Yes, Climate Change Will Affect Us Here

“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.” – unknown

This quote has been making the rounds on social media lately. I’ve found myself thinking about it a lot ever since Friday, September 27—the day Hurricane Helene ripped through my hometown of Asheville, North Carolina.

I’ve found myself thinking about it as I doomscroll through social media (now my go-to post-work activity), watching videos of neighborhoods I used to drive through completely swallowed by flood waters, photos of my go-to coffee shop and favorite quirky consignment store turned to rubble, clips of the roads I take to get to Target and Michaels destroyed.

I find myself thinking about it as I follow the nightly news, watching reporters interview locals who have lost loved ones, families who have lost their homes, artists who have lost their businesses—familiar communities and shops and restaurants now on the news for the world to see, my mind having trouble connecting familiar stomping grounds with the images on the screen.

And I’ve found myself thinking about it as I scroll through my own phone, rewatching my own footage of the road at the base of my mountain underwater, my own photos of trees and signs and power lines knocked to the ground, my own screenshots of Emergency Alerts warning of flash flood emergencies and dams at critical levels.

I’ve found myself thinking about it, because—even after all my time working in the clean energy space, all my years studying climate communication during graduate school, all my conversations with friends and family insisting that “yes, climate change will affect us here” and “yes, climate change will affect us now”—I was still shocked to see my hometown in the middle of a climate disaster.

Signs of destruction around the apartment complex

Not the Last Unsuspecting Climate Casualty

I shouldn’t have been.

Climate change doesn’t discriminate. It will affect you (it probably already has), regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic status, or zip code. 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change, and that number is rapidly growing. The impacts are so widespread, in fact, that an online tool can show you just how vulnerable your community is. Asheville, now turned upside-down by a hurricane made 200-500 times more likely due to climate change, scores at only the 62^nd percentile on the vulnerability scale.

Asheville, now turned upside-down by a hurricane made 200-500 times more likely due to climate change, scores at only the 62nd percentile on the vulnerability scale. Source: The U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index

But Asheville, 2,000 feet above sea level and 300 miles from the coast, isn’t the first unsuspecting climate casualty. And it won’t be the last. 2023 was the hottest year on record, with 2024 on track to take the unfortunate title. Tornado Alley is migrating eastward. Wildfires, once considered a cliché of the West, are posing a growing threat to the Southeast.

None of this is a surprise. Scientists have been warning us for years of hotter oceans leading to stronger hurricanes; of warmer air leading to heavier rainfalls; 0f increased temperatures setting the stage for larger wildfires. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned of “widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people.”

Cut Off From The Outside World

But now these facts felt personal.

I woke up the morning of Friday, September 27 to the sound of wind and rain. My apartment’s electricity was already out. Our cell service would soon follow. Our water after that. By mid-afternoon, the sound of wind and rain had stopped, only to be replaced by the sounds of helicopters and sirens—sounds that wouldn’t stop for weeks.

Once I finally ventured out, I was able to find a weak cell signal standing in an empty Bojangles parking lot at the base of my flooded mountain. Just enough to let my family in Ohio know I was ok. While on the phone with them, I received yet another Emergency Alert. A dam was at critical levels. I was supposed to move to high ground now. I quickly said goodbye to my parents. I wouldn’t reach them again for almost 24 hours.

The next morning, I journeyed outside my neighborhood for the first time. I drove on sidewalks, under trees hanging over the road, over power lines in the street, past cars and homes that had been crushed, by hours-long lines of people waiting for water, past even longer lines of people waiting for gas. I’d only made it 4 miles.

The news came in slowly. Asheville had been cut off from the outside world, both literally and figuratively. Almost the entire city of 90,000-plus people had lost cell service and WiFi. Three of four major routes into Asheville had been blocked. On a call with my parents, standing in the driveway of a fire station, I learned for the first time of the destruction of neighborhoods like Asheville’s River Arts District and Biltmore Village, the leveling of towns like Lake Lure and Chimney Rock, the woman who watched her son and elderly parents get washed away.

Our apartment entrance soon turned into a community bulletin board, with neighbors sharing which roads were closed, where to find water, which stores were open, where to get cell signal. Neighbors began trekking to the apartment’s pool just to collect enough water to flush their toilets. Each time I ventured out, I’d come home wiping hunks of mud from my tennis shoes. Mud I’d later learn was toxic.

Left: A line for water wraps around Harris Teeter the day after the storm; Top Right: The apartment entrance turns into a community bulletin board; Bottom Right: Free “Wi-Fi Zones” pop up around town

Recovery Will Be Measured In Years

I’m one of the lucky ones.

As Helene ripped through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and more, it left a trail of destruction. Of locals who have lost loved ones; families who have lost homes or businesses; children awaiting much-needed food, water, and supplies; relatives awaiting word from friends or family.

In North Carolina’s Buncombe County alone, 21 students are still missing, just some of the dozens of people —moms and dads and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and friends — still unaccounted for. The county’s confirmed death toll of 42 is expected to rise as search and rescue efforts continue and, eventually, end.

Helene and Milton are both expected to surpass $50 billion in damages, joining only eight other hurricanes on a decreasingly rare list. Experts estimate that only 5% of homeowners impacted by Helene have the necessary insurance for the type of damage their home received. Recovery in many places will be measured not in months, but in years.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The devastation wrought by Helene has been called ‘historic,’ ‘unimaginable,’ ‘unprecedented.’ It is also unnatural.

Fossil fuels are to blame. As SACE Executive Director Dr. Stephen A. Smith so aptly put it, “Record-breaking carbon emissions driving up record-breaking sea surface temperatures fueling record-breaking flooding all enabled by political denialism supported by corporate greed leading to a lack of political will to address the root cause of these catastrophic events.”

The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.

As members of the Clean Energy Generation, we’re alive during a time of unprecedented climate disruption but also historic climate funding and opportunity. There are all kinds of ways to get involved in the movement — and the time is now, because later is too late. Each of us has the power to spark clean energy change in our lives, homes, or communities. Let us know you’re in by signing up below.

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The post From Abstract to Reality: When Your Hometown Becomes a Climate Casualty appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

From Abstract to Reality: When Your Hometown Becomes a Climate Casualty