There’s a popular quote often attributed to Mark Twain that was used in a radio ad in the Virgin Islands many years ago: “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it….”
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| A man walks on a street covered in debris after Hurricane Irma passed on the French island of Saint-Martin, on September 8, 2017. |
It always seemed strangely inappropriate in a place where people seldom talk about the weather, and where blue skies produce picture postcard days and temperatures seldom vary from the mid-80s. In the islands, the saying goes, as in much of the Caribbean, the weather is pretty predictable.
But really, it is not.
Rising sea levels, longer dry spells and erosion of precious beaches are affecting people’s lives and livelihoods. And in her new book, The Irma Diaries: Compelling Survivor Stories from The Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands author Angela Burnett warns that unless there’s some real movement to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, the series of deadly hurricanes that churned their way through the Caribbean in September 2017 could be a glimpse into a future of unprecedented weather.
Read the Yes! Magazine story by Lornet Turnbull - “The Irma Diaries: Hurricane Irma Survivor Stories Should Be a Climate Change Wake-Up Call.”
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