Emory University Creative Writing Prof: Hurricane Dorian Is 'Man-Made'

Emory University Professor Tiphanie Yanique argued during a television appearance this week that Hurricane Dorian is “man-made.”

Emory University English and Creative Writing Professor Tiphanie Yanique appeared on Democracy Now! on PBS this week to discuss the hurricane which recently devastated the Virgin Islands, where she is from. The appearance, which was highlighted in a report by The College Fix, took a bizarre turn when Yanique argued that climate change is responsible for the storms that have ravaged the Bahamas.

Yanique argued that she was disappointed that none of the news coverage of the storm mentioned climate change. According to Yanique, Hurricane Dorian is the result of “carbon emissions” made by humans.

“[I]t is quite ironic and saddening that the people who are most vulnerable to these man-made storms are the ones who, in all cases, are not the contributing factors to the carbon emissions that are causing these storms,” she said.

Bahamian poet Christian Campbell, who appeared alongside Yanique on the program, argued that the islands impacted by the storm are vulnerable due to the history of “global exploitation.”

The Bahamas “is extremely fragile and extremely precarious,” he argued, “like the rest of the Caribbean, [it’s] extremely vulnerable also due to the ongoing legacy of colonialism, the legacy of slavery and indenture that sort of manifested in systemic global exploitation and local corruption.”