The Great Escape
The Great Escape
'Resilience thinking' needs to inform how we navigate climate change—regardless of who wins the White House.
As extreme climate events —like Hurricanes Milton and Helene—become more frequent, public opinion is shifting. New research shows a growing consensus, even across political divides, that climate change is an important issue this election season and beyond.
In this post, we check in with New Rules Media team member Anabel Evora, who experienced Hurricane Milton’s wrath first-hand in St. Petersburg, Florida— and is serving as a volunteer this week to help some of the local relief efforts move forward.
CHICAGO—This past weekend, Anabel Evora, like many who weathered Hurricane Milton, emerged from her apartment in St. Petersburg—one of the few buildings which still had power—to survey the damage.
“It looks like a war zone,” she told us during a call from our Chicago bureau. “It’s devastating.” Anabel, a member of our New Rules Media team, said all trees, one after the other, had been uprooted or were missing; dozens of cars have been lining up for days, trying to refuel at one of the only stations downtown still open for miles; hundreds of residents have been displaced; a strip mall of half-standing convenience stores no longer have roofs, and bits of people’s belongings—stuffed toys and bicycles—are still bobbing in sewage-filled floodwaters.
We then asked her about the political climate. Florida is considered a “red” state, and because Florida just suffered two back-to-back major hurricanes, are voters ready? Anabel said people are aware of the disinformation campaigns, but have been coming together regardless of their politics to help their neighbors clean up after the storm, receive medical help if needed and distribute supplies.
She put us in touch with Karen Rae Selm, the Executive Director of Positive Impact Ministries, a local nonprofit providing hot meals and basic clean-up supplies to thousands displaced after both hurricanes, Helene and then Milton. “This isn’t a time for division,” Karen said. “We have come together, regardless of our politics, to help each other get through this. … It’s about peoples’ lives. All of our lives. We’re in this together.”
According to National Public Radio and local aid workers on the ground in Florida, conspiracy-mongers targeting the communities hit by the storms aren’t letting up locally. Some have been sharing Marjory Taylor Greene’s false claim that Democrats serving the White House had been “controlling the weather” to attack MAGA voters before the November 5th election. According to some of the men supervising the federal aid stations to help those displaced find temporary housing, another bit of disinformation is also making the rounds—that hurricane victims would only be getting $750 in federal aid from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (false) because federal response funds are no longer available (false) because they were diverted by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to support illegal immigrants, instead (false).
[President Joe Biden denied the claims over the weekend, and so has FEMA. Even conservative podcast host Sean Ryan debunked a false claim made on his show this week about the federal government’s response. The Atlantic predicts far more disinformation designed to enrage hurricane victims will be shared before and after the November 5th election.]
The good news? Neither Anabel nor any of her local friends were harmed physically in the storm, but some are experiencing high levels of mental stress over skyrocketing insurance premiums that are no longer affordable, along with the sky-high sums needed to repair the flood-driven mold and structural damage to their homes. Many are being forced to move to less expensive locales. One couple who moved to St. Petersburg from Boston seven months ago is trying to sell the land on which their damaged house was built—but at a deep discount, cash only—before heading back up north.
[According to The Wall Street Journal, housing sales are slowing in Florida now, with the hurricanes and extreme weather only making it more difficult to interest new buyers. A new U.S. Census report just released says there are fewer people moving into Florida and significantly more moving out— the highest number (510,925) since the Great Recession in 2008. The Washington Post recently did a year-long investigation of how climate change is affecting housing prices in Cape Coral, Florida and other areas on the frontlines of climate change along Florida’s coastline and found the gap between riskier properties and safer ones “is only growing.”]
Anabel has decided to keep her apartment. The building retained its electricity, as it was connected to an electric grid run by Florida Power & Light Company located across the street. Since the storm, Anabel has been volunteering to help thousands of St. Petersburg residents displaced by both hurricanes from their homes.
“What strikes me most now is how the people here, everyone I encounter, is changing what they think about everything—risk, climate change, how we need to get better at coming together to help us become more resilient in a world where there are bigger and more destructive storms yet ahead.”
