How extreme weather survivors are working for a better future

Some survivors of extreme weather events are channelling their experience and “starting to organise into a political force”, said The Guardian.

With apocalyptic floods, wildfires and other events becoming more common, that force is growing and transforming devastation and heartache into action.

‘Political toxicity’ around climate change

These survivors are calling for “improved disaster response and even action on the politically contentious issue of global heating”. The “shock” of extreme weather is bonding them in “an unusually bipartisan way”, with “politically diverse delegations” travelling to Washington to lobby politicians.

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Some of them are surprised to find themselves in the role of activist. “I just didn’t care about politics,” said Kylie Nidever, whose childhood home in Hunt, Texas, was one of the few in her neighbourhood to survive floods last year. “I never thought I’d be doing this.”

Their “common woes” have helped develop a “greater appreciation of the role of the climate crisis in disasters” among those “previously sceptical” of the connection. But the “political toxicity” around climate change, which Donald Trump has called a “hoax” and “bullshit”, means the campaign groups have names that don’t include the term, such as Extreme Weather Survivors and Rebuild: the National Disaster Survivors Association.

Extreme Weather Survivors concentrates on issues such as federal aid, debris clean-up and insurance reform. The latter has particular resonance because survivors of Hurricane Helene in 2024 “struggled to navigate a patchwork of insurance policies” after the storm, said WFAE 90.7.

‘Power in humanity’

A meeting of survivors in Texas in October suggested that politicians “don’t yet feel overwhelming political pressure to engage with those affected by extreme weather”, said The Guardian. In a community hall in Kerrville, near where flash floods killed 136 people last year, all of the candidates for the Texas governor election and selected state legislators were invited to speak to survivors but “only one”, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, “showed up”.

But even if survivors don’t make a “major impact” at this election, “many feel this will change as warping weather” raises home insurance rates and other costs and “large chunks of the year” see “toxic wildfire smoke, flooding and heat”.

Meanwhile, “one of the most powerful discoveries is how quickly trauma can become power if the right support is there”, Amanda Rosa, from Extreme Weather Survivors, told the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

She’s “watched survivors go from breaking down in a support call to testifying before the Senate judiciary, and briefing FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] leadership in a matter of months”. Rosa explains that “when people are given the space to feel, heal, and then speak, their stories can move people”. Their advocacy “isn’t separate from the emotion, it comes from it” because “their power is their humanity”.