Reimagining Recovery
I won’t lie. It has been a hell of a week for me. We went into it with warnings of a super-cyclone brewing in the Indian Ocean threatening to unleash its fury on my birthplace, West Bengal, India, and neighboring Bangladesh — both heavily populated regions that are already struggling to control the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
We had been anticipating this at the Journal for weeks as hurricane season began approaching and new research bolstered projections that climate change was increasing the frequency of destructive tropical storms. We worried that the need to keep distance during this pandemic would hamper rescue and relief operations. But the focus of my concern had been on the North Atlantic, on the people and places of my adopted country. Somehow, it had slipped my mind that my aging parents, extended family, and friends stuck in their homes in South Asia were facing the same challenges.
The destruction that Cyclone Amphan wreaked along the Bengal coast in less than 24 hours — killing more than 100, causing more than $13 billion in damage, and rendering hundreds of thousands homeless while a killer virus lurks in the air — is heartbreaking. It is also a grim example of what we can expect in coming weeks here in the US as well, given predictions of an above-average hurricane season for the fifth year in a row. And as it is playing out there, it will here as well — the poor and vulnerable will be the worst impacted. My family and friends have emerged largely unscathed, thanks to their socioeconomic status, but not so the economically disadvantaged.
All of this brings home to me, yet again, what Aaron G. Lehmer-Chang has elaborated in today’s Journal article: “Returning to our old growth-obsessed, consumption-driven economy would be nothing short of suicide.”
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor, Earth Island Journal
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