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"We are deeply worried such events will get worse until oil and gas giants like Shell, Total, Equinor, Exxon, OMV, and ENI are forced to stop drilling for fossil fuels driving climate change," said one campaigner.
The international climate group Greenpeace on Friday called on European leaders to "reciprocate" the courage shown by first responders in several countries over the weekend by forcing fossil fuel giants to pay for climate damages.
Calling out leaders including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, and Romania Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, Greenpeace campaigner Ian Duff said Central and Eastern European countries should end their "support for fossil fuels and [make] climate polluters pay for this disaster," as emergency workers rescued people from catastrophic flooding.
The death toll on Monday rose to at least 16, with many more people missing and hundreds of thousands of people displaced in countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia after the low-pressure system Storm Boris dumped torrential rains on the region for days starting late last week.
Two men, aged 70 and 80, drowned in their homes in northeastern Lower Austria after being trapped by rising floodwater, and confirmed deaths in Poland rose to six.
About 70% of Litovel, about 140 miles east of the Czech capital of Prague, was underwater Monday, while a power plant servicing the country's third-largest city was forced to shut down and leave residents without heat and hot water.
"Greenpeace is horrified by damages brought by floods across Central and Eastern Europe, claiming lives, leaving homes without power and farmers with ruined fields, after being already ravaged by drought," said Duff, head of Greenpeace's Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign. "We are deeply worried such events will get worse until oil and gas giants like Shell, Total, Equinor, Exxon, OMV, and ENI are forced to stop drilling for fossil fuels driving climate change."
In the U.S., the notion of big polluters being required to pay for damages caused by the climate crisis has recently gained traction, with lawmakers introducing a bill in Congress last week.
In Europe, a "polluter pays" principle is followed for many kinds of pollution, but advocates have called for it to be applied to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.
The flooding in Europe comes, as London-based meteorologist Scott Duncan explained on the social media platform X, after "an exceptional summer for the Mediterranean Sea," with heat records broken—just as scientists have warned this year that record heat in the North Atlantic and other oceans around the globe would mean "a busy hurricane season."
"Warmer sea surface temperatures allow more moisture to evaporate, like fuel for a storm. The warmer the water, the greater the evaporation," said Duncan.
Liz Stephens, science lead for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, noted that in Central and Eastern Europe, "climate change is known to be playing a role in increasing the risk of flooding," with the World Weather Attribution saying in 2021 that disastrous flooding that hit Germany and Belgium was tied to "a rapidly warming climate."
Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Stephens added, "have indicated that we have already observed an upward trend in heavy rainfall, surface water, and river flooding, and climate models show high confidence of further increases into the future."
"The flooding looks set to be the worst in the region since 2002," she said. "Lessons will have been learned from previous big European floods, but forecasts for some locations are for flooding of unprecedented magnitude, and history tells us that people are often surprised by the seemingly unimaginable consequences of such events."
Journalist and climate advocate George Monbiot pointed out on Al Jazeera that storms previously described as "once-in-1,000-year occurrences [are] happening several times now in the past decade. We're seeing a massive acceleration and intensification of extreme weather events, and unfortunately this is exactly what climate scientists were predicting."
Climate action group Friends of the Earth echoed Greenpeace's demand to "leave fossil fuels in the ground and instead invest in a green future," and Duff emphasized that communities across Central and Eastern Europe are far from the only ones "reeling from deadly floods and torrential rains," with Typhoon Yagi causing flooding and landslides that killed at least 250 people in Southeast Asia in recent days and heavy rains across West and Central Africa leading to floods that killed more than 1,000 people.
"The fossil fuel industry," said Duff, "is worsening weather extremes everywhere."
"What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don't know what will happen because my house is under water and I don't know if I will even return to it," one storm evacuee said.
Extreme flooding has claimed the lives of at least seven people in Central and Eastern Europe and forced thousands to flee their homes over the weekend.
Storm Boris—a low pressure system—has been lashing the area since Thursday, with major cities seeing a month's worth of rain and some areas seeing their heaviest rainfall in 100 years between Saturday and Sunday.
"We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences," Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said, as The Guardian reported.
The storm has been deadliest in Romania, where four people were killed on Saturday and a fifth on Sunday, according to CNN. Hundreds of people also had to be rescued from rising waters.
The most impacted part of Romania was Galati, where the storm damaged around 5,400 homes—and around 700 in the village of Slobozia Conachi alone.
"This is a catastrophe of epic proportions," Mayor Emil Dragomir said, as The Guardian reported.
