‘Despondent’: Battered Louisiana city gets more rain from Nicholas; 100,000 without power in Texas
John Bacon, USA TODAY
More than 100,000 Texas homes and businesses remained without power for a second day Wednesday as the remnants of Hurricane Nicholas slid across the Gulf Coast from the Lone Star State into Louisiana, drenching a region still staggering from Hurricane Ida’s wrath less than three weeks ago.
Nicholas, downgraded to a tropical depression with sustained winds of 30 mph, was centered about 30 miles northeast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, early Wednesday. The storm was inching east-northeast at 5 mph.
“Much of South & Central Louisiana are under flood watch today as #Nicholas moves through the state,” Gov. John Bel Edwards tweeted Wednesday. “Stay aware of conditions in your local area.”
Earlier, Edwards warned the state’s residents to “take this storm seriously and put yourself in a position to weather it safely.”
Almost 80,000 utility customers remained without power in the state, where the lights went out for more than 1 million homes and businesses during Ida’s peak fury.
Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said city crews had scoured the drainage system to keep it free from debris that might cause clogs and flooding. Hurricane Laura struck the city a little more than a year ago. Then came Hurricane Delta, then a January freeze that shattered pipes across the city of nearly 80,000 residents just 60 miles east of Beaumont, Texas. A rainstorm in May swamped houses and businesses yet again.
“With what people have gone through over the last 16 months here in Lake Charles, they are very, understandably despondent, emotional,” Hunter said. “Any time we have even a hint of a weather event approaching, people get scared.”
In Pointe-aux-Chenes, 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, Ida tore the tin roof off Terry and Patti Dardar’s home, leaving them without power and water. Rains from Nicholas have now soaked the top floor of their home – but it also provided badly needed water their family collected in jugs. They poured the water into a large plastic container through a strainer, and a pump powered by a generator brought the water inside.
“We ain’t got no other place,” Patti Dardar said. “This is our home.”
The National Weather Center warned that Nicholas, which already dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of Texas and several inches on areas of Louisiana, was expected to generate an additional 3 to 6 inches across the central Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle through Friday, with isolated totals of 10 more inches possible in some areas.
“Life-threatening flash flooding impacts, especially in urban areas, are possible across these regions,” said Alex Lamers, a National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist.
Tornado warnings were issued in parts of southern Louisiana early Wednesday. The storm was forecast to gradually dissipate over central Louisiana on Thursday.
Hurricane Nicholas made landfall early Tuesday along the Matagorda Peninsula with torrential rains and storm surge. The cleanup was in full swing in Texas, where more than 14 inches of rain fell on parts of the Galveston area. Houston was hit with 6 inches, and the city set up cooling and phone charging centers in areas where power outages dragged on.
Earlier, first responders joined with members of the National Guard in rescuing people from flooded homes.
“Texas has deployed swift-water boats, helicopters and high profile vehicles to help local authorities with rescue efforts arising from flooding and high winds,” Gov. Greg Abbot said Tuesday. “Emergency shelters have been set up for residents who might be displaced.”
A historically Black town stood in the way of a pipeline – so developers claimed it was mostly white
Ben Paviour, VPM and Abi Cole, Floodlight
Photograph: Steve Helber/AP
As fracked gas fields in West Virginia boomed over the past decade, energy companies jumped at the chance to build massive new pipelines to move the fuel to neighboring east coast markets. The 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have been the crown jewel.
But Union Hill, Virginia – a community settled by formerly enslaved people after the civil war on farm land they had once tilled – stood in the way. Residents fought against a planned compressor station meant to help the gas move through the pipeline, arguing that because Union Hill is a historic Black community, the resulting air pollution would be an environmental injustice.
But Dominion Energy, one of the pipeline’s two developers, kept pushing. It pledged to invest $5.1m in community services in exchange for the imposition. The company hired a former member of the governor’s cabinet, who grew up in Union Hill, to drum up support from church leaders to landowners. They flew local leaders on a helicopter to Pennsylvania to tour a compressor station there.
Dominion’s campaign split the Union Hill community, dividing church congregations, and in some instances, families. While some residents were for the investment, others saw their resolve to fight the pipeline deepen. In response to mounting opposition, Dominion took an unexpected tack: the company hired outside help to argue that the community around the site was, in actuality, mostly white.
“No environmental justice community is disproportionately impacted,” the pipeline project told state officials January 2019, arguing that the communities around the project were “not majority minority or low income”. Dominion did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
The locals who took on Dominion eventually became the linchpin of a campaign that helped to get the pipeline canceled. But the fight against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a familiar story now playing out around the country as gas companies expand a sprawling web of pipelines. Even when minority communities say no, the fossil fuel industry keeps saying yes.
Even when minority communities say no, the fossil fuel industry keeps saying yes
In Minnesota, Indigenous-led environmental groups are fighting the hundreds of miles of crude oil pipeline Enbridge is constructing for its Line 3 project from Canada to Wisconsin. In North Brooklyn, New York, community groups are alleging a civil rights violation against Black and Latinx residents over National Grid’s plans to build a seven-mile natural gas pipeline through the area. In North Carolina and Virginia, tribal advocates are opposing a 70-mile extension of the Mountain Valley Pipeline that would cut through Indigenous and Black burial sites and put a large compressor station near a largely rural Black and Native American population.
