Hurricane Helene’s reach shows why no place is immune from impacts of climate change

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Florida, but it's towns across Western North Carolina hundreds of miles from the coast and thousands of feet above sea level that have seen some of the worst destruction.

  Communities once considered climate havens are now facing a harsh reality. There may be no such thing.

  William Brangham joins us now with more — William.

• William Brangham:

  That's right Geoff.

  Asheville, which is temperate, inland, nestled up in the hills with lots of freshwater, often ranks high on lists of so-called climate-safe cities. But experts are skeptical of the idea that any community is truly out of reach of the impacts of climate change. This storm has driven that point home in the worst way possible.

  To discuss how a warming world impacts us all and what individuals and communities can do about it, we are joined by climate expert Alex Steffen. He writes the newsletter The Snap Forward.

  Alex Steffen, so good to have you on the "News Hour."

  I mean, as I mentioned, Asheville for years has had this reputation as, a haven a place you could go to live a safe life in the woods and in the hills, insulated in some way from climate change. What does this storm tell us about that conceit.

• Alex Steffen, The Snap Forward:

  Well, I think it tells us three things.

  First, I think it tells us that nowhere is totally safe. And, second I think it tells us that while there are places that are relatively safe compared to others, even those relatively safe places can have a tragic disaster.

  And that means the third thing that we all have to be thinking in our own lives, in our own communities about how we're going to prepare for what's coming and ensure that we have the best chances.

• William Brangham:

  As you mentioned, some places are more resilient than others and potentially more protected than others.

  But do you think it's even a wrong question for people to be thinking about moving to a place that is — quote, unquote — "safe from climate change"?

• Alex Steffen:

  Well the way I like to talk about it when I teach classes and do talks is that the thing we want to think about most is moving away from risk.

  There are places that we know for sure have very high and rising risks. There are places that have fewer risks. And I think that, if you live in a really dangerous, vulnerable place, moving is in fact probably the best thing you can do. And I think millions of people in America will be moving over the next couple of decades.

• William Brangham:

  I mean, as you're talking, I'm thinking about — I mean, apart from the human toll that these disasters cause, there are so many embed assumptions made in where we live, the houses people buy, the mortgages that banks give, the businesses that are bought and run.

  I mean, it seems those places — those are all done with an assumption of certainty. And this seems to call all of that into question.

• Alex Steffen:

  Absolutely.

  We built these great lives for the needs we had in the past. And we have thriving communities and folks have homes and we have businesses and infrastructure that were all built for how the world worked a couple of decades ago. But the world doesn't work that way anymore. So there's been a discontinuity.

  What we're used to thinking about, what we thought we knew, how we act and our expertise, all that is up in the air now because now we need to think and act in new ways. That's a really hard thing for people to get their heads around.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

  In fact, the data, I think, indicates that people, rather than doing what you're suggesting, moving away from risk, are in fact moving into risk. They may not be doing it intentionally, but they're moving to areas that we know are more and more dangerous.

  How — what is — what should individuals do to try to make an assessment about smart moving, if they're going to do so?

• Alex Steffen:

  Well, at the very basic level, we should be looking to resources like the FEMA risk maps that exist and making sure that we're not moving right into the jaws of harm.

  But at a longer — at a larger level, we need to be thinking on a broader scale and understanding that each person's answers will be different based on their community, their politics, their race, their creed, and that each person also can balance different risks more capably.

  And so we need to start digging into what actually makes a place safe, not just how endangered is it by climate change and other ecological problems, but how well is the community coming together? How effective is local government?

• William Brangham:

  It also seems that the role of government plays a big part here, because every time we rebuild a coastal community that has been leveled multiple times by storms, you're signaling to people, it's OK to move back here, it is OK to live near this beach or on this slipping wetland.

  I mean, what role would you like government to take, broadly speaking?

• Alex Steffen:

  Well, in an ideal world, we would be moving much faster to head off further climate change by lowering our emissions, and we would be engaged in a nationwide process of helping people who are most at risk have supported migration away from those places, meaning that they have resources and help to actually make these moves, but also that we're making some tough choices, doing some triage about what places can we easily defend and what places might be a little too hard to save.

  And, unfortunately, we are at that point in things. We can't save everything. So we have got to be smart about where we put our dollars. Right now, we're not even being smart at all. We're not — barely doing anything. So we need to do a lot better.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

  And it does seem like the incentives are running completely in the wrong direction, that it's very difficult for a local leader to say no to those new housing permits and tax revenues out of concern for this, what are — what's often thought of as a future risk.

• Alex Steffen:

  Yes.

  I mean, if there's any lesson that we have learned from Helene and other storms and disasters, it's that we used to think of climate change as being something that would happen elsewhere sometime in the future and with somebody else's problem to worry about. And none of those things are true. It's here. It's happening where you live, and nobody's coming to save you.

  You have got to be part of the solution in your own life.

• William Brangham:

  All right, Alex Steffen, who writes the wonderful newsletter The Snap Forward, thank you so much for being here.

• Alex Steffen:

  My pleasure. Thanks for having me.