The images went around the world. At the start of the week, while the hurricane Milton still hovering over the Gulf of Mexico, veteran hurricane meteorologist John Morales became emotional on air as he presented the latest data on the storm. “I’m sorry, it’s just terrible,” he said after suppressing a sob.
Morales is an interesting character. Born in New York, he grew up in Puerto Rico before entering the meteorology program at Cornell University. He began his career as a weather presenter on Spanish-speaking television networks, where he soon paid special attention to hurricanes. For decades, climate change has been at the heart of its concerns. He is particularly concerned about the fate of populations most affected by storms, which intensify as the climate warms.
In the fall of 2017, while the hurricane Maria threatened the island nations of the northeastern Caribbean Sea, Morales had already made a splash by posting a video, which went viral on social networks, in which he implored the people of Puerto Rico to get involved. shelter. Mariaas we now know, had devastating consequences: nearly 3,000 deaths officially recorded (but probably more in reality), thousands of people displaced from the island, monstrous damage inflicted on infrastructure, the scars of which we can still see today. ‘today.
The hurricane Mariajust like Katrina in 2005, quickly transformed into a humanitarian crisis along clear social fault lines. The after-Katrina in New Orleans was marked, as we know, by striking inequalities in access to aid and support for reconstruction. The post-Katrina has transformed into a veritable laboratory for “disaster capitalism”, and the management of chaos has been presented to companies as a business opportunity, at the expense of the most vulnerable populations (first and foremost, non-white populations).
This is the “shock doctrine” theorized by Naomi Klein in the early 2000s: major upheavals create perfect opportunities to deploy massive privatization policies, strengthen surveillance and population control policies and sustainably transform public governance. in favor of commercial actors. This was the case after Katrinathis was the case after Mariaand let’s just say that the stage is well set for future disasters to be managed according to the same principles.
As these lines were written, the hurricane Milton made landfall on the west coast of Florida. The monster was now classified as a Category 3 hurricane, but the damage was considerable: millions of people without power, thousands of people displaced, several deaths already reported. All this occurs, remember, just a few weeks after the hurricane Helenewhich caused more than $200 billion in damages (the majority of which were uninsurable) and claimed more than 230 lives in six states.
A sign of the times, without a doubt, it is the conspiracy theories that proliferate in the wake of these cataclysms. On Tuesday, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) declared that misinformation had reached new heights in the run-up to Milton. Having become a target of choice for conspiracy theorists and the far right, the agency said it received an endless stream of hatred.
The tenor of the theories spread by the fascist sphere in recent weeks is clear: the hurricanes are a Democratic plot aimed at preventing citizens of Republican allegiance from voting in the November presidential elections. On X, Georgia Representative and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene issued a statement claiming that Democrats control the weather.
Conspiracy YouTuber Alex Jones, for his part, claimed that the hurricane Helene had been sent to North Carolina to force the evacuation of the region and provide access to its lithium reserves (?). In a state won by Donald Trump in 2020, the ground is fertile for conspiracy theories.
Trump and his troops obviously participate in the dissemination of this type of rumor, in particular by increasing the number of false attacks against FEMA. For example, it has been claimed that President Biden diverted his funds to allocate them to immigrants. In fact, migrants and people in an irregular situation are strictly excluded from the agency’s aid programs.
The support offered to the victims by the US federal government is certainly insufficient. Except that instead of inventing anti-Republican conspiracies, we should instead talk about the widespread neglect of the immediate and growing consequences of climate change.
When it comes to FEMA, the organization itself laments its underfunding and understaffing while the risks of major emergencies increase exponentially. This is not unique to the American context: society and institutions are poorly prepared to face the scale of the upheavals to come.
In reality, the proliferation of lies and political conspiracy theories hides a simpler, but all the more worrying, reality: we are sailing on the climate crisis aboard a raft of paper. The degree of preparation is derisory and dramatic human consequences are to be expected. This is undoubtedly all that we could guess behind the sobs of John Morales.