Remind me never to drive across the Chesapeake Bay again during a night storm. The large spotlights lining the edges of the 17.6-mile bridge and tunnel system offered glimpses of the ferocious waters lashing the support columns in the country’s largest estuary.
I also have astigmatism, a fact I nearly always forget until night falls.
I may be from Scotland and live in Mobile, Alabama, but I’m kind of over rain after driving hundreds of miles through the storm from New Jersey to North Carolina on my return trip homefrom Montauk, New York.
But save a thought for the residents of Carolina Beach on North Carolina’s Atlantic Coast, who saw record amounts of rainfall earlier this week.
This week in The Meltdown, we’ll explore North Carolina’s record floods and how they’re linked to extreme weather nationwide. From surging heat to rising seas, we’ll connect the dots between these devastating events, the fossil fuels driving them, and the steep costs communities face—from sky-high utility bills to dangerous pipelines.
Before you read on, please feel free to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And share this newsletter with your friends if you think they’ll enjoy it.
Drizzle
The storm dropped a record 21 inches of rain in just 12 hours, flooding homes and submerging cars. Scientists called it a 1,000-year event. Here in Wilmington, the Cape Fear River is still spilling into the streets as of Thursday afternoon. A local said Tuesday’s full moon didn’t help since full moons create higher-than-normal tides.
During my drive from Alabama to New York and now back again, I’ve witnessed extreme weather and its consequences and examples of how humans have made it worse. But I’ve also got the feeling that people see many of these issues as unrelated and independent.
Extreme weather, like droughts, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes, is connected by rising temperatures. For example, more heat means more evaporation, which leads to heavier rainfall. That can be especially bad in cities where water can’t be absorbed into the ground because of all the roads and development we’ve built. Instead, heavy rains flood streets and homes and overflow rivers, like in Wilmington. The floods also wash out our roads and carry pollution from sewers and other sources, just like all the hazardous medical waste discovered on beaches in Delaware while I was there. The waste was also found on beaches in Maryland and Virginia.
Extreme heat also fuels droughts and wildfires, which can make flooding worse. When the ground is too dry, it becomes hydrophobic, meaning it can’t absorb water. Even moderate rain can cause flash floods—endangering life and property like we often see in California. High temperatures also strengthen hurricanes and coastal storm surges, which erode our beaches, cliffs and dunes—as I saw in Montauk, coastal Delaware and North Carolina. Of course, rising sea levels, caused by melting glaciers and ice at the poles, make it all much worse.
Then there’s the chemicals left in the ground by heavy industries in Birmingham, Alabama, and the smelters in Knox County, Tennessee. That means people there don’t trust the drinking water, forcing them to use more bottled water, increasing plastic consumption, and creating emissions by transporting crates of the stuff around the country. The same situation exists in industrial regions nationwide, with 9 million homes, schools, daycares, and businesses still receiving drinking water through toxic lead pipes.
In 2022, Americans consumed 15.9 billion gallons of bottled water. That’s enough to fill 200 million standard bathtubs. About 22 billion plastic water bottles, all made from oil, end up in landfills every year.
But what causes all this extreme heat? Burning fossils like oil and natural gas to power our cars and homes. In return, we experience extreme and often dangerous weather and the loss of our natural habitats. We end up paying more to drive our cars and heat or cool our homes. Insurance costs also go up.
And to top it all off, we get to live with oil and gas pipelines running through our communities. Sometimes, they explode, like in Houston earlier this week.
Compost dump
10%: price increase of butane since the Houston pipeline explosion.
318,000: number of customers lost power in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee after storm Francine.
25 million: cubic meters of rock and ice that fell into waters off Greenland, causing a 656-foot tsunami. Scientists say the incident was climate change-related.
130 million: number of pounds of avocado Chipotle used this year.
$500 million: federal climate money set aside to bail out a major steel plant in vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s hometown of Middleton, Ohio.
Before You Go
I’m about to leave coastal North Carolina. I’ll probably head back to the interior and then down to Mobile. If you think I should visit a place under threat from climate change or experiencing an environmental issue, let me know. I’ll pop by!
Thanks for reading The Meltdown. Please sign up, share, and be nice to people. Send environment and climate tips to: [email protected]
See you next week.
Chris Harress
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Publish date : 2024-09-25 02:50:00
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