In many cases, energy companies have succeeded against the wishes of residents, winning local government support by pledging opportunities of economic growth. Environmentalists are growing frustrated with the Biden administration, considering its environmental justice agenda to be full of false promises, as it has been reluctant to fight specific fossil fuel projects.
“Union Hill was unique and not unique. The patterns are quite widespread,” said Mary Finley-Brook, who served on the Virginia governor’s advisory council on environmental justice at the time of the Union Hill battle. Historically, “infrastructure was definitively put through Black communities. We [saw] that with the interstate and with power lines and it continues to develop that way.”
Some residents believe Union Hill wouldn’t have been eyed by developers if different people lived there. “If it had been all millionaires living in that area, it would never have been considered,” said Paul Wilson, a Baptist pastor of a historic Black church near Union Hill.
Had the community been less effective in battling Dominion, he said, “all of the destructive forces from that pipeline were going to rest on a Black community”.
Formed in the chaotic aftermath of the civil war, Union Hill is one of the few historically Black communities in Virginia that retained its identity and history.
Formerly enslaved African Americans bought land in the area – in some cases, the fields they’d toiled in under slavery – and formed a small “freedman community”. In 1869, the Buckingham county courthouse burned down, possibly from arson, taking with it records that could have been used for restitution for the formerly enslaved.
Today, some locals are fifth-generation descendants of that initial settlement. Community surveys suggest the area contains burial grounds of the enslaved laborers and freedmen. When Dominion bought land for the compressor station in 2015, some residents worried about the effect development would have on the community, potentially uprooting historic grave sites, polluting the nearby water and air, and lowering the value of land.
Dominion argued the compressor station – a facility which pressurizes natural gas to transport it from one location to another – would be among the cleanest in the country and have a negligible impact on the Union Hill community. Locals were skeptical of the science, but were entirely unprepared for the next argument Dominion put forward in support of the pipeline.
Protesters turn their backs on a meeting of the Virginia state air quality control board in Richmond, Virginia, in January 2019.Photograph: Steve Helber/AP
Utilizing a 2017 report from federal regulators, the company used census data to claim that the facility wouldn’t disproportionately impact Black, low-income areas.
That finding contradicted the lived experience of most locals. As Chad Oba, who is white and the head of local environmental group Friends of Buckingham county, put it: “I’ve lived here for 35 years […] I know who my neighbors are. I know that I live in a mostly African American community.”
Dr Lakshmi Fjord, a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia’s anthropology department, organized a door-to-door survey in Union Hill, reaching three-quarters of households within a mile of the compressor’s proposed site. Fjord’s survey found that just 17% of residents self-identified as white, while nearly two-thirds were Black.
The question of whether or not to build out oil and gas infrastructure in Union Hill had real consequences for the community there. In the US, Black communities face higher rates of asthma and greater risk of premature death compared to white communities. African Americans are 75% more likely than whites to live in communities next to industrial facilities, according to a 2017 report from the NAACP and Clean Air Task Force.
The Virginia air board took up the issue in November 2018, in a meeting over whether to grant the facility a key permit. Several members raised questions about the competing claims about Union Hill’s racial makeup, and how the board should resolve them. The group decided to delay a decision. A few days later though, Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D) who has accepted nearly $400,000 from Dominion over his career – replaced two board members who’d raised questions, reportedly saying that their terms had already expired. His office denied it had anything to do with the pipeline issue.
‘Environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked,’ the court wrote, vacating the pipeline’s construction permit
To bolster their case before the board, Dominion hired PC Analytics to conduct an analysis of the demographics of the population. Its owner, researcher and Richmond professor Paolo Catasti, has a history of working with the tobacco industry. Catasti’s findings, which became one of the main arguments used by Dominion to support the pipeline, was that the residents in Union Hill were not Black, but instead representative of the county and state they resided in: majority white.
Catasti’s analysis for Dominion drew from forecasts built using 2010 census data and concluded that African Americans make up just 22% to 25% of the population surrounding the proposed site.
In January 2019, the reconstituted board approved the permits. Environmental and community groups sued, arguing the state air board failed to scrutinize Dominion’s methodology in assessing Union Hill’s racial makeup when Fjord’s study was much more detailed.
“They were given evidence that there was a deeper story, and they disregarded it in the favor of the applicant,” said Stephen Metts, an analyst at New York’s New School who focuses on gas infrastructure projects.
The battle came to a close in January 2020, when the fourth circuit of the US court of appeals found the state air board never resolved conflicting claims about the demographic makeup of Union Hill residents, and criticized the board for its “flawed analysis”.
“Environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked,” the court wrote, vacating the pipeline’s construction permit.
