Author: tourist_yp6g7u

By the end of this week, the world will know the full extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Beryl, one of the earliest storms to have ever formed in the region, as it makes it way from Trinidad and Tobago at the southeast end of the Caribbean island chain to as far north as Jamaica and possibly Belize in the northwest. 

The formation of the category four storm in the past week has triggered panic across the region, as most nations are not used to dealing with a fully developed storm this early in a season that normally begins on June 1 and concludes at the end of November each year. Rewriting many records, Beryl, officials say, has moved from a depression to a full-fledged hurricane in less than 50 hours, a development that experts say is highly unusual but points to the realities of climate change that regional governments had been complaining about so persistently around the globe.

Forecasters say that the impact will be felt from Tobago, Trinidad’s sister isle to the north, right through the Eastern Caribbean island chain up to Jamaica by the end of the week. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, like leaders of other nations in Beryl’s path, took to national airwaves at the weekend to warn Jamaicans to be prepared for the very worst as “all the models have suggested that if it is not a direct impact, it will be in the vicinity of Jamaica. We expect that this will bring adverse weather conditions, and we expect that by Wednesday morning we will be experiencing such conditions.”

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves in St. Vincent also warned locals to take Beryl seriously, noting that “this is a major hurricane. This is not a joke. We see what major hurricanes have done nearby to Grenada with Hurricane Ivan, and what has happened to Dominica in 2017 with Hurricane Maria, though Category Five in those cases. But the point I want to make, I want to repeat, this hurricane is intensifying,” he said.

But Grenada, just north of Trinidad and down dip from St. Vincent, is the one preparing for a battering, as models have shown that it might well pass over the island of just over 100,000 people as Ivan did back in September 2004, when the storm left much of the country like a South American gold mining camp, with tarpaulins of various colors dotting the island and replacing blown off roofs. Mainland Grenada has, however, been spared the worst of the storm this time as the eye has picked out the two smaller islands, Petite Martinique and Carriacou. PM Dickon Mitchell urged citizens to remain indoors at least until midnight when attempts to assess the situation will be made.

Ironically, Grenada should have been hosting this week’s regional leaders summit, but the 15-nation bloc announced a postponement as priorities shifted to Beryl. The formation of the storm with 150 miles per hour winds during Monday, will give the region further evidence in arguing that the climate is changing and that the countries which pollute the least are bearing the brunt of storms, as Bloc Secretary General Carla Barnett and others have pointed out.“Climate change has a very tangible human, economic, and financial impact on Caricom. We recall the record-breaking 2017 hurricane season when Hurricanes Irma and Maria, within a period of two weeks, charted paths of destruction across the region. Damage estimated at more than 200% of GDP occurred in one of our member states—Dominica. In Barbuda, the housing stock was almost totally destroyed. Critical infrastructure, including water and electricity, homes, health facilities and schools, were decimated in the wake of these storms,” she told a recent international forum in Antigua.

“Even as we meet at this conference, the region is entering an Atlantic hurricane season that is expected to be extremely active with a forecast of 11 hurricanes, five of them slated to be major storms of Category 3 intensity or higher. The Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CARICOF), coordinated out of the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), predicted near record heat for the Caribbean region from April to September 2024. Several of our member states have already been experiencing periods of prolonged drought, and this has been compounded by forest and bush fires across our region,” she said.

The post As Beryl hits Caribbean leaders warn about climate change appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, 
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.

I’m not doing this again with y’all.

While Democrats debate how to respond to Joe Biden’s debate performance, Trump and the Republicans are plotting to erase the entire twentieth century.

That’s not an exaggeration. Donald Trump has publicly threatened to be a dictator on “day one” if he wins in November, and the Supreme Court justices he appointed have just immunized him from accountability and vested him with the unchecked powers of a monarch. 

If Trump wins, he would empower an army of radical right-wing activists who plan to implement Project 2025, dismantle civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights, rescind long-established progressive laws and policies, and swing a wrecking ball against the fragile institutions of government and democracy.

Yes, Joe Biden is a flawed candidate, but Donald Trump is a threat to America. If anyone should withdraw from the race, it’s the twice-impeached convicted criminal.

RELATED:  With a Trump Win, Republican Judges Will Rule the Courts—and Our Lives

But some critics are making the same miscalculation they made with Hillary Clinton. A Trump victory will not bring on a progressive people’s revolution, strengthen third-party candidates, or buy us time to elect a better Democrat in the next election. It will set us so far back that it will take decades to unravel, no matter who wins in 2028. America cannot afford to make that mistake again.

Back in 2016, I was teaching at Columbia University when college students were complaining about Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for president. Many raised legitimate concerns, including her support for the unpopular war in Iraq. But others raised less substantive issues. She’s not likable. She panders. And the most memorable critique: they didn’t believe her when she appeared on “The Breakfast Club” and announced that she carried hot sauce in her purse.

I, too, opposed the war in Iraq, and that was one reason why I voted for Barack Obama instead of Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary. But now it was 2016, and Clinton was the Democratic nominee facing a Republican opponent, Donald Trump, who posed a clear and present danger to democracy.

“If Hillary Clinton wins, we may have a liberal majority on the Supreme Court for the first time in nearly 50 years,” I posted on Twitter a few weeks before the election. 

That was eight years ago. 

Now, as Trump cements his legacy on the right-wing court, that opportunity could be lost for a generation, as Republicans have appointed six of the nine Supreme Court Justices.

Joe Biden is not the ideal candidate to represent the Democratic Party. He’s an 81-year-old white man leading a party that is increasingly represented by young people, women, and people of color.

