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'Apocalyptic Scenes': Hurricane Beryl Leaves 'Complete Devastation' in Its Wake
"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," the prime minister of one impacted country said, as the storm now bears down on Jamaica.
Jul 03, 2024
Hurricane Beryl—the earliest Category 4 and Category 5 storm to ever form in the Atlantic Basin—killed at least seven people as it tore through the southeastern Caribbean nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada on Monday, leaving behind devastation that the leaders of both countries compared to "Armageddon."
Scientists say that the record-breaking storm intensified so rapidly and so early in the season due to above-average ocean temperatures heated primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves toldDemocracy Now! on Wednesday morning. "We are in the era of the Anthropocene, and the developed countries—the major emitters—are not taking this matter seriously."
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters."
Beryl made landfall on Carriacou Island in Grenada at around 11:00 am EDT on Monday as a Category 4 storm before strengthening to a Category 5 later in the day. With winds blowing as high as 150 miles per hour, it was the strongest hurricane to hit the Grenadines since at least 1851.
The storm flattened Carriacou in half an hour, Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said in a press briefing late Monday.
"Having seen it myself, there is really nothing that could prepare you to see this level of destruction," Mitchell told reporters. "It is almost Armageddon-like. Almost total damage or destruction of all buildings, whether they be public buildings, homes, or private facilities. Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture, complete and total destruction of the natural environment. There is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou."
The hurricane also pummeled the Grenadian island of Martinique. On the two islands, which are home to around 6,000 people, the storm damaged or destroyed 98% of structures, including Carriacou's marinas, airport, and main hospital, The New York Times reported. It also wiped out electricity and communications on the two islands, damaged crops, downed trees and power lines, and flattened Carriacou's mangroves.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the hardest-hit islands were Canouan, Mayreau, and Union Island, where 90% of homes were flattened or seriously damaged, according to The Guardian. The outlet said social media footage of the damage showed "apocalyptic scenes."
Speaking on Democracy Now!, Gonsalves compared conditions in the south of the country to "Armageddon."
"Union Island is flattened," he said, adding that everyone on Union and Mayreau were homeless.
One woman who survived the storm described the experience to Vincentian journalist Demion McTair, saying, "Just imagine stoves flying in the air, house flying, lifting up, tearing apart, and just going in the wind. Just like that… Just imagine."
Despite the devastation, the death toll has remained low for now, with three reported dead in Grenada, one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and three in Venezuela, according to The New York Times.
However, the task of rebuilding from the storm will be "Herculean," Gonsalves told Democracy Now!, adding that he estimated the damage was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We are in a sense going up a down escalator," he said. "Every time we make some progress, we get hit by these natural disasters and we have to start afresh."
Yet, given the role that the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis plays in supercharging storms and hurricanes, these disasters expose the deep guilt of powerful corporations who have profited from the continued consumption of coal, oil, and gas.
"Seriously, at what point do we get crimes against humanity trials for the fossil fuel execs and economists, like Nobel winner William Nordhaus, who minimized climate impacts for decades?" climate advocate Julia Steinberger wrote on social media in response to the storm's devastation.
Greenpeace International agreed.
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters," the group wrote on social media.
Both Gonsalves and Mitchell criticized wealthier nations for leaving Caribbean countries to bear the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause.
In Monday's press briefing, Mitchell said he expected recovery to cost tens of billions of dollars and called for climate justice:
We are no longer prepared to accept that it's OK for us to constantly suffer significant, clearly demonstrated loss and damage arising from climatic events and be expected to rebuild year after year while the countries that are responsible for creating this situation—and exacerbating this situation—sit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.
Grenada's economy, Grenada's environment, both physically built and natural, has taken an enormous hit from this hurricane.
It has put the people of Carriacou and Petit Martinique light years behind, and they are required to pull themselves by the boot strap, on their own.
This is not right, it is not fair, and it not just.
Mitchell promised to establish a task force to address the issue involving other small island developing states and the international community.
Gonsalves, speaking from his residence late on Monday, said that developed countries who have contributed the most to the crisis were "getting a lot of talking, but you are not seeing a lot of action—as in making money available to small-island developing states and other vulnerable countries."
He also referred to the United Nations climate negotiations, or COPs, as "largely a talkshop."
He expressed hope that seeing such a strong hurricane form so early in the season "will alert them to our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses and encourage them to honor the commitments they have made on a range of issues, from the Paris accord to the current time."
However, he also expressed concern that the climate crisis was not a larger point of discussion in the upcoming U.K. elections, or in other elections worldwide this year.
"The same thing is happening in other parts of the election in Western Europe and the United States as countries move to the right," Gonsalves said. "It's a terrible time for small-island developing states and vulnerable countries."
Meanwhile, Beryl's potential path of destruction is not over, as it approaches Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 140 miles per hour, the National Weather Service (NWS) wrote at 2:00 pm EDT Wednesday.
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica."
"On the forecast track, the center of Beryl will pass near or over Jamaica during the next several hours. After that, the center is expected to pass near or over the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday and move over the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico Thursday night or early Friday," NWS said.
While the agency predicted the storm would weaken somewhat over the next two days, it "is forecast to be at or near major hurricane intensity while it passes near Jamaica during the next several hours and the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday."
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica," AccuWeather's chief meteorologist Jon Porter said, adding that Beryl was "the strongest and most dangerous hurricane threat that Jamaica has faced, probably, in decades."
Oliver Mair, Jamaica's consul general in Miami, told The Washington Post that the hurricane was "almost like a game-changer."
"To have this size hurricane so early in the season, it's frightening," Mair said.
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'Unprecedented' and 'Very Dangerous,' Hurricane Beryl Explodes Into Category 4 Storm
"The climate crisis is here. This is an emergency. Politicians need to start acting like it."
