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To ignore the fact that global warming amplified this flood is to invite the next storm—wetter, hotter, and deadlier.
More than 120 deaths have been reported, and at least 161 people remain missing after catastrophic floods tore through Central Texas on July 4. The death toll is expected to rise. As communities reel from the tragedy, the question remains: Will anything change?
Over the last 12 months, hundreds of Americans have died in disasters made deadlier and more likely by climate change. Yet, the U.S. government and many state and local leaders continue to deny and otherwise downplay the climate emergency. How many lives will be lost before our leaders confront reality?
The floods in Hill Country, Texas are only the most recent in a devastating string of climate disasters across the U.S. in the last year alone.
In September 2024, Hurricane Helene killed more than 200 people in North Carolina and drenched the Southeast with 20 trillion gallons of rain—50% more than would have fallen without climate change, according to experts.
This January, wildfires swept across Los Angeles, killing 30 people in what were some of the most destructive fires in the city’s history. Fueled by extreme heat, record winds, and historic drought—conditions exacerbated by climate change, the fires were a reminder of the human causes and consequences of global warming and the disasters it fuels. The smoke may lift, but the consequences will linger, reshaping lives and landscapes for years to come.
Every moment we stay silent about climate change, we sink deeper into a fossil-fueled future defined by disaster.
In March, a deadly tornado outbreak tore through much of the Midwest and South, killing 42 people. It was the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded for the month of March, again, made more likely by a warming climate.
Just two months later, in mid-May, a severe tornado outbreak struck the Midwestern and Southeastern United States, spawning 60 tornadoes and claiming 27 more lives.
Tornadoes emerge from powerful thunderstorms, and climate change is making these storms more frequent and more intense. As the atmosphere warms and holds more moisture, the conditions that fuel tornadoes—like those seen in March and May—are arriving earlier, occurring more often, and leaving behind more destruction.
Despite the relentless and deadly reminders of climate change, the U.S. administration remains in denial. Just last week, they replaced hundreds of scientists and experts working on the federal government’s flagship climate impacts report with known climate skeptics.
Just a month before the floods, NASA released new research showing a sharp rise in the intensity, frequency, duration, and severity of extreme weather events—including floods—over the past five years. The Texas floods are another example of the devastating extreme weather events fueled by rising temperatures and human-caused climate change.
The fatal Texas flooding began with torrential downpours that overwhelmed the Guadalupe River and its tributaries. In a matter of hours, more than 10 inches of rain fell, causing the river to rise nearly 29 feet in less than an hour. This kind of extreme rainfall has become far more likely in our warming world.
As Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, put it, “Climate change is like steroids for the weather—it injects an extra dose of intensity into existing weather patterns.” Global temperatures have already risen 1.5°C, on average. Warmer air holds more water vapor, enabling bigger downpours and more intense rainfall. At least 1.8 trillion gallons of rain fell over the impacted area.
Arsum Pathak, director of Adaptation and Coastal Resilience at the National Wildlife Federation, explained it simply: “The atmosphere is like a giant sponge. As the air gets warmer, which is what’s been happening because of climate change, the sponge can hold a lot more water. And then when there’s a storm, the same sponge can squeeze out way more water than it used to.”
In Texas, warmer temperatures mean storms like this one are now up to 7% wetter than during similar storms in the past. The region has experienced a 21% increase in total precipitation on the heaviest rainfall days since the 1950s. These are no longer theoretical risks; they are lived realities.
Many politicians and officials have been quick to blame the severity of the flooding on the federal administration’s weakened civil service and cuts to disaster response agencies. It is true that hollowing out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has left communities less prepared and protected. But we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture.
Don’t let the preparedness debate distract us from the real question: Why do we need this level of preparation in the first place?
Climate change.
In all the chatter about preparing for extreme weather, “climate change” has barely been uttered by federal, state, or local officials from either political party. Indeed, like challenges to preparedness, efforts to raise climate change as a contributing factor have been met with tired accusations of “politicizing a tragedy.” But as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman rightly argues:
Now is exactly the time to put officials on the spot… if we don’t make an issue of how this happened… nothing will be learned and nothing will change.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dismissed the idea of blame, calling it a word for “losers” before pivoting to football metaphors. But unless climate change becomes part of the game plan, Texans—and all Americans—will continue to lose.
