In climate disaster zones, these workers are restoring the fabric that binds us together.

News of the world environment

 NEWSLETTER | OCTOBER 18, 2024

Building Home

IT’S BEEN NEARLY two decades since Hurricane Katrina, and in that time, there have been over 200 US climate disasters that have done a billion dollars’ worth of damage or more each. Our recovery in their aftermath depends on these workers, who have become America’s white blood cells. They travel from disaster to disaster, rebuilding homes and schools and hospitals and whole cities for the federal government and private insurance companies. They’re at the center of an economy that spends tens of billions of dollars a year on rebuilding, weatherizing, and decarbonizing America, an economy that is poised to receive $2 trillion in federal investment over the next decade.

These workers are incredibly skilled and highly dedicated, but they’re also very vulnerable because they’re overwhelmingly immigrants, and most of them are undocumented. They come from Mexico and Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela. Some come from as far away as the Philippines and India. And most of them are dislocated from their own homes even as they’re rebuilding the homes of others.

These workers are on the road six months at a time, traveling from state to state, doing the rebuilding. Yet, they are separated from the multibillion-dollar contractors at the top of the disaster-recovery industry by layers of subcontracting, earning poverty wages on contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Since many of them are undocumented migrants, they’re subject to political fearmongering and scapegoating.

Saket Soni, founder and director of Resilience Force, advocates for the rights of highly skilled, yet extremely vulnerable, workers who help us return home after climate disasters.

READ MORE

Photo by William Widmer / Resilience Force

SUGGESTED BROWSING

Cold Fire

“In dark places, it is light that calls us. Even in a broken ocean full of chemical fouling and warming water, bioluminescent fire remains. Sometimes, a warming and failing ocean makes it burn brighter.” (Orion)  

Secrets in Ice

“The (Greenland) ice sheet is packed with information, like a giant encyclopedia. Among the first to recognize this was Ernst Sorge, a German glaciologist. ‘I’m looking at a landscape whose vast simplicity is nowhere to be surpassed on earth, and which yet conceals a thousand secrets,’ he wrote.” (The New Yorker)

Land Connection

“Since I was a little girl, I kept a sprig of windmill jasmine from our backyard in a jar on the windowsill next to my bed. The scent transported me to a world where I belonged and felt safe. I didn’t know it then, but I was longing for a taste of the land of my birth, longing for nourishment from the soil of Cambodia.” (Emergence)

Emergency Mismanagement

“In the face of intensifying wildfires, storms, and heat, we are consistently confronted with the vulnerabilities of our daily lives: aging infrastructure, hazardously placed developments, and our haphazard national approach to emergency alerts and warnings, too.”  (Rolling Stone)

Not a subscriber yet?

You can get 4 issues of our award-winning print magazine delivered for $20 ($25 for international addresses) by clicking this secure link.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

Earth Island Journal is a nonprofit publication. Our mission is to inform and inspire action. Which is why we rely on readers like you for support. If you believe in the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our Green Journalism Fund.

DONATE TODAY!

Did a thoughtful friend forward you our newsletter? Keep up with the latest from Earth Island Journal!

SIGN UP TODAY

Follow

Follow

Subscribe

You are receiving this email newsletter because you signed up on our website.
If this newsletter was forwarded to you, you can sign up to the email newsletter here.

Support our work by subscribing to our quarterly print magazine.

Copyright © 2023 Earth Island Journal, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:

Earth Island Journal
2150 Allston Way Ste 460
Berkeley, CA 94704-1375

Add us to your address book

No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe