Hurricane Beryl is more evidence that climate change is here

Before Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Mexico, workers in Cancún dug sea turtle eggs from the sand and secured them in crates to ensure they would be safe from the category-five storm. Residents of Union Island in Saint Vincents and the Grenadines prepared by fortifying roofs with cinder blocks. From Venezuela to Texas, millions of people have been affected by Beryl. The impact has been devastating. On Union Island, almost all of the 2,500 residents have been made homeless. In Texas, 2 million people have been left without power in the midst of a heatwave.

In Jamaica, a resident of Treasure Beach said that the storm was “terrifying” and people were grateful to be alive. Eyewitness reports detail the terror of being trapped inside homes while roofs are ripped off by the wind. More than eighteen people have been killed, but the death toll will likely rise as clean-up efforts continue.

Speaking to the Guardian, meteorologist Jeff Masters said the hurricane was “unprecedentedly strange”. Beryl is strange both because it occurred earlier in the season than any other category-five hurricane on record, and because it intensified far quicker than expected. Usually, Atlantic hurricanes at this time of year are category one or two, meaning they are less likely to result in severe damage and loss of life. The reason for this unprecedented event is the warming ocean.

The last decade saw the hottest ocean temperatures since the 1800s, and 2023 set the record for the hottest year ever. Scientists estimate that 90 percent of global warming from human activity has been absorbed by the world’s oceans. And because hurricanes draw their energy from the ocean, warmer water makes for more powerful and destructive storms.

Warmer water was an important factor underpinning the rapid intensification of Beryl from a lower category into a category five—the highest level. And it affects the coral reefs that act as natural barriers to the waves caused by Atlantic storms, providing protection for more than 18,000 people in the area. The reefs are being bleached and weakened by warmer waters.

This double whammy of bigger storms and the breakdown of natural defences means there will be more storms as destructive as Beryl. Ko Barrett, deputy secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said that Beryl is a harbinger of a “very active, very dangerous” hurricane season.

Poor countries like Jamaica and other Caribbean islands are going to bear the brunt of these climate-change-induced superstorms. According to the prime minister of Grenada, Dickon Mitchell, 98 percent of the country’s infrastructure has been damaged.

The story is similar everywhere. The countries that bear the least responsibility for the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis and which have the fewest resources available to deal with its impacts are the ones hardest hit. Because such countries are marginal to global capitalism, little is done to protect the lives of those in them.

Western politicians have even been known to joke about the threat of climate change on these vulnerable populations. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, for example, was caught in 2015 making fun of the prospect of “water lapping at the doors” of people in the Pacific Islands.

Every year, new climate-related records are broken. Whether it’s warm oceans, heatwaves, rising sea levels. The causes are no mystery. Fossil fuels continue to be burnt so that companies can profit, with the encouragement of governments, when we need a rapid transition to renewable energy sources.