All climate change is local

In July of 2025, Cedar Rapids’ flood abatement project reached the 35% completion benchmark. The entire project will eventually cost three-quarters of a billion dollars. After the floods of 2008 and 2016 and the derecho of 2020, most of us understand why the investment is necessary. It has become instinctive to eyeball the bubbling surface of the Cedar River and comment on its proximity to the underside of the bridge. A particularly windy day reminds us of the day the towering oak tree came crashing through the bay window.

The effects of climate change around here have been life-altering. The word “unprecedented” lost its luster sometime in 2020, but we still enjoy the privilege of an infrastructure that kicks in when things go sideways. The National Guard rolls in and stands next to the floodwaters to keep people out. We can request funds from the federal government to build astronomically expensive river containment systems. We continue to operate in largely the same way we always have. As one of the top three contributors to global emissions, we aren’t really surprised by the outcomes anymore.

On Monday, scientists from across the state endorsed the 2025 Iowa Climate Statement. In previous years, these statements have focused on how we can reduce our emissions. This year’s big story? Insurance costs are climbing due to the rising costs of natural disasters occurring with both greater frequency and greater intensity. I suppose our scientists have decided it’s time to read the room and know their audience, and are therefore appealing to wallets rather than sensibilities.

In other parts of the world, the climate crisis has moved far beyond taking out a loan to cover the contractor. It has already become a matter of life and death.

I sat with MarieYolaine Toms, a New Yorker who emigrated from Haiti at age 5, to talk about her work in addressing the progressively disastrous weather events in the Caribbean.

In 2010, a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti killing over 316,000 people including some of her own family members. Toms abruptly resigned from her job and boarded the next plane to her father’s hometown, Petit-Goâve in southern Haiti. Conditions were jarring before the earthquake; there was minimal existing infrastructure to speak of. The damage exceeded the nation’s entire GDP. Fifteen years later, Haiti has never fully recovered.

Toms founded nonprofit Community2Community (C2C) with a handful of supporters and one guiding principle: rebuild with the people, not for them. The original four community-defined priorities included water and health, environmental renewal, education, and economic development.

“We don’t go in as saviors,” she told me. “We go in as partners.”

Life in Haiti is particularly difficult for women, and the work of C2C has evolved over time to address additional needs. Haiti has the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, due largely to poverty and lack of health care infrastructure. The nearest hospital to the mountain community is a two hour walk down the mountain. “Aided by local midwifes, most births are at home, but I've seen them carrying (women in labor) down the mountain in what is called a blanca, a blanket tied to two sticks like a stretcher.”

In 2017, C2C launched the Continuous Care Initiative to bring medical care to the people living on the mountainside. The project held pop-up medical services in any location they were able. “Under the sky, under a tarp. It doesn't matter, wherever. One building had a roof that was half caved in, we still used it.” Toms recounted the story of a pair of older women who traveled four hours on foot to attend a pop-up medical services event, walked home, and because they could not afford to pay, made the entire journey again to gift the care team a home-cooked meal.

She described the cholera outbreak that claimed 10,000 lives, ringworm running rampant among the children, the small injuries that often lead to death due to lack of basic sanitation tools like alcohol and cotton swabs.

In the months prior to our conversation, Toms was immersed in a capital campaign to build a health and wellness center on the mountain. As she closed on her goal, Hurricane Melissa roared through Petit-Goâve and wiped out homes, roads, and the lives of 43 people. Progress on the medical facility is now paused as C2C has diverted resources to search and rescue efforts, emergency food distribution, and temporary shelters.

“You have to tell people the truth,” she said. “They gave for a health and wellness center, but people are dying now. You can’t build for tomorrow if no one makes it through tonight. Everyone says, ‘What happened?’ but almost no one asks, ‘Why does this keep happening?’ It’s the same thing all over the world. Socioeconomic status determines what you have access to in an emergency.”

The imbalance is staggering. The country contributes less than 0.03 percent of global carbon emissions, yet faces some of the world’s deadliest climate-driven disasters. This is what climate inequity looks like: the smoke from one hemisphere’s factories turning into floodwater in another’s fields. Haiti is absorbing the cost of comforts enjoyed thousands of miles away, and cannot defend or repair itself due to generations of systemic social, racial, and economic oppression.

If that sounds distant, it shouldn’t. As part of the global community, we could at the very least learn from the experiences of our neighbors and acknowledge that changing the way we exist in this shared space is no longer optional. The disasters that swept through our community gave us cause to connect in a way that we hadn’t for years; lending a generator to the family next door or working together to dismantle the maple blocking the intersection. We might not be able to stop every threat that comes our way, but we do have the opportunity to decide what kind of humans we are going to be. What we build before the storm determines who survives when the clouds break.

For information about C2C, visit c2chaiti.org

Sofia DeMartino is a Gazette editorial fellow. sofia.demartino@thegazette.com