Tag Archives: hurricane

The Weather Channel’s new climate change video is … really intense

“The Arctic — the fastest warming area on Earth,” Weather Channel meteorologist Jen Carfagno narrates in a new video as the camera speeds you under an iceberg arch, through the spray from a breaching whale, and past ice-capped peaks so realistic you can almost feel the Arctic chill. “Changes here are drastic, undeniable, and all too real.”

It’s the latest in a Weather Channel video series that uses immersive mixed reality technology to help you visualize extreme weather up close. The first video went viral last September, when meteorologist Erika Navarro was virtually transported from the studio to a flooded neighborhood street in North Carolina to demonstrate storm-surge projections for Hurricane Florence in person.

“For 30 years, weather presentation has been very consistent,” Michael Potts, the vice president of design at the Weather Channel, told New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. “Usually it’s a person in front of a map. We wanted to engage the audience more and find a way to go deeper into the science of weather.”

And, in this latest video, they do. Instead of regurgitating statistics or presenting another doomsday scenario, the video portrays global warming in a gripping yet realistic way, transporting you from a rooftop above flooded city streets to a rocky coast in front of a collapsing iceberg. Carfagno takes you from 1851 to 2100, visiting Charleston, South Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; and Greenland’s famous Jakobshavn Glacier — all in the span of under two minutes. How’s that for high-speed time travel?

Using an immersive graphics technique popular in video games to produce the clip, the Weather Channel hopes to turn climate change into a vivid experience for viewers.

“By engaging our senses of sight and sounds — and our tendency to focus on things that move — they earn our full attention, and are experienced more like real lived experience than like book learning,” Edward Maibach, director of George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication, told the Verge.

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The Weather Channel’s new climate change video is … really intense

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Deadly air pollution has a surprising culprit: Growing corn

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A new study raises serious concerns about the human health consequences of growing corn. Though air quality has improved in the United States in recent decades, fine particulate matter still kills about 71,000 people each year — and is one of the leading causes of death globally. About 4,300 of those deaths are from the process of growing corn, mostly due to the application of ammonia as a fertilizer. That’s more people than died in Hurricane Maria, every single year.

“The magnitude of the problem is surprising,” said University of Minnesota’s Jason Hill, the study’s lead author. “We tend to think of air pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes, but agriculture is a major contributor to reduced air quality also.” Hill and his colleagues found that ammonia from corn fertilizer significantly increases atmospheric PM2.5 levels, a particularly deadly form of air pollution.

In total, corn alone is responsible for about a quarter of agricultural-related air pollution deaths, with most of the rest due to animal agriculture. Since corn is a primary source of animal feed, the new study likely underestimates its impact on air quality.

The study attempted to estimate the cost of growing corn on human health and climate change. The researchers used the EPA’s values of $9 million for every avoided death due to air pollution and $43 per ton of CO2 for the social cost of carbon. In terms of air pollution and carbon emissions, that means the harm caused by growing corn is equal to about 70 percent of the value of the corn that’s produced — a shockingly high value.

But even that doesn’t include the emissions from animal agriculture or corn ethanol. Most corn grown in America goes to producing ethanol, for use in animal feed, and other industrial uses. Only a small percentage is for human consumption.

“The full impact of corn is going to be much larger,” Hill said.

This huge impact is likely not evenly distributed. Hill’s previous research showed that the cost of air pollution in general is borne disproportionately by communities of color. He’s working to see if the same is true for agricultural-based air pollution.

In an interview with Brownfield Ag News, Nathan Fields, the vice president of production and sustainability for the National Corn Growers Association, called the study “divisive.” “It’s no secret that corn production is an intensive cropping system,” Fields said, noting that the industry has been trying to “lower that footprint as much as possible” for decades.

“The way that we react, I would say, is just to highlight all the work that’s been done, all the research that’s going into nutrient use efficiency that’s out there and hopefully not spend more money and more resources on paper studies trying to link it to horrible situations,” he added.

Hill told me that the importance of his research is magnified because it was funded in part by the USDA, EPA, and the Department of Energy. “As members of publicly funded universities, our charge is to look for problems that affect the public and solutions to them,” Hill said. “The paper went into detail about the ways that this problem could be alleviated.”

Among the solutions Hill floated: precision agriculture, using different fertilizer types, changing the location of where corn is planted so it’s not upwind from major cities, crop switching, and even dietary shifts away from foods that use corn-based ingredients.

