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There was a time when few people in the coastal Pakistani city of Gwadar understood what climate change was. After a decade of extreme weather, many more do. Rain battered Gwadar for almost 30 consecutive hours last February. Torrents washed out roads, bridges, and lines of communication, briefly cutting the peninsula town off from the rest of Pakistan. Homes look like bombs have struck them and drivers swerve to avoid craters where asphalt used to be. Gwadar is in Balochistan, an arid, mountainous, and vast province in Pakistans southwest that has searing summers and harsh winters. The city, with about 90,000 people, is built on sand dunes and bordered by the Arabian Sea on three sides, at a low elevation that makes it vulnerable to climate change in a country that has already seen its share of catastrophe from it. Its no less than an island nation situation, warned Gwadar-based hydrologist Pazeer Ahmed. Many low-lying areas in the town will be partially or completely submerged if the sea level continues to rise. The sea, once a blessing for Gwadars fishing and domestic tourism sectors, has become an existential threat to lives and livelihoods. Warming oceans mean bigger and more powerful waves, and those waves get whipped higher by summer monsoon winds. Warmer air holds more moistureabout 7% more per degree Celsius (4% per degree Fahrenheit)and that means more big rain events. Waves have become more violent due to the rising sea temperatures and eroded beaches, said Abdul Rahim, deputy environment director at Gwadar Development Authority. The tidal actions and patterns have changed. Hundreds of homes have been washed away. It is very alarming. Melting glaciers contribute to rising sea levels, another cause of coastal erosion. The sea level at Karachi rose almost 8 inches (almost 20 centimeters) between 1916 and 2016, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its projected to rise another half-inch (about 1.3 centimeters) by 2040. In areas near Gwadar, like Pishukan and Ganz, waves have swallowed up mosques, schools, and settlements. There are gashes in the cliffs at the popular picnic spot of Sunset Park, and rocks have cascaded onto the shore. Beaches run flat for dozens of kilometers because no structures remain on it. Authorities have built seawalls from stone or concrete to hold back saltwater intrusion. But they’re a small solution to a massive problem as Gwadars people and businesses are fighting climate change on different fronts. Saltwater pools on government land, salt crystals glistening in the sunshine. In the Shado Band neighbourhood, former local councillor Qadir Baksh fretted about water seeping up through the ground and into his courtyard every day, held at bay only by regular pumping. Dozens of houses have the same problem, he said. Officials, including Ahmed and Rahim, said changes in land use and unauthorized building are worsening flooding. Locals said some major construction projects have destroyed traditional drainage pathways. Gwadar is the centerpiece of a massive Chinese-led initiative to create an overland route between its western Xinjiang region and the Arabian Sea through Gwadar. Hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into the town to create a deep seaport, an international airport, expressways and other infrastructure. The more sensitive projects, especially the port, are tightly secured by the Pakistani military, out of sight and off-limits to the public. But there is no proper sewage or drainage system for residents despite a decade of foreign investment, and Gwadars porosity, high water table, rising sea levels, and heavier rainfall are rocket fuel for the towns vulnerability. There’s nowhere for the water to go. In the past when it rained, the water disappeared up to 10 days later, said Baksh. But the rain that came last year hasnt gone. The water rises from the ground with such speed it will reach the four walls of my home if we dont run the generator every day to extract it. Officials say its because of climate change but, whatever it is, were suffering. Gwadars fishing community is also hurting. Catches are smaller, native fish are disappearing, and migration patterns and fishing seasons have changed, said Ahmed and Rahim. There is also algae bloom and the invasion of unwanted marine species like pufferfish. Illegal fishing and foreign trawlers are responsible for a few of these things, but its mostly rising sea temperatures. People have migrated from places like Dasht and Kulanch because of water scarcity. What agriculture there was in Gwadar’s surrounding areas is vanishing due to loss of farmland and livestock deaths, according to locals. It’s part of a wider pattern in which Pakistans farmers are seeing declining crop yields and increasing crop diseases due to climate extremes, particularly floods, droughts and heat waves, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There are heat waves and dust storms in Gwadar, said Ahmed. But the main impact of climate change here is that there is too much water and not enough of it. If nothing is done to address this problem, we will have no option but to retreat. The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Riazat Butt, Associated Press Mary Katherine Wildeman, Associated Press data journalist, contributed to this report.
