On September 27, 2022, Hurricane Ian hit western Cuba, knocking out power all across the country, wrecking tobacco farms crucial to Cuba’s economy and killing five people, although the full extent of the damage is unknown. This occurred after tens of thousands of people had already been evacuated and others had fled. At the time, it was a Category three storm, but Ian worsened to a Category four storm a day later, when it hit Fort Myers, Florida.
Killing at least one hundred people in the United States, and with a record 7.26 foot storm surge in Fort Myers, Ian swept across the Florida peninsula for two days. Three days after Ian made landfall on September 30 near Georgetown, South Carolina, more than 400,000 homes and businesses were still out of power.
Regarding Ian, President Biden remarked, “It’s going to take a lot—a lot of time—not weeks or months; it’s going to take years for everything to get squared away in the state of Florida to fully recover and rebuild,” on October 5, standing in Fort Myers beach. Not only will it take time, but it will also take tens of billions of dollars of hurricane relief. President Biden has agreed to give the State of Florida one hundred percent federal funding for hurricane relief, which includes, for instance, debris removal and emergency protective measures for the sixty days directly succeeding the tropical storm. Even then, individual Florida residents will be struggling to recover financially as well as emotionally for decades, possibly their entire lives.
According to NBC News, “Only about 18.5 percent of homes in Florida counties that faced a mandatory or voluntary evacuation order the evening before Hurricane Ian landed had a flood insurance policy with the National Flood Insurance Program.” Without this insurance, many who have lost their homes are unable to rebuild them. It doesn’t look very good for those with insurance either. Private insured losses (excluding flood insurance losses) are expected to reach sixty seven billion dollars. And because natural disasters such as hurricanes are part of a pattern, insurers are pulling back from vulnerable markets. Home insurance will only
get more expensive at a time when many Floridans already can’t pay. This exemplifies how natural disasters, worsened by climate change, amplify disparities in wealth.
But what exactly does human-caused climate change have to do with it? According to the Center for Climate Change and Energy Solutions, there are multiple ways climate change causes hurricanes to be more dangerous.
Warmer sea surface temperatures, directly caused by the greenhouse effect, increase hurricane wind speeds and cause tropical storms to carry more water, which often results in life-threatening floods. Because warmer temperatures also melt glaciers and ice sheets, and seawater expands when warm, climate change also leads to rising sea levels. This, in turn, worsens coastal storms, such as Hurricane Ian, and makes flooding much more likely. Other recent hurricane trends include the storms slowing down—therefore lasting longer—as well as peaking further north. It is disputed what exactly causes those trends, though climate change is a likely culprit.
When it comes to climate change, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has focused his policies on resilience. “Under his leadership, the state has put more than one billion dollars toward hardening infrastructure against rising seas and more destructive storms,” reported Amy Green from NPR. When asked what local, state and federal officers should do differently to prevent future deaths, President Biden responded, “What the governor has done is pretty remarkable, so far,” before continuing to describe how the new infrastructure, in this case, steel telephone poles, survived Ian.
DeSantis is walking a thin line between addressing climate change and ignoring it, careful to handle Ian as uncontroversially as possible with the entire state and nation watching him. After all, not only did Ian make landfall only weeks before the midterm elections, but DeSantis is also considered a G.O.P. front-runner for the 2024 Presidential Election. While dismissing climate change mitigation as “left-wing stuff,” DeSantis has realized his state is in too much danger to do nothing at all. He presents a new G.O.P. climate strategy, one that will reassure Floridians that they’re safe while doing nothing to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The question is how long this strategy can last.
People will be looking back on Ian for decades. Floridians will be grieving their loved ones, their homes and their belongings. The lives of North Carolina, Virginia and Cuba residents who were killed will be mourned as well and the economies of Cuba and Florida will struggle to recover from this devastating blow. Thanks to climate change, Ian will not be the last deadly, multi-billion dollar disaster.
This will not be the last time political enemies work “hand-in-glove” despite “very different political philosophies.” This will not be the last time natural disasters affect election results. This will not be the last time the President says, “I think the one thing this has finally ended is a discussion about whether or not there’s climate change and we should do something about it.”
Thanks to climate change this is only the beginning.