I needed to explain that Louisiana's coast accepts the drainage from two-thirds of the United States and, while the necessary levees constructed upstream have prevented floods, they have also contributed to problems downstream.
Most anyplace one lives is essentially dangerous. There are floods in the Midwest, and tornadoes. There are hurricanes along the Gulf. In New York, you get mugged.
People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms.
All of us who lived outside of New Orleans were horrified and heartbroken by what we saw when Katrina hit, the floods that followed the hurricane that happened.
Eighty percent of the people in the world have no food safety net. When disaster strikes - the economy gets blown, people lose a job, floods, war, conflict, bad governance, all of those things - there is nothing to fall back on.
I was 15 when Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998. At the time, I lived in Vargas State, which borders the Caribbean. In 1999, torrential rains caused flash floods that left thousands of people dead. I lost several friends, and my school was buried in the mudslide. The importance of resilience has been etched into my soul ever since.
I remember being about eight and watching 'Pollyanna' with Hayley Mills. I looked at my mum and said, 'Mum, I want to be Pollyanna.' She said, 'You're going to have to make yourself cry if you want to be an actress.' So I turned my head away, and when I turned it back I was in floods of tears.
We have chosen to bring future generations into this world of rising seas and warming temperatures, droughts and floods, heat waves and wildfires, a world in which one in four mammals and one in eight birds are at risk of disappearing forever. While the damage we've done is irreversible, that doesn't give us the right to do nothing.
Floods will become more serious and frequent in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Drought induced food and water scarcity will become more acute. South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the small islands will be the worst victims.
You have this fairy tale of 'life on your own.' It's so awesome. Until the apartment floods, or something happens, and your go-to people aren't there.