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It’s peak season for fevers and runny noses, and when it comes to the flu, the illness has been rampant this year. In some areas, the flu has been so widespread, schools have even closed to help communities get well. This week, local news outlets have reported school closures in at least 10 states due to higher than normal flu numbers. Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee, have all kept kids home in order to disinfect, and allow teachers and students time to get well. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data, 27 states and Washington, D.C., are experiencing “very high” flu activity levels, while 14 states are seeing “high” flu activity levels. Hospitalizations have been soaring, too. Just last week, there were an estimated 38,255 hospitalizations from the flu. Over the entire flu season, there have been 20 million cases reported, as well as 11,000 flu-related deaths. Dr. Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said, per NPR, the flu is peaking for the second time this season. “Influenza activity first peaked around the turn of the new yearlate December, early January. Activity then declined for several weeks in a row, which is usually a sign that the season is on its way out,” Rivers says. “But then it really took an unusual turn and started to rise again. So activity is now at a second peakjust as high as it was at the turn of the new year. It’s unusual.” Still, even in rough flu seasons, school closures due to the flu are rare. However this year, it has felt unavoidable in certain locations, like Northeast Ohio, where a number of schools closed over a staggering number of flu cases. St. Hilary School in Fairlawn, Ohio, addressed its high flu numbers in a post on Facebook, announcing its closure this week, writing, “St. Hilary School will be closed Tuesday, February 4, with over 20% of students and 15% of staff out due to illness,” administrators wrote. “Unfortunately, we are experiencing many of the same illnesses currently prevalent in the general community. We will be disinfecting the building and expect to reopen Wednesday, February 5, but please watch for updates.” While the flu is raging, other illnesses have felt more mild this year. COVID transmissions have been at their lowest yet this season. According to the CDC, only about 4 per 100,000 have been hospitalized during its seasonal peak. Last year, it was twice that at 8 per 100,000. Compared to the winter of 2021-2022, when there were 35 per 100,000, it feels like COVID is taking a backseat to the flu, at least for now.
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László Toth, a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, emigrates to the United States after World War II in search of a new life. After a rough start, a wealthy businessman recognises his talent and offers him a job that will change his life. This is a very brief summary of Brady Corbets film The Brutalist, which stars Adrien Brody as Toth. While the protagonist of this almost four-hour film is fictional, his story is inspired by many real figures. During the rise of Nazism in Germany, and especially after the de facto demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933, many intellectuals, scientists and other educated people chose to emigrate in search of a more favourable climate in which to work. For many, it was also a matter of life and death. The legacy of Bauhaus Many of these émigrés were architects associated with the Bauhaus, the famous school of design and architecture established in 1919 in Weimar. The institution, which later moved to Dessau and then to Berlin, left a legacy that endures to this day. Bauhaus directors were among those who left Germany in this period. This included architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, who headed the school in Weimar and then Dessau, and designed the new building there. His Dessau successor Hannes Meyer also left, as did Mies van der Rohe, who headed the school in Dessau and Berlin, where the school was closed by the Nazi government. The Bauhaus building in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius. [Photo: Wikimedia Commons] The Bauhaus was an indisputable cornerstone of interwar Germanys cultural, political and social development, and while its architecture course was not established until about halfway through its existence, the school is worth studying from an architectural perspective. While they each had different methods and priorities, the three aforementioned architects espoused a form of modern architecture that reflected a much broader movement that sought to change with only partial success the aesthetics and ethics of architecture, and even of life, at the time. All three taught their students to break with the styles of the past to offer a progressive architecture that met the eras physical, aesthetic and cultural needs. Of course, these men were not the only émigrés from Nazi Germany, but their stories (and those of other Bauhaus figures), can help us better understand this emigration that is often widely misunderstood. The Bauhaus American dream? When we refer to this emigration of German