"The idiotic media have failed to make it clear what's coming—and this is still the beginning."
The sixth death came in Austria, where a firefighter battling flooding perished on Sunday. Authorities have declared a disaster for Lower Austria, where Vienna is located, and staged nearly 5,000 rescues there Saturday night. The storm also shut down rail service in the eastern part of the country.
"We are experiencing difficult and dramatic hours in Lower Austria," said the provincial governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner, as The Associated Press reported. "For many people in Lower Austria these will probably be the most difficult hours of their lives."
In Poland, one person drowned in the hardest-hit region of KÅ‚odzko, where around 1,600 people were forced to evacuate and 17,000 lost power.
In another town of Stonie Slaski, flood waters overwhelmed a dam and collapsed a bridge, while the river in Glucholazy overflowed its banks.
"The situation is still very dramatic in many place[s]," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday, according to CNN. "Unfortunately, these situations are repeating themselves in many places… but some residents sometimes underestimate the level of threat and refuse to evacuate."
The storm also pummeled parts of Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where some of the highest rainfall totals in the region were reported and where four people are still missing.
The storm forced 10,000 people from the city of Opava to flee their homes, and Mayor Tomáš Navrátil said conditions were worse than in 1997's so-called "flood of the century," according to AP.
"What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don't know what will happen because my house is under water and I don't know if I will even return to it," Lipová-lázne resident Pavel Bily said, as The Guardian reported.
The rains are expected to continue at least through Monday.
In 2021, World Weather Attribution said that the climate emergency has made extreme flooding in Europe more likely. The storm also followed the hottest summer on record, as well as a warm beginning to September in the region, and warmer air can hold more moisture.
"People are in prison today for trying to warn the public how bad things are going to get," author Matthew Todd wrote on social media in response to footage of a dam bursting in Poland. "Scientists have taken to the streets to warn us."
"The idiotic media have failed to make it clear what's coming—and this is still the beginning," Todd continued. "Educate everyone you know."
While we can’t count on certain stubborn politicians to save our only planet, we can count on the young people at the heart of the climate movement.
The past 20 years have been critical in the fight for bold and sustainable climate solutions. The next five years will be even more vital—and young people like me are fighting hard to make sure our leaders get it right.
Research shows we have about five years left to avert global warming beyond 1.5°C, the tipping point when even more severe climate disruptions could exacerbate hunger, conflict, and drought worldwide.
Climate change—long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil—impacts our livelihoods and our lives. It harms our health and well-being and threatens our access to vital resources, from water to food to housing.
We’re the last generation that can save the world from climate disaster—and we’re giving the fight for our lives and for a better future everything we’ve got.
Communities on the front lines of the climate crisis are already paying the price for inadequate climate action. Pacific islands like Tuvalu are already sinking and expected to be completely submerged in coming years. Meanwhile, scientists predict that rising sea levels will leave 60% of Miami-Dade County under water by 2060.
While we can’t count on certain stubborn politicians to save our only planet, we can count on the young people at the heart of the climate movement.
The global youth-led climate movement has a long history of standing up to corporate giants and their political allies who exacerbate climate change. Despite failed attempts by some politicians to patronize, belittle, or discredit the teenagers and 20-somethings leading protests and driving policy demands, young climate activists are fueling hope—and winning change.
In June 2023, youth climate activists won a landmark lawsuit, Held v. Montana, when a judge ruled that the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional. Similar suits are underway in many other states.
Universities also have a prime role to play in encouraging students to practice sustainability and foster social change. At my university, Virginia Tech, students can participate in a Climate Action Living Laboratory (CALL), where they work with faculty and staff on sustainability projects and research, using our campus and surrounding community networks to work towards the university’s climate action goals.
In my Virginia Tech coursework, I got to harvest food for our dining facilities at our campus farm, compost on an Indigenous farm, visit a local community garden, and tour a food sorting facility—all while working closely with campus partners I wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Across the country, institutions like Colorado State, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell, Dickinson College, Furman, and the University of Vermont have implemented living learning labs of their own. In addition to advancing sustainability initiatives, these labs combine disciplines and skills—and unite diverse groups of people—to incubate innovative climate solutions.
You can help us grow the movement, too. Consider supporting domestic climate activist youth movements in your local community and organizations like Sunrise D.C., a local branch of the youth climate organization where activists in the nation’s capital get involved at both the local and national level.
We’re the last generation that can save the world from climate disaster—and we’re giving the fight for our lives and for a better future everything we’ve got. Join us.