SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
hurricane helene
What Were the Most Expensive Climate Disasters of 2024?
"The human suffering caused by the climate crisis reflects political choices. There is nothing natural about the growing severity and frequency of droughts, floods and storms," said the CEO of Christian Aid.
Dec 30, 2024
Climate disasters aren't cheap. In 2024, the 10 costliest extreme weather events not only extracted a toll in the form of human lives, but also each cost over $4 billion in economic damages—and some much more—according to a report released Monday from the global group Christian Aid.
"The human suffering caused by the climate crisis reflects political choices. There is nothing natural about the growing severity and frequency of droughts, floods and storms," said Christian Aid CEO Patrick Watt in a statement Monday.
"Disasters are being supercharged by decisions to keep burning fossil fuels, and to allow emissions to rise. And they're being made worse by the consistent failure to deliver on financial commitments to the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries," he continued.
According to the report, the costliest climate disasters in terms of economic cost this year, in ascending order, were: Valencia floods in Spain; Bavaria floods in Germany; Rio Grande do Sul floods in Brazil; Storm Boris in Central Europe; Hurricane Beryl in the U.S., Mexico, and Caribbean islands; Typhoon Yagi in Southwest Asia; China floods in China; Hurricane Helene in the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba; Hurricane Milton in the U.S.; and U.S. storms in the United States.
Two items on the list—"China floods" and "U.S. storms"—are not a single event. The China floods refer to flood events across China that happened in June and July, and U.S. storms are all storms classified by the global professional services firm Aon as "severe convective storm" for the period between January and September, according to the report.
These U.S. storms, the most expensive climate disaster of 2024, amounted to over $60 billion in economic costs and 88 deaths, per the report. The second costliest, Hurricane Milton, caused 25 deaths and $60 billion in economic losses.
Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida, was made worse by fossil fuel emissions: "In a world without climate change, Hurricane Milton would have made landfall as a Category 2 storm. Instead, it struck as a Category 3 hurricane, with stronger winds and more intense rainfall, causing extensive tornado activity, and damaging infrastructure in regions still recovering from previous hurricanes."
Specifically, "a rapid analysis by Climate Central showed that the unusually warm ocean temperatures, which fueled the hurricane's rapid intensification, were made 400-800 times more likely by climate change over the two weeks preceding the storm," according to the report.
The report's authors also caveat that the losses tallied in the document are likely an undercount. Most of the costs estimates are based on insured losses, meaning that the true financial costs are likely to be even higher (for example, it does not include economic costs stemming from crop production losses). Human costs are also often undercounted, the report's authors state.
Another important piece of context is that economic costs are generally higher in absolute terms for richer countries because the value of infrastructure and private property tends to be higher, living costs are greater, and more is covered by insurance—meaning losses are more calculable in financial terms, per the report. However, the death toll tends to be higher in poorer countries.
The deadliest climate disaster, according to the report, was Typhoon Yagi, which came in as the fifth most expensive climate disaster in terms of economic cost, and caused the deaths of over 829 people. The typhoon struck multiple countries in southeast Asia, causing landslides, flooding, and infrastructure damage in places including the Philippines, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Thailand. In Myanmar, for example, it devastated entire villages and decimated over 2.3 million hectares of agricultural land.
In its Monday statement, Christian Aid highlighted that "some of the most devastating extreme weather events in 2024 hit poorer nations, which have contributed little to causing the climate crisis and have the least resources to respond."
To that end, the group is calling on Global North countries to increase their commitment to climate finance and cease development of new fossil fuel projects.
The report also includes additional information about disasters that didn't make it into the top ten for economic damages, but are still of note. They include a drought that impacted countries in southern Africa between February and July and floods impacting Afghanistan and Pakistan between March and September.
Keep ReadingShow Less
10 Million Kids at Risk of Hunger Unless GOP-Led States Embrace Summer EBT Program
"Summer can be the hungriest time for children," said one anti-hunger advocate.
Dec 16, 2024
A dozen states are poised to walk away from a combined $1.14 billion in federal funding that would help alleviate hunger for nearly 10 million children next summer, according to Food Research & Action Center, or FRAC, a nonprofit that addresses poverty-related hunger.
The 12 states, all of which are GOP-led, face a January 1 notice of intent deadline to participate in the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Program, also known as SUN Bucks. Under the food assistance program, families with eligible school-age children can get $120 per summer to buy food.