To ignore the fact that global warming amplified this flood is to invite the next storm—wetter, hotter, and deadlier. Every moment we stay silent about climate change, we sink deeper into a fossil-fueled future defined by disaster.
The science is undeniable. Greenhouse gases are at their highest concentration in at least 800,000 years, and fossil fuels are their primary driver. 2024 was the warmest year on record, with the global average near-surface temperature 1.55°C above the preindustrial average. The last decade was the warmest ever documented.
The deadly floods in Texas will cause an estimated $18 billion to $22 billion in damage and economic loss. But it won’t be the fossil fuel companies footing the bill. It will be ordinary Texans‚ families already grieving lost loved ones and livelihoods.
As the waters recede, many flood victims will discover they won’t be insured for the damage. Standard homeowners’ insurance doesn’t cover flooding. Separate flood insurance, often prohibitively expensive, isn’t always required, and only a fraction of Texans carry it.
Across the 21 counties included in Gov. Abbott’s disaster declaration, only 10% of homeowners carry federal flood insurance. In Kerr County, the worst-hit area where 95 people died, just 2% of homeowners hold federal flood insurance. In neighboring Kendall County, it is less than 5%.
The tragic loss of life in Texas was undoubtedly fueled by climate change—and climate change is driven by the fossil fuel industry.
Homeowners can purchase a separate flood insurance policy from a private insurance provider, but it is expensive, and the coverage is limited. It’s not yet clear how many Texas flood victims held separate private flood insurance as an add-on to their homeowners policy.
The residents facing the greatest climate-related vulnerabilities, including those living in RVs, mobile homes, or informal housing, face even greater risks. Several RV and mobile home parks in Central Texas were swept away by floodwaters, highlighting how those with the fewest resources are often forced to live in the most dangerous places.
And yet, the insurance industry—an industry that invests billions in fossil fuel companies and underwrites fossil fuel projects—continues to fuel the climate crisis while shielding itself from its financial impacts. Insurers raise premiums, limit coverage, or leave disaster-prone areas altogether, but they remain heavily invested in the fossil fuel economy that’s driving these disasters.
The tragic loss of life in Texas was undoubtedly fueled by climate change—and climate change is driven by the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry must be held accountable for its contribution to the floods in Texas—and other fossil-fueled climate catastrophes.
Insurance companies must also be called to account. They cannot claim to be managing climate risk while actively financing and underwriting the industries that create it. State insurance regulators should require insurers to divest from fossil fuel companies and stop insuring fossil fuel projects. And responses to the climate-driven insurance crisis should prioritize the needs of residents on the front line of fossil-fueled climate disasters, not insurers’ bottom line.
Extreme weather events will continue to escalate until we confront their root cause. State and local leaders hold the keys to both prevention and recovery. It’s time for them to face reality and protect the people they serve.
When it comes to climate change, the fact that Donald Trump is distinctly a terrorist first-class should be a daily part of the headlines in our world.
Yes, he’s done quite a job so far and, in a way, it couldn’t be simpler to describe. Somehow he’s managed to take the greatest looming threat to humanity and put it (excuse the all-too-appropriate image) on the back burner. I’m thinking, of course, about climate change.
My guess is that you haven’t read much about it recently, despite the fact that a significant part of this country, including the city I live in, set new heat records for June. And Europe followed suit soon after with a heat hell all its own in which, at one point, the temperature in part of Spain hit an all-time record 114.8°F. And oh yes, part of Portugal hit 115.9°F as both countries recorded their hottest June ever. Facing that reality, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said (again all too appropriately), “Extreme heat is no longer a rare event—it has become the new normal.” The new normal, indeed! He couldn’t have been more on target!
And why am I not surprised by all this? Well, because whether you’re in the United States or Europe (or so many other places on this planet) these days, if you’ve been paying any attention at all, you’ve noticed that June is indeed the new July, and that, thanks to the ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gases that continue to flow into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, heatwaves have grown more frequent and more intense. After all, we’re now on a planet where, without a doubt, heat is at an all-time-record high. After all, 2024, was the hottest year in history and the last 10 years, the hottest decade ever known. Worse yet, in the age of Donald Trump, this is clearly just the beginning, not the end (though somewhere down the line, of course, it could indeed prove to be exactly that).
