Crashing Out Over Climate
Another week in the life of a lifelong New Yorker who is often reminded that she is surrounded by water.
I have to think about the climate crisis every day. I’ve started implementing “no news” hours throughout the week to stay sane through the barrage of news. I’ve started devouring horror novels on the Libby app. Because yes, I (and many other reporters) have to think about bad policy and potential collapse, but at least I’m not trapped in a haunted house. Or being chased by zombies. Or wandering a desolate landscape.
So many people around me in NYC pointed to Sandy as this ‘wake up’ moment. I personally don’t feel that it woke up enough people at the time. I think we simply took it at face value that if there’s a storm, of course it is going to flood. An old friend had texted pictures of the floodwaters crawling up her street, then up her front stairs. Then engulfing the second floor.
It’s one thing to read about sea level rise and coastal cities as a middle schooler, and it’s another to experience it firsthand. It’s another thing to start looking up flood risk in my neighborhood.
In 2021, I spoke a Miami-based climate artist about climate gentrification and his fears of Southern Florida what the future held for his city. I asked him how it felt knowing that places he loved and identified with maybe weren’t going to exist in a few decades.
“It’s hard to cope with, but I have to,” I remember him saying.
Later that same year, I was on assignment as a runner for the New York Times. I had to speak with a landlord about tenants who tragically passed after their basement apartment flooded. I had to ask neighbors questions and hear how they were scrambling to call 911 when they saw their street flooding after heavy rainfall. I see videos of floods every year and wonder if I’ll eventually be one of the people on the roof of a car, or wading through floodwaters in a subway station.
I text friends and we joke about having a weekly climate crash out. We’re living. I go on jogs and look up happy hours while my phone alerts tell me that a big beautiful bill passed. I go grocery shopping and see a journalist explain another lawsuit on my FYP. And sometimes I sit on the floor next to my cats and read about how funding was cut for an environmental justice organization. We’re all just coping.
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Some published work! I wrote about how the climate crisis is disrupting HIV treatment for people in the U.S. South. Here’s how org experts suggested those living with HIV plan ahead for climate change-fueled extreme weather.
On World Refugee Day this past June, I wrote about the need for better immigration and resettlement policies. The climate crisis is going to create more situations that force people out of their homes, which should prompt policy makers to modernize immigration laws. However, the U.S. is only becoming increasingly hostile to immigrants (and to non-white Americans).
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