"Summer can be the hungriest time for children," said Crystal FitzSimons, FRAC's interim president, in a Monday statement. "This funding is an opportunity for states to ensure children have access to the nutrition they need to grow, thrive, and return to school ready to learn. No child should have to go hungry during the summer months, especially when solutions like Summer EBT exist."
Currently, Idaho, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida are set to potentially not participate in the program for this coming summer, according to FRAC. All other U.S. states, Washington, D.C., all U.S. territories, as well as the Cherokee Nation and the Chickasaw Nation are participating this coming summer.
The Summer EBT Program is one of multiple Summer Nutrition Programs administered through the U.S Department of Agriculture. Last summer, the SUN Bucks "bridged the gap" for some 21 million children in 37 states, as well as D.C., all U.S. territories, and multiple Native American tribes, per FRAC.
While the Summer EBT Program, or SUN Bucks, doesn't have widespread name recognition, a poll conducted by Data for Progress this past summer found that once voters read a description of the policy, it enjoyed strong bipartisan support from voters.
The governor of Tennessee has indicated that he will not renew the Summer EBT Program for the state, according to NBC News, despite the fact that FRAC estimates that hundreds of thousands of children would be eligible for the benefit this coming summer. According to FRAC, the program would result in approximately $77.2 million in benefits for struggling families in Tennessee.
FRAC and at least one other group are urging the governor to change course. According to NBC's reporting, advocates say Tennessee presents a particularly acute need for the program because the state's topography can make it hard for families to reach food banks or other meal distribution sites. Also, some communities in the eastern part of the state that struggle with hunger and poverty were also impacted by Hurricane Helen earlier this year.
Keep ReadingShow Less
What Is Trump Really Offering Rural Voters? More Hell on Earth and Harder Times Ahead
In a world where the weather’s only growing worse, if my community is a good example — and I suspect it’s as good as any — rural Americans need to think hard when they go to the ballot box next week.
Oct 28, 2024
Images of homes that collapsed under mudslides or falling trees, waterlogged farms, and debris-filled roads drove home (yes, home!) to me recently the impact of Hurricane Helene on rural areas in the southeastern United States. That hurricane and the no-less-devastating Hurricane Milton that followed it only exacerbated already existing underlying problems for rural America. Those would include federal insurance programs that prioritize rising sea levels over flooding from heavy rainfall, deepening poverty, and unequal access to private home insurance — issues, in other words, faced by poor inland farming communities. And for millions of rural Americans impacted by Helene, don’t forget limited access to healthcare services, widespread electricity outages, and of course, difficulty getting to the ballot box. Case in point: some 80% of North Carolinians under major disaster declarations live in rural areas.
Given that Helene’s human impact was plain for all to see, what struck me was that significant numbers of headlines about that storm’s devastation centered not on those people hardest hit, but on the bizarre conspiracy theories of extremist observers: that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is funneling tens of millions in funds and supplies meant for hurricane survivors to migrants, that the Biden administration has been in cahoots with meteorologists to control the weather, or that Biden and crew actually planned the storm! One of my personal favorites came from a neighbor I encountered at the post office in our rural Maryland town: we don’t have enough money for FEMA rescue operations, she told me, because we’re funding Israeli healthcare and housing — a reference, undoubtedly, to the tens of billions of dollars of bombs and other aid this country has sent Israel’s military in its war in Gaza and beyond.
Of course, some conspiracy theories have a grain of truth at their core: if only we had focused long ago on issues of human welfare here instead of funding decades of foreign wars, it’s possible we might not be living in such an inequitable, infrastructurally weak country, or one increasingly devastated by climate-change-affected weather. But why did it take the deranged rantings of figures like former President Donald Trump and multibillionaire Elon Musk on social media to begin a discussion about how we choose to spend limited federal dollars? If only more government relief money was indeed spent on basic human necessities like housing and healthcare, anywhere at all, and not on war!
All of this ambient chatter has had an impact as real as the 140 mile-per-hour-plus winds and severe flooding that razed communities in six states across the Southeast in the last month and killed hundreds of Americans, with more still missing. In a region where death remains so omnipresent that observers can smell human bodies as they drive through mountain passes, conspiracy theories have led to real threats that forced FEMA crews to relocate from hard-hit Rutherford County, North Carolina, after reports of armed militia members who said they were “hunting FEMA.”
