There’s a tweet1 making the rounds, again2: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”
Yesterday the disaster films were disconcertingly near at hand: Flood waters sloshing around the feet of New York City bus riders, cascading down subway stairs, threatening to burst the seams of the subway station walls, turning normal city streets into lakes. Many basement and garden-level apartments flooded. Residents filmed themselves walking around in several inches of water as more streamed down the stairs to their front door.
My own garden-level apartment is located high enough on a hill that it hasn’t (yet) flooded, and I work from home. I felt nearly as removed from the unfolding disaster as I have from the other extreme flooding events around the globe this summer, which I also consumed and experienced on social media. By the time I was done with work and went out for a run, the rain a mere whisper of a drizzle, the floodwaters at Carroll Street and Fourth Avenue—where one of the viral videos was shot—had already receded.
Others have criticized the sluggish, lackluster communication from Mayor Eric Adams and pointed out how dismally unprepared the city is for climate crisis.3
I don’t have much to add to the discourse. It’s exhausting, discouraging, depressing to witness all of the above. I feel lucky, privileged, maybe a little guilty for escaping unscathed, but I know that won’t always be the case. Tomorrow or next month or next year it could be the camera in my pocket recording climate disaster.
Unfortunately, it often seems as though people in power will simply not treat the crisis with any urgency unless they personally have had their lives upended by it—the climate equivalent of a politician who only supports gay marriage because their child is gay. But wealth, power, and privilege insulates them from the worst effects of climate change. By the time the water is at their door, it will be too late for the rest of us.
On the way back to our apartment we passed a large rat nest that has taken over an entire stretch of Carlton Avenue between Atlantic and Fulton. It looked like the part of the nest in an empty sidewalk tree pit had partially collapsed under the onslaught of rain. I also noticed several dead rats, maybe a half-dozen, slumped over the bottom rail of a nearby fence, and wondered whether they had been flood victims, or if they had been poisoned. Probably the latter, but odd that I had never noticed until now.
Reading list
Must read: This sprawling story about rats very nearly brought me to tears last night. It is fun, fascinating, touching, provocative—everything one could ask of a creature feature. The accompanying illustrations are delightful. I can’t choose just one bit to excerpt because you should read the whole thing. I will never look at the skittering creatures the same way again. [J.B. MacKinnon for Hakai Magazine]
My latest: Wrote a couple fun stories for the Bulletin recently, including a review of a new PBS nature docuseries, and a report back from a climate-“endangered” and “emerging” wine tasting.
Love to see screenshots from one social network on another social network, and then to share them via this social network.
I’m not positive this is the first instance but it’s the first I could find.
Out of curiosity, after seeing videos of a submerged FDR next to the barren construction site that is the East River Park, I went to see if anyone was talking about how the raising/razing of the park—which involved cutting down a thousand mature trees—has done nothing to protect that part of the city from extreme rainfall events. I found tweets, but no articles, yet.