US correspondent Thomas Robb went to Miami for a story on the historic heatwave, which you can read here. He is now stuck there for several days, because his flight to New York is constantly canceled due to severe weather at both the place of departure and arrival. We invite him.
Can you still see the humor in the situation or have you lost your laugh?
“Yes, of course there is some poetic synchronicity in the fact that I’m doing a story about severe weather, and now I’m stuck because of… severe weather. It becomes part of what you’re writing about. I was supposed to leave on Sunday, but right now there are very severe weather systems all over the United States. And in the New York area, where I live, as well as neighboring states like Massachusetts and Delaware, there have been tropical storms with heavy rain.”
And as it was made clear in New York, I began to storm here in Miami with lightning bolts the likes of which I had never seen before. At least hundreds of travelers were stranded, including many journalists.
Are you still going home?
“My flight was supposed to be in a few hours, but the second I called there was the deep sound of a thunderstorm. We’ll see, there was also a warning about this. A lot of water has evaporated from the sea, so it lies. Somehow it doesn’t make more than sense.”
“What’s really disturbing is that you see, everywhere and in different guise, how vulnerable the country is to climate change.”
Has this extreme weather really been politicized?
It wasn’t that bad. Even conservative Fox News, which should know absolutely nothing about climate measures, can only conclude that something extreme is going on. The extremism is so obvious that politicization is not so bad.
The question is whether it will actually lead to a different policy. It’s true that 70 percent of Americans experience temperatures above 33 degrees and one in three has been warned of the consequences of severe weather. The states in the south and southwest were hardest hit, like California, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico. In those desert countries, temperatures rise so dramatically that life becomes threatening and water becomes more scarce. In Las Vegas, the temperature rises to 50 degrees.
Dylan Van Beekum