Given the truly destructive nature of all that chatter, I wasn’t surprised to hear New York Times “The Daily” host Michael Barbaro open one of his podcasts about Hurricane Milton with a question to fellow political journalist Maggie Haberman that would have seemed odd in any other context: “How quickly do we expect this storm to become political?”
How quickly do we expect this storm to become political? How about: How long before the next storm hits category 4 or even 5 status and makes landfall? It seems as if the world we’re living in isn’t Helene’s or Milton’s but the alternative-factual world of former Trump staffer Kellyanne Conway and forecasting what nonsense will pop up next about the weather (or almost anything else) has become more real than the weather itself.
The Complex Identity of Rural America
At the start of the Covid pandemic, I moved to a fairly progressive rural community in Maryland after my family purchased a small farm there where we have an orchard, a large produce garden, and a flock of egg-laying chickens (all of which are, I suppose, our versions of hobbies). I remain confounded by the fact that so many Americans — especially rural ones — vote for the party whose leaders divert aid and attention from solving problems that affect their communities, including the hurricane season and other kinds of extreme weather, not to speak of the rescue work that follows such natural disasters, and the need to provide services and protection for migrants who work on such farms and in rural businesses. Case in point: Republican members of the House and Senate voted against stopgap funding for FEMA a few weeks before Helene hit, doing their part to jeopardize aid to so many of their supporters, even though such efforts may ultimately prove unsuccessful.
It’s well known that many rural Americans provide a bulwark of support for Republican candidates and far-right causes. During the 2016 presidential elections, Donald Trump gained more backing from that group than any other president had in modern American history. The impact of rural America on his coalition of voters in the 2020 presidential elections was comparable to that of labor unions for Democrats.
Some rural voters also have spoken up loudly when it comes to far-right causes and identity politics. Typically, Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the “largest rural lifestyle retailer” and sells gardening tools, feed, small livestock, clothing, and guns, among other things, succumbed last summer to a pressure campaign from its customers to stop anti-discrimination and awareness-raising diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring programs that had previously earned it national recognition. Its management also pledged to stop participating in LGBTQ+ pride events and eliminate its previous goals to cut carbon emissions in its operations. The campaign kicked off after a right-wing influencer in Tennessee, who ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in 2022, posted on X that the company was funding sex changes, among other baseless accusations.
Rural America and Climate Change
I had to balk at such a campaign. Anywhere you look in my town, you can find evidence of how initiatives like Tractor Supply Company’s serve to benefit our community.
To consider (at least to my mind) the most pressing case in point, it’s increasingly difficult for people to farm in today’s climate because governments are not curbing greenhouse gas emissions fast enough. The Biden administration has significantly chipped away at the problem by investing in clean energy, reining in the worst corporate polluters, and curbing emissions and coal usage. Unfortunately, this country still produces record amounts of oil and natural gas, and the ravages of extreme weather in my mid-Atlantic agricultural community are plain to see, as is also true nationally.
Let me share a few small-scale, personal examples. A few years ago, I found that there was enough water locally and nighttime temperatures dipped sufficiently low to grow vegetables, meaning my family wouldn’t have to purchase much produce during the summer months. The past two summers, however, heat, wildfire smoke, and more recently, drought, have made small-scale farming prohibitively difficult, at least for my less experienced hands. My tomatoes haven’t cooled enough at night to ripen sufficiently. More than half of the new fruit trees I purchased to add to our orchard died for lack of sufficient water, and I found myself having to stay up in our barn with one of my best laying hens that I found collapsed from heat stroke one summer day. Dipping her little feet in cool water and forcing electrolytes down her beak ultimately revived her, but the near death of that tiny animal that the local Tractor Supply branch had sold me and advertised as “heat hardy” shook me.
Worse yet, earlier this spring, wildfires swept through my back woods and neighborhood, burning down one of my neighbor’s sheds, threatening numerous homes, including mine, and forcing a neighboring farm to evacuate their livestock. And even worse than that, there wasn’t enough water in my once robust creek for the local fire department to extinguish the flames quickly before the fire impacted several properties.