The Virginia department of environmental Quality said it “is considering” the Union Hill ruling as it grows its environmental justice efforts, pointing to its recently established environmental justice office this year.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was ultimately canceled on 5 July 2020. Dominion’s then CEO, Tom Farrell, cited “increasing legal uncertainty” that large scale energy infrastructure projects faced in the US.
Metts said the verdict was a welcome precedent for communities fighting pipeline ventures. Federal and state regulators are “coming to a reckoning” over the scale of community pushback to big gas projects,” he said.
In Virginia, a law passed in 2020 inspired by Union Hill now requires state officials to consider environmental justice concerns when examining proposals.
“That era of just accepting it – I think it’s really over,” Metts said.
More than a year after the pipeline was called off, the effects of that conflict are still playing out in Union Hill.
There’s a question of what’s to be done with the 31 miles of pipeline built and 83 miles of trees cut prior to the pipeline’s cancellation. Federal energy regulators like July recommended leaving the infrastructure and felled trees in place. Additionally, many residents who had signed deals with the pipeline to allow the project to use portions of their property for construction now want the easements rescinded so that Dominion can no longer access their land. Dominion has said it has no plans to return the easements in the short-term, but will negotiate their return on a case-by-case basis after it completes restoration efforts – a process that could take years.
Despite the pipeline’s cancellation, Dominion announced in February it was donating $3.5m toward community services in Buckingham county. Over half of that money went to a local foundation chaired by Basil Gooden, the former Virginia secretary of agriculture who’d lobbied on Dominion’s behalf in 2018.
Union Hill residents are already facing another industry that would like to do business just a few miles away – gold mining.
After gold was found near Union Hill, state lawmakers agreed to fund a study on the effects of its mining, declining to institute a moratorium demanded by activists.
Elsewhere in the region, other community fights against pipeline projects continue, including a 14.5-mile intrastate pipeline in eastern South Carolina proposed to cross the Great Pee Dee River, and a compressor station being constructed in Northampton county, North Carolina, whose census block is 79% Black.
While the Union Hill fight was a victory, residents and anti-pipeline activists acknowledge it’s just one of a few.
“It’s an incomplete success story and it’s definitely a cautionary tale,” said Finnley-Brook. “The community is still divided, the community still lacks investment. It is still in a situation of desperation….We still need to recognize that the [pipeline’s investments] did not improve the standards of living for that community.”
Rooftop Solar Systems Fared Better Than Big Energy Companies in Surviving Hurricane Ida
Climate Nexus September 15, 2021
A utility crew works to restore power in the wake of Hurricane Ida on Sept. 2, 2021 in Albany, Louisiana. Sean Rayford / Getty Images.
Hurricane Ida shut down all of Entergy’s electricity transmission into New Orleans and left hundreds of thousands across the region to suffer a week — or longer — in the heat and darkness.
But the Hazlett family’s 37 rooftop solar panels made the blackout caused by Entergy’s failures after Ida bearable. While not powerful enough to run the central air conditioning during the day, the family’s solar panels did allow them to run fans throughout their home, distribute ice to the neighborhood, and even power their elderly neighbor’s refrigerator and oxygen machine.
“During this whole Ida incident, I didn’t have to chase gas, I didn’t have to worry about carbon monoxide, I didn’t have to worry about extension cords,” Jewell Hazlett told NOLA.com. “The sun came to me.”
According to SEIA, Louisiana ranks 38th in the U.S. for home solar panel installations.
In the Louisiana Bayou, Dolphin Victims of Hurricane Ida Set the Stage for a Political Fight Over Coastal Restoration
Dolphins killed during Ida’s storm surge are a reminder of how vulnerable Louisiana’s marine life is to climate change. And locals worry a controversial river diversion project to increase the state’s marshland could make things even worse.
By Rocky Kistner
Dolphins killed by Hurricane Ida raise fear among locals for what the future holds. Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department
Days after Hurricane Ida roared through coastal Louisiana, sending a 12-foot storm surge rushing across the marshlands south of New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department Capt. Kevin Coleman was driving on a coastal road trying to reach his isolated fire station near Myrtle Grove, Louisiana.
As he drove toward Barataria Bay, he saw in the distance what looked like black plastic garbage bags littering the road. But as he drove closer his curiosity turned to horror. “What the hell,” he said to himself as he slammed on the brakes. Scattered along the road were the remains of four dead bottlenose dolphins, lying on the drying asphalt with mouths agape, a decaying pile of flesh that revealed their agonizing deaths.
Coleman jumped out of his vehicle and took a few pictures to capture the morbid moment he had just witnessed. The fire department captain didn’t have much time to reflect on what he had seen, but later he couldn’t shake the thought of what might be in store for the region’s dolphins. He says he worries that the future is not a bright one for the dolphins, as well as the oysters, shrimp, and salt-water fish that make the bay one of the most productive in the nation.
That’s because, he says, about six miles from where he found the dolphins dead in the middle of the road, the state of Louisiana plans to build an unprecedented multi-billion river diversion project. The goal is to build up marshland in Barataria Bay in order to mitigate coastal erosion. The plan is currently under federal environmental review.
Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department
Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department
The project’s supporters, including major environmental nonprofits like the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Audubon Society, say large river diversions are the most effective way to send land-building sediment streaming into the bayou from the Mississippi River to fight land subsidence and sea-level rise. Losing land at an alarming rate, Louisiana is one of the states most threatened by the impacts of climate change in the U.S.
The diversion project is part of a 50-year coastal restoration plan by the state, boosted by major funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which has supported a multi-million dollar PR and media campaign to promote the plan. The foundation also has funded local media coastal reporting efforts, which, along with national media stories, has largely been positive about the state’s diversion plan.
But that’s not how some locals and other marine mammal experts see it. The massive river diversions planned for Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes has run into a buzzsaw of opposition, as local fishing communities worry that the diversions will pour polluted Mississippi River water into the bay. The fear is that upstream chemicals, pesticides, and other toxins will change the salinity levels of the water and destroy one of the most productive fisheries in the country.
A study earlier this year found that the Barataria Bay diversion project could result in local dolphin populations becoming “functionally extinct.”
But in 2018 a Congressional lobbying effort successfully managed to insert an exemption to remove protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act in order to allow the project to move forward.
Dolphin expert Moby Solangi, president and executive director of the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, says finding four stranded dolphins on a road is unusual, but it’s not surprising given that climate change is contributing to bigger and more destructive storms. “The climate predictions of increased hurricanes and tropical storms in the region, and the proposed diversion of polluted Mississippi River in the Louisiana estuaries, will have a devastating effect on dolphins, turtles, fish and shellfish,” Solangi said.
Solangi and other marine mammal experts say dolphins are territorial and will not move, even if their habitat is threatened, and they will suffer deadly skin lesions disease caused by the planned massive inflows of river water.
Dolphin expert Moby Solangi, at the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies. Credit: Julie Dermansky
Dolphin populations are already stressed in the area, having been severely damaged by the historic BP oil disaster in 2010, which still impacts the dolphin populations in Barataria Bay today. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that deadly dolphin strandings in Texas, western Louisiana, and coastal Florida are on the rise this year as well. Still, they haven’t approached the dangerous 2019 levels when record flooding pumped river runoff into the Gulf and contributed to the death of more than 300 hundred dolphins. Scientists say impacts of red tide and the toxic impacts of yearly “dead zones” caused by inflows of toxins and oxygen-killing algal blooms may be contributing too.
Meanwhile, Louisiana faces challenges to find all the dolphins that may be dying in its marshes, a major task considering the state essentially abandoned its stranding effort, a program to identify and recover marine mammals in distress, in the years following the 2010 BP disaster. Experts say many dolphins likely have died unidentified.
Gabriella Harlamert, coordinator of the Audubon Nature Institute’s wildlife stranding network, says the organization is trying to build up its resources, and that it now has its first boat on order. She says they were able to help rescue seven dolphins last year after Hurricane Laura slammed into the Louisiana coast, and they participated in a recent multi-agency rescue of a young dolphin trapped in Ida’s floodwaters in Slidell, Louisiana.
But Harlamert was too late to help save the four dolphins recently found in Plaquemines. Her small team responded to the stranding report, but she says the animals were too decomposed to do a proper necropsy. “I’ve never gotten dolphins like this that were so fragmented,” she says. She blames storm surge for trapping the animals, who likely got caught in a containment area by the road as the surging water rushed back into the bay.
Dolphins killed by Hurricane Ida. Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department
Public officials, however, like Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, former president of Plaquemines Parish during the BP oil disaster, say the dolphins killed during Hurricane Ida are symbolic of a state’s coastal restoration plan gone awry.
Nungesser, who is in charge of Louisiana’s seafood promotion board, has made opposing the massive river diversion projects central to his likely run for governor in 2023. He said earlier this year that the future of Louisiana lies in protecting its fisheries, not the oil and gas industry, which he famously said “was going down.” He argues that the state should be focusing on more immediate, short-term projects they know work, such as more dredging and berms to help land areas which act as a buffer between storm surges and the coastline, instead of working on 50-year programs when it’s challenging to predict that far into the future.
“The dolphins on that road is a wake-up call,” Nungesser told Desmog. “How do they think they can dump all this polluted river water in there and not kill everything?”
Political leaders and residents in coastal areas that will be impacted by these diversions largely agree with the Lt. Governor. They say there are other ways to try to build coastal land that won’t destroy the fisheries in the process.
Dredging, for instance, also works to build land — but requires constant maintenance. The state says diversions can build land naturally. The question for many is: at what cost? Is it worth impacting dolphin populations and jeopardizing the fisheries? The state says it will compensate local communities for their losses, but locals say that is impossible. They say it will kill their livelihoods.
“There are more than two thousand dolphins in this area,” says Coleman. “The diversions will kill them … we need to stick with dredging.”
Pasture conditions in the US are the worst they’ve been since 2012. That’s bad for inflation.
