Climate Change: The Florida Keys are the canaries in the climate-change coalmine

The Florida Keys are still closed until further notice. On the far side of the blockade that inhabitants of the lower Keys negotiate to return to their homes, the US One highway, a tarmac spine over the limestone vertebrae of the islands, makes its way 127 miles down to Key West, battered and torn. Key West, final south-easterly outpost of mainland North America and the self-styled “last resort”, is, still, four days after Hurricane Irma hit, almost completely out of contact with the outside world.

Images have been surfacing all week. In Marathon, the sea draining away from an entire bay like dishwater off a dirty plate, leaving the ocean floor exposed to the daylight, while a woman films it from her balcony and screams: “My God! My God! The sea is gone!” In Key Largo, a stretch limousine banked crosswise across the highway. Big fridges stranded on plinths of trashed seagrass and mangrove leaves, their doors open, still full of food. Cars blown the short distance from road to shoreline, sideways in the shallows in a rusty puddle of their own fluids. Boats that have cracked the road with the force with which they’ve landed; in Islamorada, someone’s house being thrown along a lagoon and landing crooked in a new spot.

I know and love these islands well. I’m wondering what they did with the dolphins in the sea aquarium; how the evacuation of the mental health facilities went; whether the drive-through bank where I used to cash my pay cheque got wrecked; what it’s like in the Winn-Dixie supermarket right now, and in the Kmart, in the dark.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2xakXA9

Source: The Guardian

 

 

 

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