The sky is falling. Ask a scientist what that really means. – San Diego Union-Tribune

The tale of Chicken Little's panicked warning, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” touched me as a child. Growing up in San Diego, I was convinced that global warming was temporary and did not affect my family. Yet each year I heard more about increasing heat and food shortages in the future. Like the children's tale, this one repeated itself, but was difficult to understand.

When I lost my house in the Harris wildfire in 2007, it was an eye-opening experience. I really thought my house wouldn't burn down. I was wrong; that year, 1,600 other homes burned in addition to my house and about 13 percent of San Diego County's land mass. Seeing what seemed like most of San Diego on fire made me wonder why there was no sense of urgency in the United States to address climate change. I didn't realize it because I wasn't in the scientific community. At the time of the wildfire, I was at the peak of my career in law enforcement.

I retired from the police force in 2011. I immediately enrolled at Cal State San Marcos, graduated, and soon after, won a doctoral fellowship at the University of California Riverside. While in college, I was recruited by a retired firefighter to become a Red Cross disaster relief volunteer. I first helped with Hurricanes Harvey in Texas and Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, and then with the California wildfires. As I rose through the volunteer ranks, I couldn't help but notice the need for volunteers growing. Not only were the number and intensity of hurricanes on the East Coast increasing, but so were the wildfires in California. I didn't want to bury my head in the sand, and I knew that climate change was accelerating in the United States. I had the brains to act, but I didn't know how.

In 2019, I took a break from my studies and went to Jamaica on a Fulbright scholarship. I went there to study public trust in law enforcement. I learned about the elevated heat index and wildfires. But if you're on an island like Jamaica and a major wildfire breaks out, it could devastate the island of 2.8 million people, as we saw in Maui last year and in Greece this year. I also saw pictures of Jamaica's Hellshire Beach from the past and compared them to what it looks like now. The water is reclaiming the beach, which had receded so much that businesses that were previously out of danger are now sinking into the Caribbean Sea.

As I spoke to various government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academics at the University of the West Indies, I realized how difficult it would be for Jamaica to sustain itself economically after two consecutive hurricanes, as Puerto Rico experienced in 2017 with Hurricanes Irma and Maria. It is an island, and any severe weather immediately becomes a national security risk. If you take away the island's agricultural areas, you will see mass migration from Jamaica and an increase in crime. As of today, a major hurricane after Hurricane Beryl would hit the island hard, potentially causing unrest like we saw in nearby Haiti.

I'm writing my first book on climate change, crime, and national security. A hurricane with the world's highest temperatures is predicted for 2024, making it the worst weather event ever. The warmest day on Earth was July 21, 2024, surpassed by the day after. July last year was the hottest month on record globally.

In the last 12 months, I have witnessed six wildfires in the Dulzura and Barrett Lake area, most recently on July 30. Unfortunately, the sky may be falling as we may have passed the tipping point on our planet. Our country's national security will be at risk. Now is the time to act. Imagine seeing burglaries in San Diego evolve into burglaries of produce. My research examines how crime is increasing with the impacts of climate change while the price of an avocado is rapidly approaching $4 in some parts of the U.S. Is panic looming because the sky is falling? Act now so we don't see produce being scavenged from broken grocery store windows.

Rivera, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the sociology department at Cal State San Marcos and is writing a forthcoming book on the impact of climate change on crime. He lives in East County.