architects and intellectuals (or those culturally linked to Weimar Germany), the first image that comes to mind is emigration to the US, the land of opportunity The Brutalists fictitious architect László Toth does just this. This migration is the best known, certainly the most common, but not the only one. Moreover, it usually inspires images of the individualistic architect, a (male, of course) creative genius who puts his constructive ideals above everything else. This image was popularised by Ayn Rands 1943 novel The Fountainhead, and by the 1949 King Vidor film of the same title, starring Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper and Kent Smith in The Fountainhead, 1949. [Image: Warner Brothers] In truth, the picture is more complex and problematic. While our three architects all have elements in common a commitment to modern and transformative architecture that shaped, and was shaped by, contemporary life they did not all emigrate to the US. Nor did they go at the same time, or with the same aspirations, political and ethical commitment, or prizing their own architecture above all else. Walter Gropius, who was from a well-off family, initially left Germany in 1934 for the UK before settling in Boston, Massachusetts in 1937 as a prominent faculty member of the newly established Harvard University Graduate School of Design. There, in addition to teaching, he set up an architectural practice called The Architects Collaborative. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, undoubtedly the most brilliant of the group, remained in Germany until 1938, where he continued to work in a not entirely hospitable political climate. He eventually settled in Chicago as director of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and began a brilliant career that would make him the US (an perhaps the worlds) defining post-war architect. His work was key to, among other things, developing the corporate office building that would epitomise American expansionist capitalism after the war. Portrait of Lilly Reich. [Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA] Here, it is worth mentioning his longstanding Berlin business partner, designer and architect Lilly Reich, who also taught at the Bauhaus. Until recently Reich was overlooked, both for her direct role in much of Mies van del Rohes work and her individual output. Fortunately, researchers such as Laura Martínez de Guereu are now shining a light on her life and work. For her part, Reich opted to remain in her native Germany. Her status as a woman would undoubtedly have contributed to this decision, though it is difficult to say to what extent. Socialist architectural visions As we can see, there were indeed women architects working in Germany at the time, even if their gender rendered them all but invisible. There were also, undoubtedly, many architects whose profile did not fit the mould of the strong-willed creative genius, but rather that of the progressive, politically committed intellectual. In many cases, these people were very close to communism and the alternative offered by Soviet Russia at the time. Hannes Meyer in 1928 [Photo: Hermann Bunzel/Wikimedia Commons] Hannes Meyer, the least well-known of the three Bauhaus directors mentioned here, chose this other path. His search for the ideal place to work did not include the individualistic, commercialised society of American capitalism, but rather, following his own communist leanings, that of the USSR, where he arrived in the late 1930s. His model was that of the architect fully in service to society, and he shunned any aesthetic or artistic protagonism. He was convinced that this type of architecture could only be practised in a classless society where the means of production belonged to the proletariat. He remained in Moscow until 1936, when the country, under Stalins dictatorship, became increasingly closed off to foreign presence. After returning to Germany, he emigrated again to Mexico in 1939, and worked prolifically for ten years amidst the progressive social and political reform programmes of president Lázaro Cárdenas. He eventually returned to his native Switzerland, where he died in 1954. The émigrés who followed in Meyers footsteps not only wanted to avoid the US, but also sought refuge where they could (or believed they could) best pursue their ideals. Instead of beautiful buildings, they envisioned an architecture that would help forge a new society and a new humanity. In fact, as per the architect and scholar Daniel Talesnik, there was arguably a Red Bauhaus made up of modern architects who, following their escape from Nazi Germany, worked for the Soviet government. These other cases, whose trajectory we have barely sketched here, have been less well known to both the general public and, until recently, to academics. However, this does not diminish their significance, and they deserve a greater place in history than they seem to have been given. José Vela Castillo is a professor of theory, history and architectural projects at the IE School of Architecture and Design at IE University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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