“We need to do a better job at controlling ammonia emissions from corn itself; that will have immediate benefits to human health,” Hill said.

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Deadly air pollution has a surprising culprit: Growing corn

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5 facts to make you smarter than the president on Puerto Rico

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The fact-checking bar was already pretty low for Donald Trump, but the president’s untrue Twitter rant this morning regarding how much relief aid the U.S. has sent to Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria has still managed to shock and anger many of the island’s advocates.

When Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico in September 2017, it left mass devastation in its wake. It also left a train of misinformation, including the number of deaths associated with the storm, the amount of help that’s come from the government, and the relationship between the island’s residents and the mainland.

To (once again) clear the air, we’ve compiled a list of actual truths about Puerto Rico and its post-storm recovery:

Puerto Ricans are Americans

Despite Trump’s continued antagonism toward the island and a White House aide’s recent comment calling Puerto Rico “that country,” Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its residents are U.S. citizens. More than 3 million people reside on the island.

Puerto Rico’s death toll associated with Hurricane Maria is about 3,000 people

A report commissioned by the Puerto Rican government estimated that 3,000 Puerto Ricans perished in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. In the first week after the storm, the government initially announced an official death toll of 16. That estimate then jumped to 64 but was updated when the report was released in August 2018 by George Washington University.

Puerto Rico has received about $1.5 billion in U.S. aid for storm recovery

The storm incurred around $91 billion in damages to the island. The island has received only about $1.5 billion in federal aid, out of a larger pot of aid funding previously approved by Congress. Puerto Rico is still waiting to receive most of the approximately $40 billion in relief funds which have been allocated to the territory.

Puerto Rico did not receive more recovery aid for Hurricane Maria than mainland states did for Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina, which in 2005 affected more than a million people across three states, cost the federal government more than $120 billion in recovery efforts. About $76 billion of that aid went to Louisiana projects. In comparison, Puerto Rico has only received about $1.5 billion in storm aid so far.

Most Puerto Ricans are not happy with Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria

Despite Trump’s tweet this Tuesday that “The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump,” a poll conducted last year found more than half of Puerto Ricans felt Trump and his administration had done a poor job responding to the Hurricane Maria. That may not be surprising considering that earlier this year, the White House called Puerto Rico food stamp program “excessive and unnecessary.”

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5 facts to make you smarter than the president on Puerto Rico

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Breaking: Across the globe, students go on strike to demand climate action

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It’s Friday, March 15, and hundreds of thousands of students are expected to walk out of school to protest global leaders’ inaction on climate change. Young climate activists across the globe have been anticipating this day like Christmas without the consumerism. Inspired by newly minted teenage Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg, Gen-Zers are rallying to send adults a clear message — you need to take our future seriously.

Several Grist reporters are in the field today covering the U.S. Youth Climate Strike. We will update this post throughout the day as the strikes unfold worldwide. For more news on the student walkouts, follow @grist on Twitter.

Here’s the latest on the Youth Climate Strikes:


Some of our favorite signs yet

As Seattle strikes wrap up, kids are laser-focusing their message at politicians

“To all those politicians who can’t imagine my and many other futures in a ruined climate, imagine being out of a job in 2020, 2022, 2024, or 2026 when I personally get to vote.” — Taro Moore, 12-year-old climate striker from Kenmore Middle School

“I really can’t conceptualize an idea where people wouldn’t believe this is a real issue. The way the environment has changed over past decade, droughts from America to Africa to Australia, it’s just preposterous that some people in the Republican party are opposed to this.” — Kevin, 17-year-old climate striker from Bellevue High School

“Anybody who wants to run for president, who wants to run this country, they’ve got to pay attention.” — Athena Fain, 15-year-old organizer from Ingraham High School

Police respond in New York as protestors block roads

Per 350.org, the protests surpassed 1 million participants worldwide

Strikes get going in the Pacific North West (Grist’s backyard)

California groups join in the fray

Spotted in San Francisco!

The pace picks up across the country

Strikes get underway in other East Coast cities

New York City is up and at ’em

International Youth Climate Strikes kick off

The night before the strike, youth across the country prepare for protest

At Columbia University in New York, students worked late into the night to make signs for the protest.

Grist / Rachel Ramirez

Ahead of the strike, student leaders across the country share their motivations for participating.

Image courtesy of Shania Hurtado

As united as Friday’s protests will be in their call for meaningful climate action, the reasons young people have for participating are also grounded in their regions’ unique climate concerns.

“Hurricane Harvey devastated our city,” said Shania Hurtado, 16, who lives in Houston, Texas. “It was a time when my family and my friends were in a state of fear. It was terrible. This is truly why I’m striking. It’s why I’m organizing the strike. It’s something that affects me personally and we have the power to prevent and we should do something about it.”

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Breaking: Across the globe, students go on strike to demand climate action

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House Democrats just told the Pentagon to redo its climate change report

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon released a landmark report that identified the 79 American military installations most vulnerable to the “effects of a changing climate.” The 22-page filing frankly acknowledged the security implications of climate change — in dramatic contrast with President Trump’s very public global warming skepticism — but Democrats roundly criticized its failure to include several details requested by Congress, including specific cost estimates to protect or replace the ten most vulnerable bases from each of the military services.

Now those lawmakers want a complete do-over.

In a letter released Wednesday afternoon, three Democratic members of the House Armed Services panel, including Chair Adam Smith from Washington state, urged Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to compile another report by April that “thoroughly and clearly addresses” the criteria requested by Congress.

“They clearly ignored the requirement in the law,” says Representative Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, one of the signatories, who had described himself as “deeply disappointed” with the original report. “The report they issued was completely unsatisfactory.” Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services panel, said the report carried “about as much value as a phonebook.” Smith immediately demanded another report that “rigorously confronts the realities of our warming planet.”

Heather Babb, a Defense Department spokesperson, attempted to explain the priorities, saying earlier this month that Pentagon officials “focused on mission assurance” when compiling the report. “By using this alternative approach, we are able to highlight where there are operational risks,” she said. When asked about the new request on Wednesday, Babb said, “As with all congressional correspondence, we will respond directly to [the] authors of the letter.”

What was omitted in the first report that the Pentagon had a year to compile was striking. No Marine Corps installations were mentioned, for example, despite the fact that just four months before the report was released, Hurricane Florence slammed into Camp Lejeune, the Marines’ biggest base on the East Coast, costing more than $3 billion in damages. Omissions from other branches of the military were just as concerning. Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, where Hurricane Michael devastated 95 percent of the buildings in October, was not included among the Air Force’s most vulnerable bases.

In the summer of 2017, as part of the debate over last year’s annual defense spending bill, Langevin introduced an amendment requesting that the Pentagon assess how best to mitigate climate-related threats across the armed services, down to the level of an estimated cost and combatant command requirements. Earlier that year, the Washington Post had reported that defense officials removed nearly two-dozen references to climate change from a draft survey of installations vulnerable to the threat, creating an embarrassing news cycle for the Pentagon.

The amendment was added by voice vote in committee and reaffirmed with bipartisan support on the floor of the House. In July, more than 40 members of Congress, including several Republicans, even wrote to former defense secretary Jim Mattis to remind him of the requirements included in the report. Notably, lawmakers said they had been “disturbed” by the Post story, as if to warn Mattis against inciting a similar firestorm.“We expect that when this report is delivered to Congress later this year, it will contain candid assessments in line with the clear instructions passed by Congress and signed into law by the President,” the letter stated.

The report clearly fell short of its goal in the first version and now, with Democrats in control of the House, Langevin said the Armed Services committee is considering several options in case the Pentagon ignores this new request, from subpoenaing documents to hauling relevant DOD staffers before the panel for testimony. “I hope this doesn’t become a long, dragged-out battle,” he said. At least one major ex-Pentagon official has already voiced his support for a new report. John Conger, the former assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations, and environment, noted in a blog post earlier this month that “DoD should make the transition from anecdote to analysis and provide a fuller assessment, as Congress directed.”

For Shanahan, now in his fifth week leading the Pentagon as Mattis’s acting successor, the challenge from House Democrats poses an important early test of how compliant he will be with Congress. Mattis, who fell out of favor with Trump and ultimately resigned once the president announced that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, had long been viewed as a climate change realist in a Cabinet of deniers and skeptics. Shanahan, whose background had been in weapons acquisition and management as a career executive at Boeing, arrived at the Pentagon as deputy secretary without a history of making his public policy views explicit.

But in the months since he entered government as the No. 2 to Mattis, climate change has risen on the military’s agenda. The recently released annual worldwide threat assessment from the intelligence community even listed global warming as a menace to “low-lying military bases.” The Democrats’ request for a new report can potentially put Shanahan at loggerheads with Congress, which confirmed him as deputy secretary with wide bipartisan support, and Trump, who has indicated that Shanahan could remain acting secretary indefinitely. (A spokesperson for Shanahan was not immediately available for comment.)

Since the early days of the Trump administration, the Pentagon has quietly but firmly adopted a more proactive approach toward climate change in some areas. After years of degradation to shipyards in Virginia, Hawaii, Maine, and other states, the Navy submitted a $21 billion infrastructure plan last year to clear a backlog of maintenance work. Military leaders have also grown more assertive in confronting the possibility of security threats from Russia and China in a warmer Arctic. In the past, reports from the Pentagon and the independent Government Accountability Office have even catalogued the threat to hundreds of installations in the United States and abroad. But the reluctance some officials have shown toward openly contradicting their commander in chief has compromised lawmakers’ confidence in DOD’s willingness to seriously confront the security implications of a warming planet.

Read the complete letter here.

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House Democrats just told the Pentagon to redo its climate change report

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Into the Storm – Tristram Korten

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Into the Storm

Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival

Tristram Korten

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 24, 2018

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


“An intense, immersive deep dive into a wild, dangerous, and unknown world, written with the pace and appeal of a great thriller. This is nonfiction at its very best.”—Lee Child The true story of two doomed ships and a daring search-and-rescue operation that shines a light on the elite Coast Guard swimmers trained for the most dangerous ocean missions In late September 2015, Hurricane Joaquin swept past the Bahamas and swallowed a pair of cargo vessels in its destructive path: El Faro , a 790-foot American behemoth with a crew of thirty-three, and the Minouche , a 230-foot freighter with a dozen sailors aboard. From the parallel stories of these ships and their final journeys, Tristram Korten weaves a remarkable tale of two veteran sea captains from very different worlds, the harrowing ordeals of their desperate crews, and the Coast Guard’s extraordinary battle against a storm that defied prediction. When the Coast Guard received word from Captain Renelo Gelera that the Minouche was taking on water on the night of October 1, the servicemen on duty helicoptered through Joaquin to the sinking ship. Rescue swimmer Ben Cournia dropped into the sea—in the middle of a raging tropical cyclone, in the dark—and churned through the monstrous swells, loading survivors into a rescue basket dangling from the helicopter as its pilot struggled against the tempest. With pulsating narrative skill in the tradition of Sebastian Junger and Jon Krakauer, Korten recounts the heroic efforts by Cournia and his fellow guardsmen to haul the Minouche’ s crew to safety. Tragically, things would not go as well for Captain Michael Davidson and El Faro . Despite exhaustive searching by her would-be rescuers, the loss of the vessel became the largest U.S. maritime disaster in decades. As Korten narrates the ships’ fates, with insights drawn from insider access to crew members, Coast Guard teams, and their families, he delivers a moving and propulsive story of men in peril, the international brotherhood of mariners, and the breathtaking power of nature. Praise for Into the Storm “The story [Tristram] Korten tells is impressively multifaceted, exploring everything from timely issues such as climate change to timeless themes such as man’s struggle against the ocean’s fury.” — Miami New Times “ Into the Storm  reads like more than just the chronicle of one maritime disaster—and may be a warning claxon against the possibility of more such disasters coming this hurricane season.” — Open Letters Review

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Into the Storm – Tristram Korten

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‘Future-proofing’ is how you say climate change in Texas

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There’s a new term for all the work needed to prepare coasts and cities for the consequences of climate change, and it’s blissfully free of the words “climate change.” Introducing “future-proofing.” As in, it’s time to “future-proof” Texas to brace for future disasters like Hurricane Harvey, according to a new comprehensive report.

Prepared by Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s reconstruction commission, the report recommends myriad ways for the state to “future-proof”: elevate homes, construct storm-surge barriers, and offer buyouts for homes at high risk of flooding, to name a few.

What’s more interesting is what’s missing. Take the time to read the 168-page report, and you’ll find mention of rising sea levels and more intense storms. You might scratch your head upon finding phrases such as “changing human and environmental conditions” or “changing future weather patterns.” It would be hard to miss “future-proofing,” a phrase that’s employed 44 times. But you won’t find the exact words “climate change” anywhere except for the footnotes, as Dallas News reported on Thursday.

If you were reading very closely, you’d find a sole reference to the “changing climate” sitting in plain sight at the top of page 114. Score! (Governor Abbott shakes fist at sky.) The endnotes include scientific studies whose titles feature the words, too.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that climate change only makes one meaningful appearance in the report. When Abbott, a widely-reported climate denier, sent a 301-page plea to the federal government asking for aid after Hurricane Harvey last year, he neglected to mention “climate change,” too. His request did, however, use the term “future-proofing.”

Maybe avoiding the double-C phrase is just how you get things done in Republican-controlled Texas. Sure, sure, multiple scientific studies showed that climate change made Harvey wetter and more likely to occur. But why say it if you don’t need to?

The new report reflects a pattern of censorship in the Trump era. The Federal Emergency Management Agency dropped “climate change” from its long-term strategy this year, replacing it with oblique terms such as “pre-disaster mitigation.” The phrase has also vanished from government websites, with euphemisms like “sustainability” and “resilience” taking its place. Even National Science Foundation scientists have begun dropping the term from public summaries of their research, replacing it with terminology like “extreme weather” and “environmental change.”

Here’s the thing: According to the recent National Climate Assessment, Texas is unprepared for sea-level rise, stronger hurricanes, and intense flooding. Even if you don’t say the climate is changing, it still is.

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Here’s how anti-immigrant policies hurt hurricane recovery

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This week, President Trump hinted at an upcoming executive order that would end the long-standing Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. The announcement had its (likely intended) effect of gumming up the news cycle less than a week before the midterm elections. For communities recovering from natural disasters, it introduced a different kind of complication — a potential loss of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.

Like many other government-run assistance programs, FEMA relief is available to individuals whose children are U.S. citizens, regardless of their own immigration status. By nullifying birthright citizenship guarantees, the Trump administration would remove protections available to many victims of current and future superstorms. And it’s only the latest potential policy blow to immigrant communities.

The anticipated executive order also comes as people are still reeling from the Trump administration’s proposal earlier this fall to make it harder for individuals who accept federal housing assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid to qualify for a green card. Those moves, advocates say, would force parents to choose between becoming a legal permanent resident, or getting support to keep their families healthy.

Even though the policies are not yet law, they are already complicating recovery efforts in areas of the U.S. affected by climate change. Advocates say anti-immigrant efforts could limit many residents’ access to housing, healthy food, and disaster relief.

Rachna Khare is the executive director of Daya, a Houston-based organization that provides counseling and services to South Asian survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s well documented that gender-based violence increases after disasters like hurricanes — there was a 45 percent increase in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, for example. Khare says that after the Hurricane Harvey, many domestic violence shelters in Houston were either full or flooded. “To say low-cost housing became a challenge is an understatement,” Khare told Grist. “That’s why public benefits became incredibly important.”

Although President Trump’s next executive order is currently dominating the news cycle, advocates say his administration’s quieter moves that complicate the path to citizenship are already having a chilling effect. The Department of Homeland Security published a proposal in October that would change its definition of “public charge.” Currently, “public charge” is a term used to mean someone who is likely to become dependent on government help, such as cash welfare, for survival. Being designated a public charge can make it harder to get an application for permanent residency approved.

The proposed rule change would expand the “public charge” criteria so that accepting food stamps, Medicaid, or Section 8 Housing vouchers would also be considered a strike against you. And earlier this year, a leaked draft of the proposed policy stated that applying for benefits for your dependents could be included in the new definition of public charge. The idea that adults might be penalized for seeking resources for their eligible children sparked outrage, and by the time the final language came out in October, the language regarding aid for family members had been removed.

Lost yet? The back and forth was hard for pretty much anyone to follow. And advocates say that misinformation, fear, and anti-immigrant rhetoric are leading families to drop out of benefits regardless of whether or not it would actually harm their immigration status.

“It doesn’t matter what it says in the rule. What matters are the choices people make based on the rhetoric and the swirl of information of that is out there, which is less nuanced and less precise than it should be,” says Kate Vickery, executive director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative. “The collateral damage to this is people dropping out of programs that help stabilize their families.” Vickery’s organization helps provide cash assistance to families still recovering from Harvey. She has been hearing reports of some families refusing help even from faith-based organizations over fears of it affecting their immigration status.

The draft proposal of the changes to the definition of “public charge” is open to public comment until December. Khare says keeping abreast of changing immigration policies and managing clients’ fears has placed an extra workload on advocates.

“We want to make sure survivors know nothing has changed yet, please don’t unenroll from benefits that are keeping you alive,” says Khare. “Our biggest fear is that people would — without these benefits — go back to abusive partners and unsafe homes, and that can result in life-ending consequences.”

The stakes can be even higher for domestic violence survivors who are immigrants with U.S.-born children. For them, the decision becomes a choice between getting help for their families or being able to stay in the country with their children.

“Pia” is one of the women that Khare’s organization, Daya, has helped with housing. (Her name has been changed to protect her identity.) She is waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to reissue her a green card that she says was misplaced by one of the shelters she lived in after fleeing her husband in 2015. Because her children are U.S. citizens, she’s been able to get food stamps and Medicare for them.

“If my kids are not insured, then I have no idea where I’m going to go for a doctor. It’s a big help. And also food, food is like an everyday need. It’s been very helpful,” she says.

Despite how much Pia values the assistance, and although she’s confident she’ll be issued a new green card, she says that if she was forced to choose, “I’m going to choose a green card over anything because I need to stay with my kids.” If she had to return to her home country, she says, it would be easy for her husband and his family to take away her children without recourse. And her son, who has autism, wouldn’t have access to the same supports he gets in the U.S.

Pia’s children have access to many of those benefits because they were born in the United States. If there were no birthright citizenship guarantee, families like Pia’s would not be eligible for services like disaster aid. That kind of change would have huge implications for a diverse city like Houston. Almost half of all children in the Houston area are the children of immigrants. And a study found that immigrant communities were more likely to suffer a loss of income and say they needed help getting medical care after Hurricane Harvey. In disaster-affected areas across the U.S., immigrant families have had to rebuild in the midst of a flurry of policies and political rhetoric aimed at displacing them again. In 2017, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Houston arrested more noncitizens than anywhere else in the U.S. except for Dallas.

At least for now, it’s unclear how the proposed policies would impact individuals who already have their U.S. citizenship via birthright. When the Dominican Republic revoked birthright citizenship in 2013, it required citizens to file for “re-naturalization.” Stripping children of citizenship could have effects across generations, says Randy Capps, director of research at the Migration Policy Institute. “It’s about the long-term well-being and functioning of these children — if they get hungry, if they get sick, and also if their parents are more stressed, that could result in more problems,” he said.

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Here’s how anti-immigrant policies hurt hurricane recovery

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Typhoon Yutu spurs disaster in a remote U.S. territory

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Far away from the mainland, American citizens are reeling from a direct hit by Super Typhoon Yutu.

During its landfall on Thursday, Yutu lashed the Mariana Islands with more than a foot of rain, coastal flooding in excess of 15 feet, waves the size of five-story apartment buildings, and winds of 180 mph.

Saipan and Tinian are the two most-populated islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the central Pacific Ocean about 8,000 miles from Washington, D.C. — nearly twice as far away as Honolulu. Both islands took a direct hit. About 50,000 people live in the Commonwealth, and after Yutu, they’re fighting for survival.

Most structures have lost their roofs, and even the leaves have been stripped from trees and bushes, local lawmaker Edwin Propst told the Associated Press. Closed circuit video from near the point of landfall showed an entire hotel lobby destroyed in seconds.

Just hours after landfall, local news reports said that food, drinking water, and fuel were already in short supply. “This damage is just horrendous, it’s going to take months and months for us to recover,” Propst said.

If recent history holds, he’ll be right. Yutu is the third tropical cyclone (the scientific term for typhoons and hurricanes) in just over a year to plunge a remote U.S. territory into humanitarian crisis. Last year, Hurricane Irma’s devastation in the U.S. Virgin Islands was eclipsed just days later when Hurricane Maria made a direct hit in Puerto Rico.

In historical context, Yutu is an exceedingly rare disaster, though storms like Yutu are coming with a worrying frequency these days. According to preliminary weather data, Yutu is tied for the fifth-strongest tropical cyclone ever to hit land. Six of the 10 strongest landfalls in world history have occurred this decade.

The United States has borne a particularly damaging share of horrific storms lately. Yutu is the fifth Category 4 or 5 tropical cyclone to make landfall in the past 15 months on U.S. soil. No previous decade has had more than four such strikes on American shorelines, making this an outbreak unseen in nearly 170 years of recorded weather history.

Like so many recent hurricanes, Yutu rapidly strengthened just before landfall, going from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in just 36 hours. Waters near Yutu were 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, consistent with the effects of climate change and a key factor in rapidly strengthening storms.

Despite signing an emergency declaration to help speed the flow of federal aid to the islands, a routine task for a storm of this magnitude, President Trump has yet to publicly comment on the disaster. Mainstream media coverage has also been sparse; The New York Times’ initial story ran on page 16.

“It’s been tough seeing the lack of mainstream coverage for this,” said Steven Johnson, a native of Saipan and marine biologist now studying climate change at Oregon State University, wrote in an email interview with Grist.

Johnson pointed to the round-the-clock coverage of the mail bombs sent to Trump critics in comparison. It “hurts to know that +50K people living on U.S. soil deserve a fraction of the attention of Robert de Niro,” he said.

A lack of media and federal attention could prove deadly in the Marianas, as it did in the aftermath of Maria in Puerto Rico. Despite convincing evidence of a humanitarian catastrophe in Puerto Rico, the federal response was slow. That official neglect, plus logistical bottlenecks, lead to a nearly total breakdown in medical services and contributed to the storm’s outsized death toll, according to an independent study.

Johnson has been trying to bring attention to the storm by tweeting to celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio. He said that communicating with friends and family over social media had turned into a full-time job.

“Growing up on Saipan and Tinian, you go through storms all the time,” Johnson said. “This was the first time I’ve heard family and friends say they feared for their lives.”

Read More:

Typhoon Yutu spurs disaster in a remote U.S. territory

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Don’t blame Hurricane Michael victims for voting for climate deniers

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When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle and Southern Georgia last week, it devastated areas known for their poverty — and their conservative politics. And some media outlets didn’t hesitate to lean into the apparent irony.

A day after the calamity, while many were just beginning to process the scope of the damage, The Guardian ran a story originally titled “Victims of Hurricane Michael voted for climate deniers,” which some readers interpreted as victim-blaming. “Florida voters could put an end to this nonsense,” wrote the article’s author John Abraham. “Climate deniers are making these storms worse by stopping action on climate change. What the hell do we expect to happen when the deniers are writing the laws?”

The backlash to the article varied. Some people criticized the tone of the headline. Others, like Union of Concerned Scientists fellow Michael Lautner, had a different issue with the story — he saw the premise as patently flawed.

“It’s not that [those affected by Hurricane Michael] are voting for climate deniers,” Lautner told Grist. “It’s that they don’t really have much of a choice to vote in the first place.”

According to Latner, officials in both Florida and Georgia have used a vast arsenal of voter suppression methods to reduce voter turnout and distort civic representation. He says these techniques include heavy gerrymandering in low-income communities — the same places that are often most vulnerable to environmental woes.

Many of the Florida and Georgia residents who were most dramatically affected by Hurricane Michael live in low-income communities. Think Calhoun County in Georgia with a 33 percent poverty rate or Franklin County in Florida with a 23.5 percent poverty rate. (The states’ poverty rates stands at about 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively.)

Both Georgia and Florida have specific policies that could result in voter suppression. Florida has disenfranchised an estimated 1.5 million ex-felons — that’s ten percent of the state’s adult population, including one in five African Americans. And earlier this year, Florida Governor Rick Scott, a known climate denier, banned early voting at university campuses, which represent a younger, more liberal, diverse and climate-conscious electorate. A federal judge halted the policy, but three Florida universities announced they still would not allow early voting at their campus polls.

In Georgia, secretary of state and current Republican gubernatorial hopeful Brian Kemp froze 53,000 voter registration applications, nearly 70 percent of which belonged to African Americans, because of a mismatch with drivers license or social security information. Georgia has also reduced the number of polling places, closing eight percent of the state’s total since 2012. Three-quarters of the counties affected are communities of color. In Randolph County, an area that’s now reeling from wide-spread damage due to Hurricane Michael, local election officials attempted to close seven of nine polling places in an overwhelmingly black area, abandoning the plan only when faced with a statewide protest.

It’s unclear what, if any, effect these policies have on election outcomes. But in states like Georgia and Florida, where gubernatorial races are known to be razor-close, both voter suppression and Hurricane recovery could be significant factors.

“[In Florida and Georgia] you have a combination of factors… that are often times worse off in environmental disasters,” Lautner said. “And in communities that are already overburdened with socioeconomic distress and the like, these barriers make a difference.”

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Don’t blame Hurricane Michael victims for voting for climate deniers

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