Bulletin: From Montana fires to floods in Vermont: Interview with a climate migrant

This week Vermont (as well as parts of New York and Massachusetts) saw heavy rainfall resulting in catastrophic flooding in the state capital and other low-lying towns across the state. One man drowned in his home; hundreds of others were rescued or evacuated. The full extent of the damage to infrastructure and personal property will not be known for some time, and more rain is forecast for this weekend.

State climate assessments have already found that, because of climate change, Vermont is getting wetter: Precipitation is up 21 percent since the beginning of the 20th century, and the state sees almost two and a half more days of heavy precipitation annually than in the 1960s. Consequently, the state is at an increased risk for damaging rainfall and flooding. And yet Vermont has for several years now been positioning itself as a refuge for people looking to escape the worst ravages of the climate crisis.

“Climate change could be, in some ways, beneficial to Vermont,” Republican Gov. Phil Scott said in 2017. “When we’re seeing some of the activity in California today with wildfires and the lack of water in some regions of the country, if we protect our resources, we could use this as an economic boom in some respects.”

While events this week have underscored the reality that there is no escaping the climate crisis, it is true that people have moved to Vermont because the state is perceived to be safer than other places. Zack Porter, the co-founder of a regional environmental nonprofit called Standing Trees, chose to move with his family from Montana to Montpelier, Vermont, in 2018 to get away from the long wildfire seasons out West. The Bulletin reached out to Porter to ask him about experience as a voluntary climate migrant, and about his hopes and dreams for how Vermont will recover and rebuild from this disaster.

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Bulletin: Don’t call toxic wildfire smoke on the East Coast the ‘new normal’

A haze of wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada blanketed the Catskill Mountains in the days leading up to the recent holiday weekend. The air quality levels displayed in my weather app hovered between 100 and 200 on the US air quality index—not as bad as it had been a month before, but still unhealthy, especially for sensitive groups. Although my friends and I had come up for a long weekend in the fresh country air, we kept the doors shut and the windows closed tight, venturing out only for short periods until a front blew most of the smoke away.

Expect more days like those, New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned.

“There is no end in sight,” Hochul said on June 29. “This is the new normal for New Yorkers.”

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Photos: The environmental hazards of farming fish in a warming world

Additional photos from my reporting trip to Chile that didn’t make it into Patagonian paradise lost? The environmental hazards of farming fish in a warming world. Photo credit: Jessica McKenzie

  • Crew member Evelyn on the Centinela in Dalcahue.
  • Thomas Montt preparing the Centinela in Dalcahue.
  • A compressed cube of dried luche, a kind of edible seaweed.
  • A map of the Los Lagos region.
  • A salmon farm.
  • A salmon farm.
  • Salmon farm through a window on the Centinela.
  • A salmon farm.
  • Salmon farm workers.
  • A boat loaded with bags of fish food.
  • The frame of a new salmon farm ready to be towed out from Quellón.
  • A mussel farm near Quellón.
  • The silhouette of a fishing boat at sunset, with the Corcovado Volcano on the left.
  • The moon over Corcovado Volcano.
  • Corcovado Volcano.
  • A pelican in front of a beach covered in plastic trash.
  • An abandoned salmon farm with pieces falling off into the water.
  • A salmon farm with the corner of the netting that keeps sea lions out pulling away from the corner.
  • A sea lion hanging out near a salmon farm with the protective netting falling off.
  • A salmon farm at sunset.
  • An abandoned salmon farm with lots of trash strewn about.
  • Islote Nihuel
  • A salmon farm
  • A salmon farm covered in tarps
  • Workers at a salmon farm
  • Oxygen tanks on a salmon farm.
  • Salmon farm
  • Salmon farm
  • Salmon farm
  • A beach covered in plastic trash.
  • A salmon farm
  • A trail of scummy water flowing out from a salmon farm.
  • A salmon farm off the island of Caguach, with luga drying on Ana Levañanco’s front yard in the foreground.
  • Plastic waste at the high tide line on the beach on Caguach.
  • Government officials monitor local fishermen unloading shellfish in Dalcahue.
  • Sunset in Chile
  • Gathering at low tide in Dalcahue
  • Pelicans in Chile
  • A salmon farm with a yellow tube moving fish, possibly to give them a chemical bath to treat sea lice.
  • A salmon farm with a yellow tube filled with fish, possibly to give them a chemical bath to treat sea lice.
  • A salmon farm in Comau Fjord.
  • Night lights at an inactive salmon farm (foreground) and an active salmon farm (hazy light in background) in Comau Fjord.
  • A sailboat and ferry in Comau Fjord
  • A salmon pen collapsing into the water in Puerto Montt.
  • Long lines of bags of salmon food ready to be transported to salmon farms in Puerto Montt.
  • Boats loaded with salmon food bags in Puerto Montt.
  • A boat probably being loaded with juvenile salmon to be transported out to a farm.

Bulletin: Patagonian paradise lost? The environmental hazards of farming fish in a warming world

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and republished by Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

Comau Fjord is a sliver of sea framed by thickly forested mountain slopes. Melting glaciers peek between the crags. Waterfalls tumble down mountainsides, faint lines across vast expanses of gray rock. It is quintessential Chilean Patagonia, but in the austral summer of 2021, the narrow fjord filled with the smell of putrefying fish.

The salmon farms that populate the remote glacial fjord were in crisis. A massive algal bloom was suffocating salmon in their pens.

Boris Hernandez, a third-generation resident who lives in a house at the edge of the fjord, went out on the water for a closer look. He saw a boat sucking dead fish from one of the salmon farms and spewing pink liquid—a mix of seawater, liquified salmon remains, and algae—out the boat’s other side.

Hernandez contacted Thomas Montt, who had recently visited Comau Fjord and expressed concern about the proliferation of salmon farming operations in the area. A few days later, Montt came by boat with a photographer to document masses of dead salmon rotting in nets on the water.

“It was the biggest organic spill I had ever seen,” Montt recalled. “It’s something you can’t imagine. It’s hard to visualize the amount of organic garbage that was floating on the water and everywhere. It would go into the bathroom of the boat, it would go in the cooling system, it would go on your hands. Everything was oily, fishy, messy.”

That was early 2021. By April of that year, just one salmon company, Camanchaca, had lost 1.3 million fish—approximately 2,500 tons. By the end of the month, total losses in the fjord had reached 6,000 tons.

As bad as that sounds, it pales in comparison to 2016, when a red tide of algae killed approximately 27 million salmon in Chile, a staggering loss of more than 110,000 tons of fish. More salmon died in two weeks than would be expected to die in two years of normal production. Jose Miguel Burgos, the then-head of Sernapesca, the governmental office that oversees fishing and aquaculture, said the dead salmon could easily fill 14 Olympic-size swimming pools.

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