I worked for Biden’s opponent when he ran for president in 1988. I did not vote for Biden when he ran the second time in 2008. And I did not support him in the Democratic primary in 2020. I even wrote articles criticizing him after he was elected president. But I did vote for him in 2020 because I knew he was the best available option. 

I am not invested in the question of replacing Biden on the ticket. I would vote for Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, or any other credible candidate that Democrats nominate. This election is not about them. It’s about protecting our rights.

For five years, I covered Trump as a political commentator for CNN, following his racist speeches, midnight tweets, and unhinged press conferences. Some Americans may not remember the constant chaos and crises from Charlottesville to Covid that defined the Trump years, but I do, and I refuse to go back.

I know that Democrats prefer young, articulate, charismatic presidential candidates in the tradition of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. I do too, but the young guys don’t always deliver. It was not JFK, but an older, less attractive Lyndon Johnson who signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, 60 years ago today. As Jesse Jackson said at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, “I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a horse.”

Trump is far more entertaining than Joe Biden, but a presidential election is not a popularity contest. It’s a job interview. Unfortunately, the majority of white voters plan to install a twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted, convicted criminal with a 50-year history of racism in the most powerful position in America. 

My Black job, if there is such a thing, is to stop them.

Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.

The post My ‘Black Job’ Is to Protect Democracy appeared first on Word In Black.

The post My ‘Black Job’ Is to Protect Democracy appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

AYETORO, Nigeria (AP) — The coastal Nigerian community of Ayetoro was founded decades ago and nicknamed “Happy City,” meant to be a Christian utopia that would be sinless and classless. But now its remaining residents can do little against the rising sea.

Buildings have sunk into the Atlantic Ocean, an increasingly common image along the vulnerable West African coast. Old timber pokes from the waves like rotten teeth. Shattered foundations line the shore. Waves break against abandoned electrical poles.

For years, low-lying nations have warned the world about the existential threat of rising seas. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, struggles to respond. Some plans to address shoreline protection, even for Ayetoro, have come to nothing in a nation where corruption and mismanagement is widespread.

Prayers against the rising sea are “on the lips of everybody” in the church every Sunday, according to youth leader Thompson Akingboye. But they know the solution will require far more.

Even the church has been relocated away from the sea, twice. “The present location is now also threatened, with the sea just 30 meters (98 feet) away,” Akingboye said.

Thousands of people have left. Of those who remain, Stephen Tunlese can only gaze from a distance at the remnants of his clothing shop.

Tunlese said he lost an investment of eight million naira, or the equivalent of $5,500, to the sea. Now he adapts to a watery future. He repairs canoes.

“I will stay in Ayetoro because this is my father’s land, this is heritage land,” he said.

The Mahin mud coast where the community is slipping away has lost more than 10 square kilometers, or nearly 60% of its land, to the ocean in the past three decades.

Researchers studying satellite imagery of Nigeria’s coast say a number of things are contributing to Ayetoro’s disappearance.

Underwater oil drilling is one reason, according to marine geologist Olusegun Dada, a professor at the Federal University of Technology in Akure who has studied years of satellite imagery. As resources are extracted, the ground can sink.

But he and colleagues note other reasons, including the deforestation of mangroves that help anchor the earth and the erosion caused by ocean waves.

“When we started coming to this community, then we used to have fresh water,” Dada said. Today, the freshwater ecosystem is transforming into a salty, marine one.

The transformation is enormously costly in Nigeria. The World Bank in a 2020 report estimated the cost of coastal degradation in three other coastal Nigerian states — nearby Lagos, Delta and Cross River — at $9.7 billion, or more than 2% of the country’s GDP. It looked at erosion, flooding, mangrove loss and pollution, and noted the high rate of urbanization.

And yet dramatic images of coastal communities slipping away only capture Nigeria’s attention from time to time, as when the annual flooding occurs — another effect of climate change.

But Ayetoro residents can’t turn away.

“Ayetoro was like a paradise, a city where everyone lived joyfully, happily,” said Arowolo Mofeoluwa, a retired civil servant.

She estimated that two-thirds of the community has been slowly swept under the waves, along with some residents’ multiple attempts to rebuild.

“This is the third house we are living in, and there are some living in the fourth house now, and we do not have enough space for ourselves again. Four or five people living in a small room, you can just imagine how painful it is,” Mofeoluwa said.

“If you look where the sea is now, that is the end of the former Ayetoro.”

For the community’s traditional leader and head of the local church, Oluwambe Ojagbohunmi, the pain is not only in the loss of land but also “what we are losing in our socio-cultural and religious identity.”

Some residents say even burial grounds have been washed away.

Early this year, the Ondo state government announced a commitment to finding “lasting solutions” to the threat to Ayetoro. But residents said that’s been vowed in the past.

It might be too late for efforts to be effective, Dada said. For years, he has hoped for an environmental survey to be carried out to better understand what’s causing the community’s disappearance. But that’s been in vain.

The Niger Delta Development Commission, a government body meant in part to address environmental and other issues caused by oil exploration, didn’t respond to questions from The Associated Press about efforts to protect the community’s shoreline.

The commission’s website lists a shoreline protection project in Ayetoro. A photo shows a sign marking the feat with the motto, “Determined to make a difference!”

The project was awarded two decades ago. Project status: “Ongoing.”

Residents say nothing ever started.

“Help will come one day, we believe,” youth leader Akingboye said.

___

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The post It was meant to be a Christian utopia. Now this Nigerian community is helpless against rising seas appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here