My climate changed hometown
This morning I read on Miraz' blog that 91% of New Zealand’s birds and 35% of its marine mammals are endangered due to climate change. Those statistics are frightening.
I wanted to leave a comment on her post, but felt I had way more than 300 characters to say. I could write pages criticizing people, politicians, religious institutions and the meat industry… I could write an essay on my frustration at the generalized inaction. It’s not like we are waiting for something to happen in a distant science-fiction future, 800 years from now. It is happening already, everywhere. It’s been happening for a long time.
I could spend hours complaining, but instead I’ll just talk a bit about my hometown. Thank you @Miraz for the inspiration for this blog post!
Recife. My hometown in the Northeast of Brazil. Eternally 28°C, sunny, coconuts, mangoes, guava trees, warm Atlantic ocean, long stretches of gold sandy beaches, mangroves. Our climate is best described as a long dry summer season, followed by a short monsoon period between early June and late July. “The Venice of Brazil”, as it is also known, is built around six rivers and only 1m above sea level.
A report by the IPCC classified Recife as the 16th most endangered city on Earth and the number 1 in Brazil. Yay.
Photo by Igor Fonseca for Diário de Pernambuco
I remember people started talking about the sea “invading” the land when I was a child, and cities in the entire Northeast started building retaining walls to stop it. That was the first sign of some kind of change.
Today, we can say with certainty those walls have failed. The sea has indeed advanced, rising about 10cm in the past 30 years, and entire neighborhoods along the coast have been destroyed. This Brazilian website has several photos from the 1930s and 1940s along with current ones, showing the changes to the famous Boa Viagem beach.
Photo by Francisco França for UOL Notícias
The rain patterns have changed too. While it is true it doesn’t rain every single day, it sure feels like that. Whenever I call my mom or my dad to talk, the city is always flooded. September? Schools closed due to heavy rain. February? Flash flood wipes away a favela. July? A crocodile shows up in someone’s backyard, dragged by the currents. Nowadays, it floods even when it’s not raining, due to sea levels and high tides.
When it’s not raining, people complain it’s scorching. It feels too hot. Weather observation data shows the average daily mean temperature in Recife has risen 1°C due to climate change, with certain areas generating so much heat, they are 6°C above the city’s average. It doesn’t help it’s a city of skyscrapers, with 43% of the buildings 20m or higher. So it’s hot, and there’s no breeze. When it is not absurdly hot, or flooding, there is a drought. Yes. From one extreme to the other. And don’t get me started on the shark attacks…
It’s not about “global warming” (so many dumbasses are stuck on this term). It’s about everything becoming more extreme, less predictable. It’s either raining too much or too little. We are sweating, we are shivering. One day you have a nice house on the prairie; next thing you know, the ocean is your pool. It’s truly about climate change. Things have climate changed in Recife.
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