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... But the climate change that likely intensified those storms -- he's well aware of that every day.
The house next door remains abandoned. There are still empty lots left from destroyed homes. In the meantime, persistent sunny-day flooding from sea level rise means he never really knows whether he'll be wading through water to get to school in the morning or home from school in the afternoon.
"He could wake up in the morning, look out of his window and see that the water's up to the edge of the deck," said his mother, Michelle Morgan, noting that she has to park her car up the hill during heavy rains or full-moon high tides. "Or Jack will come home from school and he'll be like, Seriously, I can't get to my house unless I walk through the water?'"
"My house is gonna go," Grindley says matter-of-factly. ...
But instead of turning his climate change reality and what it portends for his future into a source of anxiety, Grindley is using it as a jumping off point for activism with other like-minded young people in the New Haven Climate Movement. And heading into his senior year at New Haven's Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, he is already focusing on urban planning and sustainability as a career -- and spent part of this summer in the Netherlands studying how that nation has battled rising seas.
Mental health professionals are starting to recognize that anxiety about climate change is a thing, especially among young people. And without knowing it, Grindley is doing exactly what a therapist might have suggested he do to deal with it: get out there and do something about it. ...
