As unimaginably destructive storm clouds roll in towards the Florida coastline today, we all feel a wrench of empathy and concern for the tens of thousands of US citizens desperately trying to get out of the path of the severest storm in their history.

It’s impossible to anticipate the destruction and danger to life likely to be caused by water surges of up to 15ft and 165mph winds hitting the coast tonight, but President Biden was likely right last night when he said bluntly: “if you stay, you will die.”

As families flee northwards into the state of Georgia, the freeways are becoming clogged and petrol supplies are running out, leaving many stranded and needing the help of state forces who are desperately trying to get everyone to some kind of safety before its too late.

On this Feast Day of St John Henry Newman the opening lines of Lead Kindly Light might be particularly pertinant: “Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead me Thou on! The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step is enough for me.”

On his Instagram account the Rt Rev. Gregory Parkes JCL, Bishop of the Diocese of St Petersburg, Florida said that he has celebrated a votive Mass this morning at the chapel in his home for the banishment of storms, and has asked all priests in the diocese to do the same.

“We are all praying for your protection,” he told the people of his diocese.

As Christians, there are many things we could be saying about Storm Milton, beyond the obvious warnings that we are going to have to live with such catastrophes unless we get far more serious about reversing climate change and the way we are abusing our God-given planet.

If one looks more closely, there are numerous analogies in scripture to the power of the sea as symbolic of chaos and the impotence of the human species. From the Psalms and Isaiah, from Exodus to the famous tempest in the Gospel of Mark, the sea serves as a powerful reminder that we tamper with the planet at our peril.

When hurricane Beryl smashed into the Grenadine Islands on 1st July this year, it was earliest first category 5 storm the tropical Atlantic had seen. Storms in this region have become reasonably easy to predict, but the early arrival of Beryl and its rapid intensification – with winds rising from 70mph to 130mph in just 24 hours – astounded scientists and pushed storm prediction into an entirely new era.

There’s no denying that as the world continues to heat up due to relentlessly rising fossil fuel emissions, there is going to be increasing unpredictability when it comes to extreme weather events. Whilst arguments may linger about the exact chain of interaction between increased carbon dioxide levels and planetary weather events, experts are unanimous that rising sea temperatures and warm, moist air are the lifeblood of hurricanes. As sea temperatures rise and the global atmosphere become more tropical, we’re all going to have to live with increasingly severe weather events until such time as those who govern countries take more meaningful action to reduce carbon emissions and start to reverse climate change.

However, given that two thirds of the world is only just starting to emerge from poverty and understandably wants all the luxuries and lifestyle trappings enjoyed by us in the developed world, it’s no surprise that world leaders are making little progress in persuading newly developing nations (and developed nations that supply them) to reduce their industrial output.

It’s worth bearing this in mind as the world turns its eyes to the COP summit Azerbaijan next month for the 29th attempt at making some kind of meaningful progress at resolving this profound theological dilemma – what do you do when everyone in the world wants a fridge, and there simply aren’t enough raw materials in the planet to provide this?

Whilst it’s critically important to campaign for action on climate change, as otherwise our planet will soon destroy itself, it’s also important to understand that changing our fuel and power supply sourcing isn’t the root of the problem – it’s the fact that as a species we are making far too many demands on our planet’s resources. These days we may not take the Hexaemeron literally, but its message remains that God set up fully renewal resources sufficient for all human needs, just so long as we curate the planet according to the principle of human solidarity and concern for our neighbour. Despite what many Victorian industrialists and subsequent ruthless capitalists may have led us to believe, relentless consumption and exploitation has no place in the Creation story, nor in the survivability of our planet.

Consumption and consumerism also has a role to play in the effects of global warming and its consequences for global communities. Reversing climate change may be a very long term prospect, but there is a lot can do now to ameliorate the worst effects of events like Hurricane Milton – after all, the human person can survive quite capably in some of the most hostile environments on the planet, so the odd hurricane or two shouldn’t be having the catastrophic effects they do. Such events become disasters because people and communities are vulnerable to them, and the institutions and services they rely on are incapable of anticipating and managing them.

This problem is particularly severe in less affluent countries, many of which also happen to be in areas vulnerable to severe weather events, such as the Philippines, Jamaica, Antigua, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Severe storm events may wreak havoc across regions with even the most robust and recoverable infrastructures, but in less well prepared places the consequences can be catastrophic. When Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico in 2017 the Caribbean island was left without power for 100 days; compare this to the even more severe Hurricane Sandy which hit New Jersey and New York in 2012 with a monster 42.5ft surge wave in New York Harbor, bringing down the power infrastructure to 2.6 million people. Power was restored to most within just nine days.

Even in highly urbanised and developed populations, severe weather events will impact people differently, and research shows that poverty and social inequality are the most significant factors in both survivability and recoverability when it comes to natural disasters. It could even be argued that focussing on climate change as a campaign issue when it comes to dealing with the human consequences of extreme weather events is a dangerous distraction from the more immediate and profound social challenges that we need to address.

Poor education, low quality housing, marginal incomes, inadequate health and social care all play significantly into how individuals will react to, prepare for, and ultimately recover from severe weather events. When Hurricane Harvey hit central Houston in 2017 there was little about the weather that caused the catastrophe. A rapid population increase since the 1990s had created an industrial centre of some 2.4 million people, most of them – and most significantly the poorest – were crammed into poor quality housing built on cheap coastal and floodplain areas, where vast swathes of rain-absorbing grasslands had been paved over and concreted.

Far worse, bitter lessons learnt about disaster prevention measures from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were never implemented in Texas, and when Harvey hit this was exacerbated by the inability of civil government to take decisive and meaningful action to save people, with the first evacuation notice only being released just 36 hours before the storm arrived. That said, there is also good statistical evidence to suggest that the population itself may have contributed to their own disaster vulnerability – Texas voting records show that demands for lower taxes, less government intervention, a drive towards personal autonomy and increased antagonisms towards the poor and marginalised may actually have contributed to government’s inability to respond to natural disasters.

If one looks at the aftermath of last week’s Hurricane Helene and how it is impacting on the more rural communities in the North Carolina valleys, it’s clear that neither local and national government, nor even the communities themselves, were anything like prepared for what was about to hit them. The derisory offer from the US government to offer every affected citizen – most of whom had seen their homes swept away – just $750 for “emergency essentials” was naively indicative of an institution with no concept of how to respond meaningfully to such a disaster.

Back in Florida a more affluent and far better prepared population is rapidly on the move, with highways and transport networks now jammed with escaping traffic. For many the coming hours and days will be a dreadful and heart-wrenching experience as homes, communities and pretty much all of the pillars that people recognise as defining their lives may well be swept away or shredded. It will be especially difficult for the large senior population who are living in the way of the hurricane, as most of them are living in mobile homes that were built in the 1970s and 80s; for them the destruction of their lives is likely to be total – and irredeemable.

With warnings now coming into place across 28 counties in Florida the coming weeks are going to be uniquely challenging and distressful for all involved, and all we can do is to offer our thoughts and prayers for everyone’s safety and eventually recovery. It might also be worth adding a few for those who will be heading to the COP29 summit next month – that the world starts talking meaningfully about means to reduce climate change, but also about ensuring in the meantime that the most vulnerable of our neighbours are protected from the coming inevitability of severe weather events across the world.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian