The Human Toll of the Climate Emergency: Survivors Speak Out
From the Pacific Islands and Pakistan to Belgium and the US, people experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change are sharing their stories – and calling for justice.
Vermont resident Melissa Whittaker speaks during a recent panel event organized by a US-based group called Extreme Weather Survivors. Credit: Dana Drugmand
Lives lost and livelihoods destroyed. Homes reduced to rubble or ash, or washed away in raging floodwaters. Small businesses wrecked, entire communities left devastated, and people struggling to get by without access to electricity, clean water or food, or public infrastructure. This is part of the grim reality our society is facing with the unfolding climate emergency, manifested through an onslaught of so-called natural disasters and extreme weather events as well as slower onset trends like rising sea levels and surface temperatures. And while scientists measure the physical transformation of our world through metrics like degrees Celsius and parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, the science of climate change can seem abstract. But people all over the globe are already experiencing the direct impacts of a rapidly warming planet, warming that is driven primarily by fossil fuels that account for about 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
In the southeastern United States, Hurricane Helene has left a staggering trail of destruction. The category 4 hurricane slammed into northwestern Florida’s Big Bend region late Thursday last week and unleashed heavy rains, winds and flooding that pummeled communities from Georgia to eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Over 100 people are dead across six states as a result of Helene, and nearly 2 million remain without power. In Buncombe County, North Carolina which includes the city of Asheville, officials have confirmed 35 deaths due to the storm. That number may rise as the county continues to conduct search and rescue operations.
“We know that we have areas in Fairview, Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and Barnardsville where the devastation is unthinkable. Those communities no longer resemble what they were a week ago. And loved ones are still trapped,” Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder said during a September 29 media briefing.
Global heating is causing the oceans to heat up as they absorb much of the thermal energy generated by greenhouse gas pollution, and that in turn is fueling stronger storms. According to Climate Central: “Ocean warming due to human-caused climate change is fueling an increased proportion of intense tropical cyclones. Since 1979, human-caused warming has increased the global likelihood of a tropical cyclone developing into a major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) by about 8% per decade.” Hurricane Helene, then, is almost certain to have been intensified by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, as the head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency said during a CBS media appearance on Sunday.
“This storm took a while to develop, but once it did it intensified very rapidly – and that’s because of the warm waters in the Gulf that’s creating more storms that are reaching this major category level,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.
Earlier this summer another hurricane hit the US Gulf Coast. Hurricane Beryl rapidly intensified into a category 5 storm in early July – the earliest Cat. 5 hurricane on record to form in the Atlantic basin – before making landfall in southeast Texas as a category 1 hurricane. The waters over which the storm formed and traveled were 2°–3°F warmer than average, and human-caused climate change made these conditions up to 400 times more likely, according to Climate Central.
Beryl knocked out power to more than 2 million people in the Houston area, leaving many residents to swelter in the summer heat without access to air conditioning. Dozens of deaths in the area were attributed to these indirect impacts stemming from the storm.
Shauntá Floyd counts herself as one of the “lucky ones” to have survived this ordeal. The Houston resident went to stay with a relative who still had power. But it would take a full week before power would be restored to her neighborhood. “A category 1 storm should not have left 2.5 million people without power in 100 degrees. It was a literal nightmare,” Floyd said during a September 25 panel event held last week during Climate Week NYC.
The event, hosted by a newly formed organization called Extreme Weather Survivors, featured the firsthand stories of people who have been directly impacted by climate-related disasters. Extreme Weather Survivors, spearheaded by organizers with experience supporting survivors of other traumas like gun violence, is building a nationwide network of folks who have been harmed by catastrophic flooding, extreme heat, wildfires, and other climate impacts, helping to amplify their voices calling for justice and accountability.
“I think all of us need to really wake up and realize that we’re all being affected” - Vermont resident Melissa Whittaker
Melissa Whittaker, a small business owner in Montpelier, Vermont, continues to face financial hardship more than a year after extreme flooding inundated the state’s small capital city in July 2023. It was the worst flooding to hit Vermont in nearly a century, and state lawmakers responded by passing the Vermont Climate Superfund Act in May that aims to make major fossil fuel companies help pay for climate costs incurred by the state. “I think that that’s really important,” Whitaker said during last week’s panel discussion. “[Big oil companies] should be helping pay for some these things that are happening, because they are part of the problem.”
Whittaker and her husband own a downtown Montpelier pizza shop called Positive Pie, and they had to close for six months and completely rebuild following last year’s devastating floods. And as if that wasn’t enough of a nightmare, parts of Vermont experienced more heavy flooding this past July, exactly a year to the day of the horrific 2023 floods.
“The thing that’s been hard is having another flood come to Vermont the exact same day,” Whittaker told me in an interview following the panel event. Fortunately, she told me, it wasn’t as bad and nothing in her restaurant got ruined. “But it was so traumatizing,” she recalled.
Whittaker said it feels like Vermont is now seeing these extreme floods occur nearly every year, and that the state no longer feels like a safe haven from extreme weather and climate disruption. “I moved to Vermont and I remember thinking, it’s the safest state,” she told me. “It does not feel like that anymore. The flooding is so bad in Vermont, and we’re such a poor little state.”
She emphasized that none of us are immune to the adverse impacts of the climate crisis. “We have to stop pretending that it isn’t going to happen to us,” she said. “I think all of us need to really wake up and realize that we’re all being affected, and we all have to care, and all have to join together and really speak out.”
