What 500,000 Americans hit by floods can teach us about fighting climate change | Elizabeth Rush

Individual action can't fight climate crisis. These Americans know we need a collective response

Last fall, as I landed in New Orleans, a seed of existential anxiety lodged itself deep in my gut. It was my fifth flight in just over a week. I was in the middle of a tour to promote a book on how coastal communities around the US were already responding to the climate crisis in surprising, often radical ways. Outside, the bayou shimmered below, the city itself barely distinguishable from the water that surrounds it. I could see the landscape that my air travel would play a role in diminishing - the additional CO2 in the atmosphere melting Arctic sea ice and Antarctic glaciers, causing sea levels to rise. What am I doing here? I wondered.

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