While this old man is online constantly reading publications ranging from The Washington Post to the British Guardian, he still reads the paper New York Times. And if that isn’t old-fashioned of me, what is? Can you even believe it? And its first section of news, normally 20-odd pages long, does regularly tell me something about how climate change is (and isn’t) covered in the age of Donald Trump. Let me give you one example: On June 21, that paper’s superb environmental reporter Somini Sengupta had a piece covering the droughts that, amid the rising heat, are now circling this planet in a major fashion from Brazil to China, the U.S. to Russia. And yes, she indicated clearly in her piece that such droughts, bad as they may always have been from time to time, are becoming significantly worse thanks to the overheating of this planet from fossil fuel use. (As she put it: “Droughts are part of the natural weather cycle but are exacerbated in many parts of the world by the burning of fossil fuels, which is warming the world and exacerbating extreme weather.”)
The next day that piece appeared in the paper newspaper I read—a day when, as always, the front page was filled with Donald Trump—and where was it placed? Yep, on page 24.
And on the very day I happened to be writing this sentence, Trump was the headline figure in, or key, to 3 of the 6 front-page Times stories, including ones headlined “The Supreme Court’s Term Yields Triumphs for Trump” and “Trump’s Deal with El Salvador Guts MS-13 Fight.” On the other hand, you had to turn to page eight to read “Heat Overcoming Europe Turns Dangerous, and There’s More to Come” in which the eighth and 24th paragraphs quote experts mentioning climate change. I don’t mean to indicate that the Times never puts a climate piece on the front page. It does, but not daily like Donald Trump. Not faintly. He is invariably the page-one story of our present American world, day after day after day. Whatever he may do (or not do), he remains the story of the moment (any moment). And for the man who eternally wants to be the center of attention, consider that, after a fashion, his greatest achievement. Yet, at 79 years old, he, like this almost 81-year-old, will, in due course, leave this country and this planet behind forever. But the climate mess he’s now helping intensify in such a significant way won’t leave with him. Not for a second. Not in any foreseeable future.
Consider it an irony that the administration that wants to deny atomic weaponry to Iran on the grounds that a nuclear war would be a planetary disaster seems perfectly willing to encourage a slow-motion version of the same in the form of climate change.
In short, despite everything else he’s doing in and to this world of ours, there’s nothing more devastating (not even his bombing of Iran) than his urge to ignore anything associated with climate change, while putting fossil fuels back at the very center of our all-American world. Yes, he can no longer simply stop solar and wind power from growing rapidly on this planet of ours, but he can certainly try. And simply refusing to do anything to help is—or at least should be—considered an ongoing act of global terrorism.
And don’t think it’s just that either. For example, Trump administration cuts to the National Weather Service have already ensured that, when truly bad weather hits (and hits and hits), as it’s been doing this year, whether you’re talking about stunning flash flooding or tornadoes, there will be, as the Guardian‘s Eric Holthaus reports, ever fewer staff members committed to informing and warning Americans about what’s coming or helping them once it’s hit. Meanwhile, cuts to the government’s greenhouse gas monitoring network will ensure that we’ll know less about the effects of climate change in this country.
To put it bluntly, when it comes to climate change, the fact that Donald Trump is distinctly a terrorist first-class should be a daily part of the headlines in our world (though, if he has his way, it may not be “our” world for long). We’re talking about the president who is already doing everything he can to cut back on clean energy and ensure that this country produces more “clean, beautiful” coal, not to speak of oil and natural gas, and so send ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House and Senate, bowing to Trump, have only recently passed a “big, beautiful bill” that would “quickly remove $7,500 consumer tax credits for buying electric cars,” among so many other things, while negating much of what the Biden administration did do in relation to climate change (even as it, too, let the American production of oil rise to record levels).
