By Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman in Delaware Online 

Extreme heat. Smoked filled skies. Violent storms and deadly flash floods. Record-breaking ocean temperatures.Clear signs of a worsening climate crisis seem to be everywhere this summer, along with the threats they pose to the health and safety of our family, friends and neighbors.

Make no mistake, the risk to our communities is real. A recent study by Moody’s Analytics found that Delaware faces one of the highest threats of disaster due to climate change behind only Florida, Louisiana and the Carolinas. We are also the fourth-fastest warming state — tied with Arizona, which is home to the Sonoran Desert.

Predictably, the Environmental Protection Agency also recently confirmed what the residents of Delaware’s historically underserved communities have long suspected: it’s communities of color who face the greatest risk from climate change.

Black families are already at greater risk of seeing their children develop asthma, being forced from their homes due to flooding and losing a loved one due to extreme heat — all of which will only worsen as the climate warms.Wilmington is in the Top 10 of Moody’s ranking of U.S. cities facing the greatest chronic physical risk, just behind Phoenix and Tucson.

Wilmington is currently seeing 7 more days a year of temperatures above 90 degrees than it did 50 years ago, and storms like Hurricane Ida, which forced 200 Wilmington residents from their homes just two years ago, are becoming more common.

How we got here is obvious: fossil fuel companies polluted our climate, air, and water for decades, while spreading disinformation about their products and fighting clean energy alternatives. Even now as we suffer through record-high temperatures, they are raking in billions of dollars in record-high profits.

Thanks to Attorney General Kathy Jennings, Delaware is helping lead the charge in holding these polluters accountable. In 2020, the attorney general’s office filed a potentially landmark lawsuit against more than two dozen major oil and gas companies — including ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron — to make them “pay for the mess they’ve made.” Our state’s fight to put these companies on trial won a major boost recently, when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Big Oil’s request to stop the case from moving forward in state court, where a jury of Delaware residents would hear it.

This originally appeared in Delaware Online. Other versions appeared in Delaware Business Times and Daily State News.