At the moment, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), a state in the far south of Brazil with a territorial extension of almost 282,000 km² (larger than the area of the entire United Kingdom, for example), is experiencing the biggest climate disaster in its history - and one of the biggest in the country. The disaster is the result of extreme climate change and the omission of systemic public policies that consider the environment and climate adaptation. Adverse weather forecasts, combined with their intensification and frequency due to climate change, have led to the scenario in which we find ourselves as of the publication of this article on May 11th: 136 dead, 756 injured, 141 missing, around 71,000 people are in shelters and another 339,000 have had to leave their homes. According to Civil Defense, out of a population of just over 10 million people, 1.9 million were affected - for reference, the US city of San Diego, in California, has around 1.3 million inhabitants.