By Claisa Diaz, Things Reporter September 15, 2021
Reuters / Aude Gerrucci. California faced its worst drought since 1977.
The governors of 10 states in the American West recently called on the Biden administration to declare a drought disaster. It follows an intense summer of drought and record-breaking wildfires across the whole region. It’s been a month since the letter was sent and the administration has yet to act on it.
Data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that pasture and range conditions have been in decline for quite some time. Pasture varies in its uses but is important for harvesting livestock feed like hay, and provides range for animals to roam and graze. Less quality pasture means less food for livestock and other animals, which could lead to higher prices for meat and dairy products—or even a shortage. It also means more yellow and brown in typically green landscapes.
Drought is hurting US pasture and range
The USDA ranks pasture conditions from “excellent” to “very poor”, with “good” meaning yield prospects are normal. During the past two decades, only small portions of US pasture have regularly been in “excellent” condition but typically about 75% of US pasture is rated at least “fair.”
Conditions have continued to trend away from good since 2015. The portion of pasture and range rated “poor”, and “very poor” has increased—meaning more and more crops and grasslands are undergoing stress.
Less feed means higher prices
The cost of animal feeds is already going up for farmers, just as it did when pastures suffered in 2012. Though today, pandemic related supply chain issues and higher fuel costs are also contributing to the trend. Some areas are reporting shortages among increased prices.
California’s second drought in three years
“You have situations in central California where there’s not sufficient water at all and farms are collapsing, farms are failing,” said Rick Mueller who manages tools that measure crop conditions and soil moisture for the USDA. “It’s just a really hard cycle that we’ve been going through now.” Major drought started in California around 2011, broke around 2018 and now it’s back again. “It’s a matter of farmers being able to adapt and react to the climate that’s around them.”
Short term price increases, long term food supply risks
According to the letter, “There is little to no animal feed across much of the west, requiring farmers to import feed from out of state…Hay prices have skyrocketed, ranchers are selling off their livestock and others are considering selling prime agricultural lands for development.” The letter warns that drought could have long-term impacts on the food supply, wildlife, and livelihood of Americans in the West as these conditions persist.
As states lack resources to deal with drought and wildfires, among climate disasters of all kinds, national US disaster policy will need to reform. State lawmakers are asking the federal government to provide support beyond what is available through existing emergency programs.
The Greatest Killer in New Orleans Wasn’t the Hurricane. It Was the Heat.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Katy Reckdahl
National Guard members distribute ice outside a community center in New Orleans on Sept. 1, 2021. The city was without power for days after Hurricane Ida made landfall. (Johnny Milano/The New York Times)
NEW ORLEANS — In many ways, Iley Joseph’s one-bedroom apartment was an ideal place to ride out a hurricane. It was on the third floor — much too high to flood — of a building that was sturdy and new, part of a sleek, gated community for older residents like him.
But in the days after Hurricane Ida, his home began to feel like a trap. The huge power failure that cut off electricity to New Orleans rendered Joseph’s air-conditioner useless and his refrigerator nothing more than a cupboard. Even worse, the outage froze the complex’s elevators in place, sealing him inside the building because his health problems prevented him from using the stairs.
Joseph, 73, insisted in telephone conversations with his sons that he was doing just fine. But in his apartment, No. 312, it kept getting hotter. On Sept. 2, the fourth day after the storm hit — the hottest yet — a friend found him lying still on the side of his bed.
“I call his name, he doesn’t respond,” said the friend, Jared Righteous. “I realized he was gone.”
Only in recent days, as the last lights flickered back on in New Orleans, have officials here discovered the true toll of Hurricane Ida. Unlike in the Northeast, where many who perished were taken by floodwaters and tornadoes, heat has emerged as the greatest killer in New Orleans.
Of 14 deaths caused by the storm in the city, Joseph’s and nine others are believed to be tied to the heat. Experts say there are probably more. And friends of those who died have begun to ask whether the government or apartment landlords could have done more to protect older residents before they died, often alone, in stiflingly hot homes.
“Heat is a hazard that we simply haven’t given sufficient attention to,” said David Hondula, a professor at Arizona State University who studies the effects of sweltering temperatures. “All cities are in the early stages of understanding what an effective heat response looks like.”
In New Orleans, officials set up air-conditioned cooling centers across the city and distributed food, water and ice around town. But for residents like Joseph who could not leave their buildings, the aid might as well have been worlds away.
All 10 people whose deaths have been tied to the heat were in their 60s and 70s, and they died over four broiling days, the last of which was Sept. 5, a full week after the storm.
Among the first was Corinne Labat-Hingle, a 70-year-old woman who had fled to Memphis during Hurricane Katrina but returned to New Orleans and was living at an apartment complex for older people near Saint Bernard Avenue, a short walk from the city’s largest park. She was found dead on Sept. 2, when the temperature reached 93 degrees outdoors and was most likely higher inside her apartment.
Two days later, another 93-degree day, four people were found dead, including Reginald Logan, 74, whose body was discovered after a neighbor saw flies in his window. On Sept. 5, the heat index reached 101, and one of the last victims of the heat was found dead: Keith Law, a 65-year-old man who lived in the Algiers neighborhood.
Heat most likely contributes to more deaths each year than are officially recorded, Hondula said. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports fewer than 700 heat-related deaths a year, some studies have estimated 5,000 to 12,000. Last month, The New York Times found that 600 more people died in Oregon and Washington in the last week of June, during a heat wave, than normally would have, a number three times the state officials’ estimates of heat-related deaths.
This comes as heat waves are growing more frequent, longer lasting and more dangerous. The 2018 National Climate Assessment, a major scientific report by 13 federal agencies, notes that the number of hot days is increasing, and the frequency of heat waves in the United States jumped from an average of two per year in the 1960s to six per year by the 2010s.
People who die from the heat may not recognize their symptoms as life-threatening, and heat-related deaths can also occur suddenly, with little warning. The most frequent cause is cardiovascular failure, when the heart cannot pump blood fast enough. Less frequent are deaths from heat stroke, when a person’s internal temperature rises by several degrees and the body cannot cool off, causing organs like the brain, heart or kidneys to fail.
Laura Bergerol, a 65-year-old New Orleans photographer, died on Sept. 5. She had planned to evacuate to Florida before the storm but told friends she had trouble finding a hotel room. By the time she arranged plans, it was too dangerous to leave. After the storm, an errant $400 charge on her bank account had left her without enough money to get out. She stocked up on candles and hunkered down in her second-floor apartment in an affordable complex built for artists in the Bywater neighborhood downriver from the French Quarter.
“Missed my window of opportunity,” she wrote on Twitter. “Curse you #HurricaneIda.”
Neighbors said Bergerol largely stayed in her apartment with the doors and windows closed. Still, she seemed to be surviving. On Sept. 3, she texted Josh Hailey, a neighbor, asking if she could visit his cat while he was out. “I have plenty of treats,” she wrote. The next day, she joined neighbors in the building’s courtyard for a showing of “Cinderella.”
On Sunday, Hailey let himself into her apartment when she did not answer the door. He found her lying on the floor and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late. That evening, the neighbors played brass-band music in the courtyard and danced for Bergerol, recalling her vivid blue eyes and frequent, wide smile.
By then, city health officials had begun to realize the danger that older residents were facing. A day before Bergerol’s death, they evacuated eight apartments for older residents, including several where people had died. Now, city officials are considering mandating, during natural disasters, that subsidized apartments serving older or disabled residents have generators, conduct welfare checks or have a building manager on the property at all times, a spokesperson said.
The proposed measures are gaining momentum partly because of deaths like that of Joseph, the man stuck in apartment 312.
Joseph was well known at Village de Jardin, a relatively affordable complex in New Orleans East for people 55 and older. It is owned by the Louisiana Housing Corp., a state agency, and managed by Latter & Blum, a large real estate company that manages properties across several states. The housing agency said Latter & Blum had encouraged tenants to evacuate and then, after the storm, brought cooling buses to the property and supplies to tenants who chose to stay.
Joseph had retired years ago from a job selling car parts. He frequently chatted with neighbors, and his routine included grabbing coffee and beignets around town. He was known for his faith, his love of his family and, to some, his trademark reply, “Yes, indeed,” which led his grandchildren to call him Grandpa Yes Indeed. Many more people knew him for his humor, which is how he became friends with Righteous, 45, who was drawn to Joseph when he was cracking jokes at an event hosted by the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church.
In the days after the hurricane, neighbors looked out for Joseph, who was subsisting on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. One friend brought him a warm plate of food. A neighbor across the hall charged Joseph’s phone using a car battery and an inverter.
But Sept. 2 was the most grueling day yet. Around 1:45 p.m., the heat index was nearing 103, and Joseph’s phone had died again. He poked his head outside his door and motioned for a woman in the hallway to come closer. The woman, Rhonda Quinn, thought he looked unwell and asked if he needed some air. He brushed her off, joking that after days in the heat, he smelled too bad to go out, she said.
What he did need, he said, was to charge his phone to make a call. Quinn found someone to help, but when she tried to return the phone sometime before 3 p.m., he did not answer her repeated knocks. She assumed he had gone out, and she left.
Shortly after, Joseph’s friend from church, Righteous, pulled into the complex’s parking lot with a bag of oatmeal cream pies and other snacks. He, too, received no answer after knocking on Joseph’s door. When he opened it, he found Joseph slumped to the side of the bed, as if he had been sitting on its edge and looking out the window.
His death has left his two sons grief-stricken and stunned, unable to understand how their father could make it through the hurricane’s wrath without a scratch only to perish in the heat that followed.
“He didn’t die from flooding, he didn’t die from a lightning bolt,” said his oldest son, Iley Joseph Jr., 45. “It’s just, he’s gone.”