Our family is lucky. We each have a full-time job to sustain us and so don’t have to rely on farming to do anything but enrich our lives. Unfortunately, other families who have bravely sought to feed more people for a living can’t always say the same. Hurricane Helene is a case in point. According to the American Farm Bureau, that storm (and Milton on its heels) had a unique impact on rural communities and agriculture, with billions of dollars in fruit, nuts, and poultry lost. Food supply in rural communities across the Southeast has already been impacted and grocery price increases throughout the country will be likely.
In the U.S., where more than half of all land is used for agricultural purposes, the number of farms has been decreasing since the 1930s. And while climate change has made growing seasons longer, it’s also made the weather far less predictable. Despite farmers scaling up production and adapting their methods, doing everything from bringing horticulture indoors to using recycled human food waste as feed, yield has fallen and it’s growing ever more difficult to stay in the black. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the crucial global research body tracking that phenomenon, recently found that the largest casualty of our overheating planet is the struggle of agriculture to produce enough food for people to live, leading to growing food insecurity in regions around the world.
Worse yet, government efforts to help farmers survive sometimes create more problems than they solve. For example, financial and tax incentives for farmers who can demonstrate that they are using their crops to capture carbon require large amounts of paperwork, while climate regulations that may help farms in the long run entail red tape and restrictions that make paying the bills far harder in the short term. Yet some of the more vulnerable farmers like those in communities of color have welcomed recent government interventions as reparations for decades of discrimination in federal loan programs, as have indigenous communities who benefit from grants to develop more sustainable farming practices.
Nonetheless, if voting patterns and consumer pressure campaigns are any harbinger of the future, too many rural voters and consumers don’t seem to be thinking about how to create just such sustainable farming practices in a climate-changing world. Instead, the loudest voices in rural America seem focused on fear-based identity politics and anger rather than what elected officials have — and have not — said and done to aid their everyday lives in increasingly difficult times.
By some indicators, rural lives have only grown far more precarious in our moment and maybe that helps explain why so many farm families are frustrated with the powers that be. Farmers in this country are more than three times as likely to die by suicide as people in the general population. Factors like high rates of gun ownership and social isolation have an impact, but so do unpredictable weather, supply chain interruptions born of the Covid-19 pandemic, and our government’s slow and haphazard response to so much in the Trump years.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
I find it perplexing that the rural customers of Tractor Supply rejected diversity, equity, and inclusion campaigns from that rural retailer, since people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ folks make up a significant part of rural communities, just not the well-paid or well supported ones. Most farmworkers who tend crops and livestock and engage in other forms of manual labor like processing or transporting our food are, in fact, foreign born and work for only the little more than half of the year that encompasses the growing season. Those workers or others in their families need to get second jobs just to make ends meet. They are more at risk of climate- and access-related health issues because of air pollution and heat-stroke. Such risks were compounded by Trump-era policies that cut federal funding for rural health centers and curbed insurance regulations in struggling rural clinics and hospitals.
In an America where discrimination as well as pay gaps based on race, gender, and sexual orientation remain rampant, making equity a priority can only help those who actually sustain this country’s farming communities. In my county, where equity and inclusiveness are central to social policy, about a third of the children at our small rural school receive free lunches and other services. That portion of the school population consists significantly of kids whose parents are willing to do low-wage work on local farms and that’s not generally white, American-born families.
What’s clear is that Donald Trump’s politics of grievance appeals to voters who see their lives and those of their children worsening, not getting better, as time goes by. Social science research has identified emotions like anger, fear, and nostalgia as key to his appeal to rural Americans and other groups whose health indicators, isolation, and economic well-being are only worsening. If his recent seemingly unhinged “dance party” in Pennsylvania is anything to go by, I suspect he’s hearkening back to a time in American history when communities were smaller, life was simpler, and racism was rampant and — yes! — unhinged. (Note, by the way, his inclusion of “Dixie,” the unofficial Confederate anthem, on that playlist he danced to for 39 straight minutes.) While rural America certainly struggles in more ways than I can describe, it’s precisely the things that Democratic candidates are trying to do now that would bring them back to a healthier, more sustainable way of life.
In a world where the weather’s only growing worse, if my community is a good example — and I suspect it’s as good as any — rural Americans need to think hard when they go to the ballot box (or the cash register) and consider the universe of hard scientific facts rather than just listening to the latest conspiracy monger on X or Instagram. Their lives and their livelihoods may just depend on it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular