During the night of Oct. 9, Hurricane Milton made landfall on the Florida coast. The hurricane ravaged Tampa Bay, particularly low-income areas. In this zone, 11% of the housing consists of mobile homes. These cheaply manufactured housing units easily crumble under the weight of 120 mph winds, often trapping their inhabitants, who cannot afford to flee.
The South has been hit by two back-to-back hurricanes this season. Hurricane Helene made landfall only two weeks before, on Sept. 26. Low-income communities find it increasingly challenging to get back up on their feet as the number of Category 3+ hurricanes increases. Leading researchers in the field of climate change believe that the increasing temperatures of the ocean are causing hurricanes to manifest with greater intensity.
Today the American voter has few options to enact progressive climate reform. Bipartisanship, specifically when it comes to climate change, has increasingly diminished. The Democratic Party has done little to promise policy measures that will address climate change in opposition to the Republican Party.
One of the biggest critiques facing Vice President Kamala Harris is her changing stance on climate change. In 2019, as one of her campaign promises, Harris said she would ban fracking. However, only four years later, her policy is barely distinguishable from Trump’s.
Who can the American voter choose to enact crucial climate change policy? Who can the American voter choose to protect their communities?
As the American historian Howard Zinn famously stated, “‘You can’t be neutral on a moving train,’ I would tell them. . . . Events are already moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral means to accept that.”
We are heading towards and seeing the disastrous effects of our current mode of production. Fracking is the way we extract natural mineral oils from the earth. This is done through the process of blasting water with mixtures of dangerous chemicals into the ground. The process of fracking releases high amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
Neutrality in this instance is the unflinching stance of both parties on the topic of fracking. The train is moving toward some parts of our planet underwater, and the rest on fire. Without radical reform to our fracking systems, we will continue to see “once every decade” events happening every year.
In 2020, there were two hurricanes that made landfall in the South: the Category 3 Hurricane Zeta and the Category 4 Hurricane Laura. In 2021, there was the Category 4 Hurricane Ida. In 2022, Florida was hit by the Category 4 Hurricane Ian. In 2023, Florida was hit again by Category 3 Hurricane Idalia. In 2024, at the start of Hurricane season, we have already witnessed two Category 4 hurricanes: Helene and Milton.
From 2005 to 2016 there were seven hurricanes Category 3+ that made landfall. From 2016 to 2024 there were 13 Category 3+ hurricanes that made landfall. In the last decade, we’ve seen almost double the amount of hurricanes compared to the previous decade. What will happen in the next decade?
There is no question that the increase in hurricanes and climate change have affected predominantly lower-income communities. Communities that live at or below the poverty line have fewer resources to flee and more to lose as rapid winds and flooding eat through everything they own. Climate change has affected primarily impoverished communities around the globe.
Immigrant communities in Central America have witnessed the brunt of climate change in the last decade. Droughts have scourged the land as the global temperatures rise. Much of the economic infrastructure in Central America comes from rural agricultural industries, which are not sustainable under current conditions. Many individuals who cross the U.S.-Mexican borders are fleeing due to climate-related economic instability. Madison Harris comments on this change in climate-based migration in her article published in New America.
“Climate impacts will increase livelihood insecurities,” Harris claims, “leading an estimated 30 million Central Americans to migrate to the U.S.–Mexico border over the next 30 years.”
Unless real, progressive reform is proposed to our current “bipartisan” system, the Americas will witness cataclysmic event after cataclysmic event, including the estimated displacement of over 30 million people. The topic of climate change does not only pertain to the suffering low-income communities in America, but across the globe.
Low-income groups will be the first to be displaced and decimated as the events of climate increase in fervor. The United States must take immediate action to inhibit the deadly effects of climate change. The American voter must be given the choice to protect their communities through adequate policy changes.