75% of the Young People Around the World are Frightened of the Future Because of Climate Change
Ciara Nugent
UK Students Strike Over Climate Change. Students march on Westminster Bridge during the “Fridays for Future” climate change rally on February 14, 2020 in London, England. Credit – John Keeble—Getty Images
Growing up in the emerging reality of the climate crisis is taking its toll on young people’s mental health. According to a global survey and peer-reviewed study soon to be published in Lancet Planetary Health, a scientific journal, 75% of young people think the future is frightening and 45% say climate concern negatively impacts their day.
The study, which claims to be the largest investigation to date into youth climate anxiety, surveyed 10,000 people aged 16-25 across 10 countries. Four of the countries were in the Global South (Brazil, India, Nigeria and the Philippines) and the remaining six were in the Global North (Australia, France, Finland, Portugal, the U.K. and the U.S.) https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7yTH7/9/
Levels of concern varied from country to country, tending to be higher in the Global South nations surveyed than in those in the Global North. When asked if their own family’s security would be threatened by climate change, for example, on average 65.5% of those in the South said yes, compared to 42% in the North.
The looming threats of the climate crisis—which include increased extreme weather and economic instability—are affecting how young people plan for their future, the survey suggests, with 39% of respondents saying they are hesitant to have their own children. The proportion reporting that hesitancy varied relatively little between countries, standing between 36% and 48% for all those surveyed, except Nigeria, an outlier on 22% https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5xvj2/2/
Young people were also asked about how they see governments’ responses to the climate crisis. Broadly speaking, governments have failed to reassure young people through their actions, per the study, with 64% of those surveyed saying officials are lying about the impact of the measures they are taking and 58% saying governments are betraying future generations.
In almost every category, negative feelings about the government’s climate response were most prevalent in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro has overseen a dismantling of environmental protections since 2019. Respondents in Finland were the least likely to have a negative perception of their government’s actions, though even there, 47% believed the government was failing young people.
UPDATE 1-Biden says in Colorado that extreme weather will cost U.S. over $100 bln this year
Steve Holland
GOLDEN, Colo., Sept 14 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that extreme weather events would cost the United States over $100 billion this year, as he visited Colorado to highlight drought conditions and raging wildfires in the U.S. West.
Colorado was his last stop on a three-state western swing in which he also visited California and Idaho to demonstrate how global warming has scorched the region’s landscape even as states in other parts of the country battle hurricanes and storms that have caused flash floods and killed dozens.
Tropical Storm Nicholas was battering the Texas and Louisiana coasts on Tuesday, flooding streets and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power.
Biden has also used the trip to build support for his administration’s infrastructure spending plans aimed at fighting the growing threat of climate change.
“We have to make the investments that are going to slow our contributions to climate change, today, not tomorrow,” Biden said after touring the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.
Recent extreme weather events will “come with more ferocity,” he added.
Biden estimated the economic damage caused by such events this year would come in at more than $100 billion, a day after saying they cost the United States $99 billion last year.
“Even if it’s not in your backyard, you feel the effects,” he said.
During the tour, Biden examined a windmill blade resting on the ground outside the laboratory and also looked at a giant solar battery, saying such batteries would be important in ensuring homeowners have seven days of reserve power.
Biden hopes to tap into voter concerns about the climate to gain popular support for a $3.5 trillion spending plan that is being negotiated in the U.S. Congress.
Republicans oppose the legislation due to its price tag and because taxes would be raised on the wealthy to pay for it.
Democrats who hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate are hoping to pass the spending plan with only Democratic votes, a difficult balancing act in chambers rife with competing interests. (Reporting by Steve Holland in Golden, Colorado; Writing by Nandita Bose; Editing by David Gregorio and Peter Cooney)
World Faces Growing Risk of Food Shortages Due to Climate Change
Áine Quinn
World Faces Growing Risk of Food Shortages Due to Climate Change Photos 1-2
(Bloomberg) — Food supplies will struggle to keep pace with the world’s growing population as climate change sends temperatures soaring and droughts intensify, according to a report from Chatham House.
Yields of staple crops could decline by almost a third by 2050 unless emissions are drastically reduced in the next decade, while farmers will need to grow nearly 50% more food to meet global demand, the think tank said. The Chatham House report was drawn up for heads of state before next month’s pivotal United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Food prices are already near a decade high, fueled by supply chain disruptions during the pandemic and extreme weather. Wheat prices surged over the summer due to crop losses in some of the biggest exporters. The Chatham House report suggests climate challenges could keep that trend intact.
“We can expect all basic food staples to significantly increase in price,” the report’s lead author Daniel Quiggin said in an interview. “We would also expect there to be shortages in some reaches of the world.”
Thе proportion of cropland affected by drought will more than triple to 32% a year, the report said. It also predicts nearly 50-50 odds of a loss of 10% or more of the corn crop across the top four producing countries during the 2040s.
Major crops from wheat to soy and rice “are likely to see big yield declines” due to drought, and shorter growing periods, Quiggin said. Severe climate impacts will be “locked in” by 2040 if countries do not reduce emissions, according to the report.