Jun 30, 2024
Meteorologists, climate campaigners, and extreme weather experts expressed shock and horror Sunday as Hurricane Beryl exploded into an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm as it headed into the warm waters of the southern Caribbean with a level of intensification characterized as unprecedented.
The National Hurricane Center on Sunday morning called it a "very dangerous situation" due to "potentially catastrophic hurricane-force winds, a life-threatening storm surge, and damaging waves" for the numerous mainland and island nations in Beryl's path.
According to the NHC, the Windward Islands of St. Vincent, the Grenadines, and Granada will be the first at highest risk from the storm as well as St. Lucia and Barbados. People on those islands and elsewhere in the region were told that all preparations for the storm "should be rushed to completion" without delay.
Weather Underground reports that subsequent locations that may face Beryl's wrath later this week could be Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Belize and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, though noted "there's uncertainty in that exact track" of the hurricane as detailed in the following graphic:
Possible storm tracks for Hurricane Beryl. (Source: Weather Underground / wunderground.com)
Citing records going back to 1851, the Washington Post reported Sunday that there "is no precedent for a storm to intensify this quickly, nor reach this strength, in this part of the ocean during the month of June."
Eric Blake, a hurricane expert, said that Beryl on Sunday was "rewriting the history books in all the wrong ways," as he urged people in its path to "be very safe and take this hurricane seriously" as "very few will have experienced a hurricane this strong" on those islands.
"This is unreal," said Nahel Belgherze, a journalist focused on extreme weather. "Hurricane Beryl continues to defy all known logic, now becoming the first June Category 4 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin. I can't even stress enough just how completely absurd that storm is."
"The climate crisis is here," said the Sunrise Movement in a social media post showing the extreme power and historic nature of Hurricane Beryl. "This is an emergency. Politicians need to start acting like it."
The group took the opportunity to re-share its petition calling on President Joe Biden to "declare a climate emergency" as a way to unlock federal funds and escalate the government's response to the crisis of fossil fuels that are the main driving of surging global temperatures.
In May, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that the 2024 hurricane season—which officially runs from June 1 to the end of November—would be "extraordinary" and "above-normal," largely due to rising ocean temperatures attributable to human-caused global warming couple with La Niña conditions.
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Greenpeace Says Ban Deep-Sea Mining, Not Our Right to Protest Against It
"How can Greenpeace's activists paddling on kayaks be a threat to the environment, but the plundering of the oceans be a solution to the climate catastrophe?"
Mar 18, 2024
As the International Seabed Authority kicked off its annual summit in Jamaica on Monday to discuss rules for extracting minerals from the ocean floor, Greenpeace—which could be expelled from the United Nations body over a demonstration targeting a mining company—is urging the ISA to "stop deep-sea mining, not protests."
Representatives of 167 nations are gathering in Kingston to draft the regulatory framework for deep-sea mining, which ISA member states agreed to work out by July 2025. Although there are no current commercial deep seabed mining operations, the ISA has issued exploration licenses to state-owned companies and agencies in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, and to private corporations including U.K. Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of U.S. military-industrial complex giant Lockheed Martin.
The Metals Company, a Canadian startup looking to make a big splash in deep-sea mining, has been targeted by Greenpeace "kayaktivists," who last November boarded a ship belonging to subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. in the Pacific Ocean and occupied the vessel's stern crane to draw attention to the potential harm that mineral extraction would cause to one of the world's last untouched ecosystems.
That peaceful protest could cost Greenpeace its ISA observer status, as members will consider whether to punish the environmental group during this week's conference. ISA Secretary-General Michael Lodge claimed that Greenpeace's kayak protest posed a "serious threat" to company personnel and "the marine environment."
However, last November a Dutch court rejected The Metals Company's request for an injunction against the protesters, finding it "understandable" that Greenpeace took direct action in the face of "possibly very serious consequences" of the company's mining plans.
Greenpeace plans to hold a side event at the ISA conference on Monday focusing on the right to protest.
"If Michael Lodge had put as much effort into properly scrutinizing deep-sea mining companies and ensuring transparent negotiations as he has chasing dissent, a pristine ecosystem would have a fair chance to remain undisturbed," said Greenpeace International Deep-Sea Mining campaign lead Louisa Casson. "How can Greenpeace's activists paddling on kayaks be a threat to the environment, but the plundering of the oceans be a solution to the climate catastrophe?"
This year's ISA conference comes as two dozen nations are calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining and campaigners are urging the United States to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, under which the ISA was established.
"Over the past year, it's been outstanding to see the growing call for a moratorium from countries in the Pacific, Europe, and Latin America," said Casson. "Responsible nations at the ISA are listening to the mounting science that shows deep-sea mining would cause irreversible damage to the oceans... The momentum is on the side of a moratorium."
There is also pushback. Last week, more than 350 former military and political leaders in the United States including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published a letter urging the U.S. Senate to sign and ratify the Law of the Sea in a bid to boost deep-sea mining amid rising international competition for minerals.
"Almost everyone agrees that the United States should ratify the Law of the Sea—it's a no-brainer and has been since the treaty was adopted over 40 years ago. This might be the only thing that Greenpeace and Big Oil agree with each other on," said Arlo Hemphill, who heads the Oceans Are Life campaign at Greenpeace USA.
"Now, deep-sea mining corporation The Metals Company has jumped on the bandwagon, hoping it will increase their chances of making it big after several costly failed ventures," Hemphill added. "With two dozen countries already on the record opposing the launch of deep-sea mining any time soon, there is little possibility it will be permitted."
However, earlier this year Norway became the first country to green-light deep-sea mining, a decision one environmental campaigner warned will have "severe impacts on ocean wildlife."
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