On a cold October Saturday in 2020, Elisa got a panicked call from her brother in France. He hadn’t heard from their mother in several days.
In the hazy hours of caring for a newborn, Elisa hadn’t known a major storm was pummeling Europe. Abnormally warm air had risen above Greenland, swirling into a cyclone that swept toward the Alps. When Storm Alex finally made landfall, it dropped 19 inches of rain over the course of the next day, the equivalent of six months’ average precipitation. Flash floods began to pour down the mountain sides, the worst deluge since France began keeping records 120 years ago.
All communications to the Vésubie Valley, where their mother lived in southeastern part of the country, were cut off. (To protect her family’s privacy, Elisa asked to be identified only by her first name.)
Elisa tried calling the emergency hotline in nearby Nice, the closest city, but the road to her mother’s village had been destroyed, and hundreds of people were evacuated. In the chaos, no one could tell them if she had managed to get out.
The amount of money the fossil fuel industries have made is obscene. The fines they must pay to help remedy the mess they have contributed to must exceed by far the profits they make. In the U.S., the gun manufacturers are also guilty of turning a blind eye to the death and destruction their products cause, and should be fined just like the fossil fuel companies, far in excess of the profits their products bring. The only way to make an impact is through their pocketbook...small fines make no impact. And holding them criminally accountable is a must.