Swallowed By the Sea and Fleeing From Fires
All across the world, people are speaking out, sharing their personal stories of loss and demanding urgent climate action and climate justice.
As the International Court of Justice prepares to hold historic hearings (starting December 2) on climate change, part of the process of issuing an advisory opinion regarding countries’ legal responsibilities to address the climate crisis, the student-led group that initiated the campaign to take the climate issue to the world’s highest court has launched a storytelling and messaging project called Witness Stand. This project from Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change features video testimonials of people from communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
In one video, Debby Schutz, a young person from the Marshall Islands who is currently studying at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, described the reality that her small islands home country is facing.
“Growing up on a low-lying atoll such as the Marshall Islands in the face of the climate crisis is a peek into the insecure and unstable future that my generation will inherit, that youth across the world will soon inherit,” Schutz said. “There is nowhere to hide from climate change in the Marshall Islands. Sea level rise continues to gnaw away at our shores like walls closing in on you from all sides. Irregular water patterns and droughts affect our agriculture and subsistence living.”
Schutz continued: “Livelihoods and traditional ways of living are at risk of being lost…Our identities are so deeply intertwined with the land that without it, we have no identity.”
In another video, youth environmental advocate Dylan Kava of Fiji described the loss of sacred burial grounds and displacement of whole communities. “The village of Togoru here on the main island of Fiji has over the past decades watched their ancestral burial grounds get swallowed up by the ocean. The beach that village elders once played on is now gone,” he said. “Whole communities have had to be relocated inland, with many more identified for relocation by the Fijian government, due to climate-induced sea level rise.”
Kava noted that Pacific Islanders are “grappling with consequences of decisions made by those far removed from our reality,” and are at the forefront of advocating for climate action. “We are agents of change, demanding justice, accountability and action,” he said.
In Australia, a group called Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action is amplifying the voices of folks impacted by the country’s devastating bushfires, which have been linked to climate change. “We believe the human impacts of climate change must be prioritised in Australia's politics, courts, businesses, and public planning,” the group’s website states. The site also includes the stories of some of these survivors.
Sabrina Davis, who lives on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, survived the 2019-2020 “Black Summer” bushfires that torched more than 59 million acres and impacted three billion animals. Davis’ story, included on the Bushfire Survivors website, recalls how she evacuated her home with her dogs and children on January 3, 2020 while her husband stayed behind with his brother and father. “Many hours of no power and no phone reception, fear and tears, no communication and sheer panic followed until we finally heard from the three men and found out they were luckily alive but we had lost everything we owned that day. After losing our entire farm including all our livestock and our house, our little family was suddenly homeless and I was lost.”
“Lives Lost and Futures Shattered”
In May, three NGOs along with eight individuals filed a novel criminal complaint against the French oil major TotalEnergies, including its board of directors and main shareholders, over the company’s outsized role in causing climate devastation. The individual plaintiffs are all survivors of, or have been deeply affected by, climate-related disasters. Some have lost loved ones in catastrophic storms or floods.
Khanzadi Kapri, a 25-year-old plaintiff, is a survivor of the 2022 extreme monsoon flooding in Pakistan. The horrific flooding in August 2022 inundated one-third of the country and killed over 1,700 people; the rains were made 50% to 75% more intense by climate change. Khanzadi lost her sister in the disaster and her community was left devastated by the destruction.
“Late at night, I woke up to see water coming into our house. It kept rising, so we gathered essentials and fled to higher ground, abandoning our animals and belongings. The relentless deluge left no corner untouched as it inundated our homes, our fields, and our hopes for the future,” Kapri recalled. “During all the chaos, something terrible happened to my family which shattered me into pieces. My sister who was pregnant and about to have a baby died during labor pains as I and my family members couldn’t get her to medical facility. I and my brother tried a lot to reach the nearby basic health facility which was about 15 kilometers away from my village but there was no transportation available, and the flood water was too high to walk through. Losing her hurt us a lot and left a lasting sadness.”
In France, siblings Elisa and William, both plaintiffs in the criminal case against TotalEnergies, lost their mother during a storm that pummeled the southeastern part of the country in October 2020. The storm caused flooding that completely destroyed the Vésubie Valley where their mother lived, washing away bridges, roads and houses. The house where their mother lived was destroyed, and she didn’t survive.
Another plaintiff, 17-year-old Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts from Dworp, Belgium, is a survivor of the tragic flash floods that hit northern Europe during the summer of 2021, killing 220 people including his friend Rosa. He had just met Rosa that summer at a camp in Belgium, and he risked his life trying to save her from the rising water.
“Suddenly there was a lot more water, the river began to overflow and the bank of the stream where we were standing collapsed,” he recalled. “I saw Rosa fall into the water, just a few meters away from me. I didn’t think twice, I ran towards the water and jumped in to catch her. The water was no longer water but a raging brown monster dragging us along. After a while, we were dragged underwater. Suddenly I was hit in the chest by a pole sticking out of the ground. I grabbed it with one arm. I held Rosa with the other. I held onto her until the monster pulled her away from me. Her body was found three days later.”
The experience led Benjamin to start a nonprofit called Climate Justice for Rosa, which strives to raise awareness of the human toll of the climate crisis worldwide.
“While I will forever carry with me that I was unable to save Rosa, I am resolved to honor her memory by dedicating myself to preventing further tragedies,” he said. “I will do everything in my power to combat the climate crisis and hold those responsible accountable. We must recognize the human toll of the climate crisis; it is not merely a matter of statistics but of lives lost and futures shattered.”