Of course, given a president who once labeled climate change a “Chinese hoax” and “one of the greatest scams of all time,” who could be faintly surprised that his administration seems remarkably intent on sending ever more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere? And sadly, if that reality, which was all too clear from his first term in office, had been the focus of the news last year, perhaps he wouldn’t have been voted back into the White House by 1.6% more Americans than opted for former Vice President Kamala Harris who, to give her full (dis)credit, didn’t run a campaign taking out after him in any significant fashion on the issue of climate change and planetary suicide.
So here we are distinctly in Donald Trump’s world and what a world it’s already proving to be. We’re talking, of course, about the fellow who quite literally ran his 2024 presidential campaign on the phrase “drill, baby, drill.” In a sense, he couldn’t have been blunter or, in his own fashion, more honest than that. Still, it pains me even to imagine that, for the next three and a half years, he will indeed be in control of U.S. environmental policy. After all, we’re talking about the guy whose (now wildly ill-named) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “plans to repeal limits on greenhouse gas emissions and other airborne pollutants from the nation’s fossil fuel-fired power plants.” Brilliant, right? And the fellow now running the EPA, Lee Zeldin, couldn’t have been more blunt about it: “Rest assured President Trump is the biggest supporter of clean, beautiful coal. EPA is helping pave the way for American energy dominance because energy development underpins economic development, which in turn strengthens national security.”
Clean, beautiful coal. Doesn’t that take the air out of the room? Or perhaps I mean, shouldn’t it? Because, sadly enough, in this Trumpian world of ours, all too few people are paying all that much attention. And yet it’s the slow-motion way that we humans have discovered to destroy this planet and ourselves. Consider it an irony that the administration that wants to deny atomic weaponry to Iran on the grounds that a nuclear war would be a planetary disaster seems perfectly willing to encourage a slow-motion version of the same in the form of climate change. After all, to take but one example, only recently it opened up millions of acres of previously protected Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling.
While President Trump and his officials essentially try to devastate this planet, a kind of self-censorship on the subject remains in operation and not just in the media, but among all the rest of us, too.
It’s not that there are no strong articles in the mainstream world about what’s happening. Check out, for instance, this article by Simmone Shah of Time Magazine on the increasing number of heat domes on this planet of ours. Or if you look away from the mainstream and, for instance, check out the work of Mark Hertzgaard at The Nation magazine considering the climate-change costs of war or environmentalist Bill McKibben at his substack writing on how Trump and crew want to create an all too literal hell on Earth, you would certainly have a stronger sense of what’s truly happening on this planet right now.
For a moment, just imagine the reaction in this country and in the media if Donald Trump suddenly started openly talking about actually using atomic weaponry. And yet, in a slow-motion fashion, that’s exactly what his officials and the president himself are doing in relation to climate change and it all continues to be eerily normalized and largely ignored amid the continuing chaos of this Trumpian moment.
Who, for instance, could imagine this headline anywhere in the media: Trump Planning to Destroy Planet. Or perhaps: American President Attempting to Create a Literal Hell on Earth. Or even how about a milder: End of World as We’ve Known It Now Underway. Or… well, you’re undoubtedly just as capable as I am of imagining more such headlines.
Instead, we increasingly live in a world where, while President Trump and his officials essentially try to devastate this planet, a kind of self-censorship on the subject remains in operation and not just in the media, but among all the rest of us, too. We lead our lives largely not imagining that our world is slowly going down the drain—or do I mean up in flames?
And in some grim sense, that reality (or perhaps irreality would be the better term) may prove to be—I was about to write “in retrospect,” but perhaps there will be no “retrospect”—Donald Trump’s greatest “triumph.” He is indeed in the process of doing in, if not us, then our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and clearly couldn’t give less of a damn about it. (If anything, it leaves him feeling distinctly on top of the world.)
Of all the wars we shouldn’t be fighting on this planet of ours from Ukraine to Gaza, Iran to Sudan, there is indeed one that we all should be fighting, including the president of the United States, and that’s the war against our destruction of this planet (as humanity has known it all these endless thousands of years) in a planetary heat hell.
If only.
The deaths in Texas mark a devastating chapter in a growing story: the slow, preventable betrayal of American children by a government unwilling to face the truth about climate change.
