Do you call back the 2016viral photoof an octopus swim next to parked cars in a flooded Miami parking garage ? A particularly high tide had likely drive the unsuspicious creature through a drain pipe and into alien soil . For Rob Verchick , climate police force scholar , it was a clear polarity of climate modification — and a preview of how humans might require to adapt .
When those drainage tube were first installed , they were above the water line . But after age of ocean level rise , the waterline began to encroach far and far inland . That devilfish and parking lot became the perfect anecdote to open Verchick ’s new Koran , The Octopus in the Parking Garage : A Call for Climate Resilience , out April 2023 .
I spoke to Verchick about his book and his thoughts on humanity ’s approach to this existential threat . This consultation has been edited and condense for clarity .
A woman walks along a flooded street caused by a king tide, on 16 February 2025, in Miami Beach, Florida.Photo: Lynne Sladky (AP)
Angely Mercado , Earther : Why is the octopus the through ancestry for resilience in the book ?
Rob Verchick : Well , it ’s funny . When that octopus was plant in the parking garage , my friend Dan Farber , who ’s a professor at Berkeley , institutionalise me a news article about it . And I was like , “ did this really happen , was this really straight ? ” We quickly realize that it had something to do with the climate . That was one of the contributing factor to make the body of water reverse and pushing that devilfish into the service department . Dan and I actually decided that we were run to write an op - ed for theMiami Herald , using the devilfish as a symbolic representation of climate change and an eight - armed alarum bell for climate resiliency .
We used octopus as a stand - in for the elephant in the room . The more I thought about it , the more I imagine , ‘ that might be a nice entryway into a Good Book aimed at a lay audience . ’ I was looking for a symbol that was n’t immediately scary . If you start talking about wildfire and houses being botch up away by hurricanes , that place a modality and it make anxiousness . The book that I want to indite was about introducing people to a issue and bugger off them to suppose about it in terms of solving a practical job . So they could feel empower , as maybe part of the solution .
Image: Columbia University Press
Earther : So we ’re the octopus , because we ’re impress by climate but have to float along somehow .
Verchick : I had to learn more and more about octopuses . I called biologist and come out doing my own meter reading . I earn that octopuses are really very special creatures , and they have evolved to adapt to many kinds of situations . They only inhabit about a class , well , most of them . And so , in that year , there ’s a set of learn that claim post . They have to learn all kinds of things about what kind of foods to eat , where to witness it , how to hide , how to protect themselves . I thought , well , that ’s what human beings are like , too . That ’s our vocation card as a species . We ’re not especially good at any one peculiar thing . We do n’t execute the firm . But what we are really good at is adapting .
We ’re really good at forming networks . The job with that is that , although we ’re really good at adapting in positive ways , we ’re also really dear at endangering our own environs . Octopuses … they switch their colors , they can stream themselves almost liquidity - like into dissimilar kind of space underwater . We have to be flexible like that .
Earther : You play up that flexibleness with your Hurricane Katrina experience in the book . Why did you appease in NOLA when so many people give ?
Verchick : That interrogative is an experience everyone in my city has kick the bucket through . I moved to New Orleans in 2004 , nine months before Hurricane Katrina . We come here and then , nine calendar month later , the house was under probably 6 to 8 feet of water system for about five week .
My wife and kids were lucky enough to rest with menage in Washington state , and I stuck around this region to figure out what we were going to do . We had a home meeting about it , and we decided that we were going to stay . There is something so particular about this city and its culture . I ’m very thankful to have the power to be able to contribute .
Earther : You end the book chat a national car park to see a melting glacier , and you identify witnessing climate alteration . Why is that of import ?
Verchick : It ’s actually the first matter that I drop a line for the book , and I knew it was going in there . It is what really inspired me . That is a glacier that I had seen over the year , 100 of times , and it ’s changing . That was something that I could say is induce me to notice . For someone else , that might be a coral reef , for someone else it might be your kids ’ asthma . That ’s why there ’s the chapter about a woman whose Word has allergic reaction . And they get spoiled during wildfire time of year when smoke drifts into Las Vegas . Her being attentive to that and noticing that direct her to make connections . She is now in climate resilience work .
Earther : Why and how should multitude become climate witness ?
Verchick : In the very beginning of the Word , there is an interview that I have with Kathleen Sealey , who is a marine biologist and teach at the University of Miami about mood and country function . In the Koran , she assigns her students the work of keeping a journal noticing how the environment is commute over clock time . Because noticing and understanding and being the witness is the first part of the activity . And sometimes it ’s hard , right , sometimes it ’s emotionally draining . But the only way you could solve a problem is to first of all understand what the problem is .
Want more mood and environment stories ? Check out Earther ’s guide todecarbonizing your nursing home , divesting from fossil fuels , compact a disaster go handbag , andovercoming mood dread . And do n’t miss our coverage of thelatest IPCC mood report , the future ofcarbon dioxide removal , and theinvasive plants you should rive to shreds .
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