Report: Climate change could see 200 million move by 2050
Renata Brito
World Bank Climate Migration Photos 1-5
In this file photo taken Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020, a Samburu boy uses a wooden stick to try to swat a swarm of desert locusts filling the air, as he herds his camel near the village of Sissia, in Samburu county, Kenya. Climate change could push more than 200 million people to move within their own countries in the next three decades and create migration hotspots unless urgent action is taken in the coming years to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found. The report published on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021 examines how long-term impacts of climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what the report describes as “climate migrants” by 2050. (AP Photo/Patrick Ngugi, File)
In this July 31, 2016, file photo, a flood-affected family with their goats travel on a boat in the Morigaon district, east of Gauhati, northeastern Assam state, India. Climate change could push more than 200 million people to move within their own countries in the next three decades and create migration hotspots unless urgent action is taken in the coming years to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found. The report published on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021 examines how long-term impacts of climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what the report describes as “climate migrants” by 2050. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)
In this July 3, 2015 file photo, a farmer works in a rice paddy field at Reba Maheswar village, 56 kilometers (35 miles) east of Gauhati, India. Climate change could push more than 200 million people to move within their own countries in the next three decades and create migration hotspots unless urgent action is taken in the coming years to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found. The report published on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021 examines how long-term impacts of climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what the report describes as “climate migrants” by 2050. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)
In this May 4, 2016, file photo, a girl wearing her school uniform pulls a rope attached to a bucket as she tries to draw water after a tanker emptied water into a dried up well at Umber Maal village in Thane district in Maharashtra state, India. Climate change could push more than 200 million people to move within their own countries in the next three decades and create migration hotspots unless urgent action is taken in the coming years to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found. The report published on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021 examines how long-term impacts of climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what the report describes as “climate migrants” by 2050. (AP Photo/ Rajanish Kakade, File)
In this Aug. 7, 2011 file photo, Somali refugees herd their goats at the Ifo refugee camp outside Dadaab, eastern Kenya, 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Somali border. Climate change could push more than 200 million people to move within their own countries in the next three decades and create migration hotspots unless urgent action is taken in the coming years to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found. The report published on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021 examines how long-term impacts of climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what the report describes as “climate migrants” by 2050. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Climate change could push more than 200 million people to leave their homes in the next three decades and create migration hot spots unless urgent action is taken to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found.
The second part of the Groundswell report published Monday examined how the impacts of slow-onset climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what it describes as “climate migrants” by 2050 under three different scenarios with varying degrees of climate action and development.
Under the most pessimistic scenario, with a high level of emissions and unequal development, the report forecasts up to 216 million people moving within their own countries across the six regions analyzed. Those regions are Latin America; North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; South Asia; and East Asia and the Pacific.
In the most climate-friendly scenario, with a low level of emissions and inclusive, sustainable development, the world could still see 44 million people being forced to leave their homes.
The findings “reaffirm the potency of climate to induce migration within countries,” said Viviane Wei Chen Clement, a senior climate change specialist at the World Bank and one of the report’s authors.
The report didn’t look at the short-term impacts of climate change, such as the effects of extreme weather events, and did not look at climate migration across borders.
In the worst-case scenario, Sub-Saharan Africa — the most vulnerable region due to desertification, fragile coastlines and the population’s dependence on agriculture — would see the most migrants, with up to 86 million people moving within national borders.
North Africa, however, is predicted to have the largest proportion of climate migrants, with 19 million people moving, equivalent to roughly 9% of its population, due mainly to increased water scarcity in northeastern Tunisia, northwestern Algeria, western and southern Morocco, and the central Atlas foothills, the report said.
In South Asia, Bangladesh is particularly affected by flooding and crop failures, accounting for almost half of the predicted climate migrants, with 19.9 million people, including an increasing number of women, moving by 2050 under the pessimistic scenario.
“This is our humanitarian reality right now and we are concerned this is going to be even worse, where vulnerability is more acute,” said Prof. Maarten van Aalst, director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, who wasn’t involved with the report.
Many scientists say the world is no longer on track to the worst-case scenario for emissions. But even under a more moderate scenario, van Aalst said many impacts are now occurring faster than previously expected, “including the extremes we are already experiencing, as well as potential implications for migration and displacement.”
While climate change’s influence on migration is not new, it is often part of a combination of factors pushing people to move, and acts as a threat multiplier. People affected by conflicts and inequality are also more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as they have limited means to adapt.
“Globally we know that three out of four people that move stay within countries,” said Dr. Kanta Kumari Rigaud, a lead environmental specialist at the World Bank and co-author of the report.
The report also warns that migration hot spots could appear within the next decade and intensify by 2050. Planning is needed both in the areas where people will move to, and in the areas they leave to help those who remain.
Among the actions recommended were achieving “net zero emissions by mid-century to have a chance at limiting global warming to 1.5° degrees Celsius” and investing in development that is “green, resilient, and inclusive, in line with the Paris Agreement.”
Clement and Rigaud warned that the worst-case scenario is still plausible if collective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invest in development isn’t taken soon, especially in the next decade.
