Climate change is personal. It is not abstract. The warming climate impacts our economies, influences our politics and culture, threatens the food we eat and the water we drink; it even affects our love lives. As climate change accelerates and extreme heat and climate disasters displace more people around the world, the crisis is increasingly disrupting our fundamental sense of where we belong and what we consider home. We saw that last summer, in Maui, Hawaii, when the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century leveled the historic town of Lahaina, killed more than 100 people, and displaced thousands of residents from their homes. In the immediate wake of the disaster, many families sheltered in hotels and resorts along the fringes of the burn zone, all to be displaced again a few months later when tourists returned to the city. We’re nearly a year out from the devastating fire and the recovery has intersected with an ongoing housing crisis that still leaves many Maui residents without stable housing. Let us know by filling out this form. Millions more have experienced the same over the last two decades. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, an annual average of 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced, on average, each year since 2008 by weather-related events such as floods, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures. “Each of these statistics is a man, woman, or child whose life has been destroyed, who has lost home, family, and friends. Said goodbye - perhaps forever - to relatives who are too old or sick to make an arduous journey to safer locations,” said UN commissioner Filippo Grandi in late October. Those numbers are only expected to grow. According to the international think tank the Institute for Economics & Peace, as many as 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters. In sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin... |