To Save Communities Like Mine, We Must Act On Climate

For the residents of my community in Kinston, North Carolina, each hurricane season brings anxiety and the fear of another potential catastrophe. We remain hopeful — yet we are painfully aware that another bad storm would mean disaster for our home.

In September, North Carolinians battened down the hatches for Hurricane Dorian, the latest in a string of powerful storms to collide with our state. Communities in our state — especially in the heavily-impacted Outer Banks region — experienced blackouts, destroyed homes, and damaged local economies. This latest storm comes on the heels of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018, which wreaked havoc on North Carolina’s health, well-being, and economy. With scientists now definitively saying that human-caused climate change plays a significant role in making storms stronger, we have to tackle the root of the problem.

I don’t want a future for Kinston in which climate change continues to make storms more intense and more unpredictable — but that seems like the path we’re headed down, unless we start to take serious action on climate at a national level soon.

The Neuse River cuts through the center of our town and runs parallel to our biggest business corridor, so when it floods, almost every aspect of our existence is at risk. After the floodwaters recede, there is a second, slower storm, as communities fracture, businesses and individuals disinvest, and families move away. Hurricanes Floyd and Fran, which happened in the early 90s, have left a decades-long shadow on my community in the form of abandoned structures, crime, and concentrated poverty. 

I was 16 when Hurricane Matthew struck in 2016. The flood stage hit 28.3 feet — almost three stories tall — and parts of Kinston were cut off from access to food for 25 days. Two years later, Hurricane Florence put barely stabilized neighborhoods and businesses right back underwater.

Though flooding may seem indiscriminate, poverty and hurricanes are deeply intertwined. My town’s socioeconomic challenges cannot be divorced from the extreme weather we’ve experienced. For example, I have lived my whole life in East Kinston, a predominantly black neighborhood ranked as the most economically distressed census tract in our state. Time and time again, East Kinston has found itself underwater due to flooding from hurricanes. In a vicious cycle, poor communities, minority neighborhoods, and housing projects are often built in the floodplains because land is cheapest and least desirable there. And in my experience helping out after the hurricane, these are precisely the people least equipped to recover. 

I am 19 years old now, and I’ve never known a world that was not impacted by climate change. And if business as usual continues, my generation will grow up in a world in which catastrophe becomes a regular occurrence. The shocking intensity of a natural disaster can make you feel powerless. But the youth of Kinston learned from a young age we have the power to change our community by uplifting others and bettering our own lives.

The people in Kinston will never stop working to build our community up, but it is a heavy burden that we cannot bear alone. In April, I shared my story in Congress alongside fellow climate activists. I asked for drastic and immediate political action to ensure that climate change does not further exacerbate the devastation of communities like mine. 

An important first step is the bill introduced last week in the U.S. House of Representatives, which would move the United States to a 100% clean energy economy by 2050. It is my hope that Congress will soon act on the legislation.

With North Carolina left to pick up the pieces from Hurricane Dorian, all while preparing for the next climate-change fueled storm, I call on our elected representatives to take action and protect the livelihoods of their constituents in Eastern North Carolina by supporting this bill. The youth in my community have taken climate action. I urge my elected leaders in Washington to do the same.

Chris J. Suggs is a youth activist and community leader from Kinston, North Carolina.