The floodwaters that tore through Texas have claimed over 130 lives—and stolen the futures of at least 36 children, most of them swept away while attending a Christian summer camp that offered neither the preparation nor protection demanded by our new climate reality.
Eventually, their names will fade from the headlines. But their deaths mark a devastating chapter in a growing story: the slow, preventable betrayal of American children by a government unwilling to face the truth about climate change.
The science is not in dispute. Storms like this—once labeled “1-in-500-year” events—are becoming terrifyingly routine. A warmer atmosphere traps more water vapor, fueling more intense rainfall. According to the National Climate Assessment, the heaviest Texas storms now dump 20% more rain than they did in the 1950s, when the planet was significantly cooler.
It is U.S. President Donald Trump who poses the central danger to our children. He thinks climate change is “one of the great scams” and governs accordingly. His resulting cuts to NWS, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—which faces a proposed 40% budget cut—and his desire to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) snub basic moral responsibility to compound the threat of a warming world.
Our children are not political pawns. They are not expendable. They are the reason we build, the reason we serve, the reason we fight for a better country. If our policies cannot protect them, then those policies must change.
Yet the White House was quick to dismiss any link between budget cuts and the catastrophe in Texas, with a spokesperson calling such criticism “shameful and disgusting.” As a trained FEMA responder, emergency nurse, and woman of faith, I’ve seen with my own eyes how shameful it is to pretend we’re prepared—and how disgusting it is to suggest these deaths were unavoidable.
There were “early and consistent warnings” from the National Weather Service (NWS), insisted Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. It is as if it were the children’s fault for not listening to the news instead of a consequence of deliberate, manmade policy failure.
That’s not politics. That’s engineered neglect.
And children are paying the price. In 2024, over 242 million students around the world had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events—from heatwaves and hurricanes to floods and droughts. In the U.S, 11 million people were displaced by disasters that year, many of them children.
When classrooms flood, when heatwaves overwhelm neighborhoods, when families are forced to flee… it is the youngest who suffer most.
Yet we continue to send 26 million American children to summer camps, many of which are located in rural, exposed areas with little to no emergency oversight. Most lack up-to-date evacuation plans or protections against extreme weather. In Kerr County, the system failed completely—delayed warnings, limited staffing, and no infrastructure to fall back on.
We owe these children more than thoughts and prayers. We owe them action.
We must respond with both moral urgency and practical action. Every community—not just wealthy ones—deserves climate-resilient infrastructure, schools, and camps built to withstand the new normal, and local authorities trained and funded to respond quickly and effectively. The Department of Education’s emergency management unit must be strengthened, not slashed.
We must also invest in prevention, not just response. That means restoring ecosystems that can buffer against climate extremes, building sustainable infrastructure, and, crucially, educating our children to understand and navigate the crisis they’ve inherited. We cannot continue to rely on outdated systems and hope they’ll hold. They won’t.
At the grassroots level, people are already rising to meet the moment. Organizations like Zero Hour are training youth from diverse backgrounds to lead on environmental justice. Faith-based networks are stepping in where policy has failed—not just preaching morality but practicing it.
Earlier this year, Duke University’s Divinity School formalized its partnership with Faith For Our Planet, a global nonprofit founded by the Muslim World League (MWL). Their pioneering youth fellowship program equips young people to identify local climate risks and lead resilience efforts in their communities. At the launch, MWL secretary general Sheikh Muhammad Al-Issa urged young people not to underestimate their power: “Challenge injustices. Innovate solutions. Start dialogues where others sow discord.”
Across denominations, congregations are mobilizing: The Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions works to develop solutions at the local level. The Evangelical Environmental Network is producing Sunday school curricula centered on stewardship and sustainability. These are not fringe efforts—they are real, growing movements that link moral clarity with public service.
We are past the point of debate. The climate crisis is not theoretical. It is here, and it is killing our children. Those who frame this as a culture war are only trying to distract from their own failures of responsibility.
Our children are not political pawns. They are not expendable. They are the reason we build, the reason we serve, the reason we fight for a better country. If our policies cannot protect them, then those policies must change.
It’s time to stop blaming God for disasters we refuse to prevent. The water is rising—and so must we.