Risk and Resilience
Climate experts agree, and new data suggests, that one of the big challenges stopping progress, climate change denial, may now be eroding. As more Americans experience extreme climate events like hurricanes, droughts, floods, unusual temperatures and wildfires, Pew and University of Chicago researchers say, their views on climate change are changing.
In a recent survey, a majority of those polled by Pew, including members of the Republican Party, say they are more likely to consider climate change an important issue this election season and want their communities to be able to receive more funding to adapt. Another poll, by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, further maps changes in climate attitudes.
ProPublica journalist Abraham Lustgarten, who writes about climate change and works frequently with The New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic and PBS Frontline, told Inside Climate News, in a recent interview, that climate denialism hasn’t gone away politically, but on a personal level, “there is now an undeniable sense— and a real consensus among all types of people holding different political views— that the environment around them is rapidly changing, and that it is changing in disruptive ways that are unprecedented. …I hear from conservative homeowners on the coast of Florida that they are surprised to see floods now coming in, over and over again, year after year—way more often than in the past.
“These may not be people who are politically supportive of the idea of climate change,” Lustgarten added, “but personally, they acknowledge that what we all see happening now isn’t matching the patterns of the past, and that climate change is something people are all becoming more concerned about. There’s a certain consensus—and Helene and Milton and the records they have been shattering are contributing to a hardening of that consensus—that we live in a new era.”
Adds climate expert Andrew Zolli, the chief impact officer at Planet and author of Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back: “Among a growing number of scientists, social innovators, community leaders, NGOs, philanthropies, governments and corporations, a new dialogue is emerging around a new idea, resilience: how to help vulnerable people and organizations persist, perhaps even thrive, amid unforeseeable disruptions. Where the sustainability movement has aimed to put the world back into balance, resilience looks for ways to manage in an imbalanced world.”
In other words? Adds Zolli: “We need approaches that are both more pragmatic and more politically inclusive—rolling with the waves, instead of trying to stop the ocean.”
In other climate news today:
Is the Midwest a ‘climate haven’? In a new survey of 300 CEOs recently released by MIT Technology Review, all respondents said climate change is hurting their business, with nearly half saying they believe that being based in the Midwest would be less financially risky. The Midwest has been cited as being a potential refuge from many of the threats of climate change, but now this new survey is suggesting that businesses, too, may be eyeing Michigan, northern Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin as areas in which to set up shop to reduce the high prices associated with global warming. “The evidence of climate change is growing like a crescendo,” Scott Thomsen, the CEO of LuxWall, a Michigan-based window manufacturer told Fast Company. The executives polled work across 14 industries —including retail, financial services and manufacturing —and said their companies have been harmed to some degree by climate change, including physical damage to property, increased operational costs, rising insurance premiums and disruptions to their supply chains. Three quarters of them said their companies have considered relocating due to climate risks, with nearly a quarter saying they’ve already relocated partly due to climate change. Nearly half said they believe the Midwest is the nation’s least-vulnerable region when it comes to climate risks. No location is safe from the effects of climate change, Thomsen said. “But some places suck less.”
Zillow is adding climate risk scores to its home-buying app to help consumers figure out how likely a climate disaster is and how severe it could be, based on current data and projections of risks 15 and 30 years in the future—the length of time of an average mortgage loan. Partnering with First Street, a nonprofit which has been working on climate risk models for years, the ratings rank how vulnerable a new house being listed is to flooding, fire, air quality issues, heat and wind damage. First Street sees this as a part of a new strategy to boost home sales in areas of the country now considered less prone to severe weather. Redfin also offers these kinds of rankings. Banks and insurance companies have this data. Climate modeling experts say homebuyers should treat these scores as warning flags rather than dealbreakers.
Who else in our New Rules Network experienced Hurricanes Helene and Milton first-hand? What else can you share about recovery efforts and new thinking about climate change? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
NOTE: This article was updated 10-17 with new U.S. Census data and a new public opinion poll by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute tracking how Americans’ view of climate change has been changing since 2017 through the first half of 2024.