Earlier this month, Hurricane Beryl swept through the Caribbean, flattening entire islands and causing “Armageddon-like” destruction. As the earliest Category 5 Atlantic storm to form in the Atlantic Ocean, it marks the beginning of what is forecasted to be the most active hurricane season on record.
This is undoubtedly a climate disaster. The torrential rainfall and 150-mile-per-hour winds that flattened the islands of Carriacou, Petit Martinique, and the Grenadines archipelago, along with the storm surge that hammered the coasts of Barbados and Jamaica, were up to 10-30% more intense due to human-driven climate change.
Hurricane Beryl’s aftermath should concern financial institutions as much as it does climate scientists, because it reveals how our patchwork development-finance system – designed when extreme weather events were far less catastrophic – is falling short in the face of increasingly frequent and intense storms, floods, and wildfires.