Experts are saying anywhere on the planet can be affected by human-caused climate change in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which impacted Asheville, North Carolina — a city that was deemed a safe haven for climate refugees due to its temperate mountain weather and distance from the coast.
Yet, Hurricane Helene led to 30 inches of rain in North Carolina — the biggest local flooding in recorded history, according to ABC News. The hurricane impacted Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. Over 30 people died and 600 remain unfound in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located. A total of 120 deaths have been recorded so far, per the Associated Press.
Climate change impacts everywhere
“No place is truly untouched by climate change, anywhere in the world,” Dave Reidmiller, the director of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Climate Center, said in an interview with ABC News.
It is estimated that 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050 on a global scale, according to the Institute for Economics & Peace.
“Climate change is sort of a pervasive issue that is going to affect communities all over the world — not equally — but definitely it will impact everyone, everywhere in some way,” Antonia Sebastian, a professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, told ABC News.
Do climate havens exist?
Not only does Sebastian not believe in climate havens, but other experts dispute the term as the criteria are unclear.
Earlier this year, Asheville’s sustainability officer Amber Weaver said the city was developing a resilience assessment to adapt to climate-related dangers.
“You pay, frankly, pay for climate readiness now, or Mother Nature is going to charge you later with interest,” Reidmiller said. “As we rebuild, we kind of need to ask ourselves, do we need to rebuild higher, stronger, with different permitting and regulatory requirements to make sure that what we are building back is more capable of withstanding these stronger, more intense, more frequent, longer lasting, greater-in-spatial scale events?”
