of the discussion around global warming is focused on its technical, political and scientific aspects, not the complex, emotional decisions that come with a changing climate, said Ferris. As many as 5 million people and 2.6 million properties in the U.S. Warmer ocean temperatures from the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are believed to have fueled the storm’s intensity, and rising sea level contributed to its record-breaking storm surge-making the 1,833 people who lost their lives and the 400,000 people who lost their homes true victims of climate change.Įstimates for the number of people who will be displaced by global warming range from 50 million by 2030 to 1 billion by 2100, said Elizabeth Ferris, director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and an expert on humanitarian crises. Hurricane Katrina is often considered the first modern climate-related disaster in the United States. The Lower Ninth Ward, a historically black and low-income neighborhood, had 14,000 residents before Katrina. New Orleans’s population has dropped to 384,000 today from the 484,000 before Katrina -and that includes 30,000 new residents. Their reasons are varied: better jobs, better schools, better housing, better health care, less flood risk. Families and communities rooted for generations in the Gulf Coast remain scattered across the country, and some never will return. Much of the physical damage the hurricane inflicted has been repaired, but the storm’s emotional cost continues to run deep. Similar stories litter the hundreds of towns in Katrina’s path. The rest, however, have not-including her mother. Two-thirds of her French Creole community Bayou Vincent have come back. She is now the executive director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, a non-profit law firm and grassroots advocacy organization for social and economic equity.īut some of Pichon Battle’s neighbors have yet to return, even 10 years later. She lived in a tent on the front lawn for the first three months, then spent another two years in a 240-square-foot trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Seeing the devastation left in Katrina’s wake, Pichon Battle decided to return to Slidell and help rebuild her hometown. Much of Slidell, La., was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The entire city was devastated, house after house ripped apart by the tidal surge. Most of her family evacuated, but two uncles and an aunt stayed behind as they had for every other storm in their lifetimes. as a corporate lawyer when the eye of the category 3 hurricane directly hit her hometown on August 29, 2005, pushing a 30-foot wall of water through the city. Pichon Battle had been working in Washington, D.C. “I was raised in this house, the same house my mother was born in,” said Pichon Battle. The air inside smelled damp and foul, and a giant X on the front door meant that the military had searched the premises for survivors. Its wood siding was warped and covered in mud and its tin roof was peeling off. It sat eerily amid an acre and a half of downed trees. The 1930s shotgun-style house remained on its foundation, but barely. One month after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in 2005, Colette Pichon Battle stood in front of her childhood home near Slidell, surveying the storm’s damage.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |