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"The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people," said a spokesperson for an emergency agency in northwestern Pakistan.
Five people on a helicopter rescue team were among nearly 200 people killed by extreme rainfall and flooding in Pakistan in a single day on Friday—the country's latest emergency caused by increasingly severe monsoon seasons, which scientists say are being fueled by the human-caused climate crisis.
The vast majority of deaths were recorded in mountainous areas in the northwestern region, with at least 171 people killed on Friday in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
As the Associated Press reported, "cloudbursts," or sudden and intense downpours over small areas, have become increasingly common in India and northern Pakistan in recent years and have caused landslides and flooding.
Pakistan has faced more extreme heatwaves and abnormal torrential downpours during its monsoon season, which typically occurs from June-September. Glaciers like those in the Gilgit-Balistan region, which hold 75% of Pakistan's stored water supply, have also been melting faster due to higher temperatures—another cause of flash floods. Several landslides have been reported along the Karakoram Highway in that region, which is heavily used by tourists and for trade.
International scientists at the World Weather Attribution said last week that rainfall in Pakistan from June 24-July 23 was 10-15% higher than it would have been without planetary heating linked to fossil fuel emissions, which have steadily risen since the 1950s with wealthy countries including the United States being the biggest contributors.
The death toll from the current ongoing extreme weather, which is expected to continue in the coming days, will likely rise significantly, said officials on Friday.
Authorities suspended an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a Sufi shrine in the northwestern Buner district, which began July 25 and was supposed to continue until early September.
About 78 people have been killed in Buner, mostly by floodwaters that swept them away and houses that collapsed.
Officials were helping nearly 4,000 pilgrims evacuate the area on Friday, building makeshift bridges to help people cross waterways and using dozens of excavators to move boulders, uprooted trees, and other debris.
"The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people," provincial emergency service spokesperson Mohammad Suhail told the AP.
A merchant in the Buner district told the New York Times that he had lost thousands of dollars in goods.
"Everything I had, groceries, edible items, is destroyed," Syed Mehmood Bacah said. "I could not save anything."
The disaster comes three years after Pakistan's worst monsoon season on record, in which flooding killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damages.
Pakistan has become the world's fifth-most vulnerable country to climate disasters despite contributing only about 1% of the world's fossil fuel emissions.
The National Disaster Management Authority said the total number of rain-related deaths has now reached at least 556 since June 26, with more than 700 people injured.
Northern India has also been affected by flash flooding this week, with at least 44 people killed and more than 100 others injured in the Indian-controlled part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Public services can prevent and mitigate disasters, but they’re being prevented from doing so by politicians like President Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Growing up in Texas, many of my summers were spent at summer church camps just like Camp Mystic, where 27 girls died in the recent flash floods. Over 130 people in central Texas have been confirmed dead overall.
Had I been just a few years younger, it’s hard not to feel like I could’ve been one of those girls tragically lost. But this tragedy was no “natural” disaster—it was political.
Texans have gotten used to “unprecedented” natural disasters. When I was growing up, we practically never got snow; now winter storms have become the norm. Hurricanes and extreme heat have become more frequent and more dangerous. And intense rain, which causes flash floods, is worsening.
The evidence is overwhelming: These trends are all happening because of climate change, caused by human pollution. And to stay safe, we need to constantly study the climate to predict these disasters and prevent the worst from happening.
While they cry that there’s no money to fully fund and staff environmental agencies, they don’t think twice about passing a Pentagon budget that’s now over $1 trillion a year, or extending trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Better warning systems may or may not have been effective for such an unexpected flood. Yet it seems unthinkable that better funding could not have helped prevent this tragedy. For one, the Guadalupe River is prone to flooding, but state officials have blocked efforts for years to use Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to install early warning systems along it.
Unfortunately, many of our politicians are outright hostile to funding the agencies that do this vital work—or any kind of public service. Just a few months ago, the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to both the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As I write, 6 out of 27 positions at the NWS Austin-San Antonio office, which covers the affected Kerr County, are listed as vacant, including the position for warning coordination meteorologist. (The previous coordinator took the Department of Government Efficiency’s offer of early retirement.) At NOAA, the cuts have affected hundreds of scientists and reduced the agency’s ability to launch weather balloons to more accurately analyze weather patterns.
Texas Republicans are still defending these cuts. Before all the bodies had even been discovered, state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-128) tweeted, “We must not allow this great tragedy to be used to grow government.” And Sen. Ted Cruz personally eliminated $150 million for NOAA’s climate change research in the GOP budget (the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”).
Part of the problem is that public goods like the National Weather Service are “invisible”—that is, you don’t notice them when they’re working well. This makes them uniquely vulnerable to calls for budget cuts, because who’s going to notice understaffing at the NWS?
But when these cuts go through—and understaffed agencies fail to serve their purpose—people say the services don’t work. And there are calls for more budget cuts.
The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget for NOAA, for example, cuts the agency’s budget by 26%. And despite widespread complaints that FEMA wasn’t answering calls from Texans during the disaster, the administration has proposed eliminating the agency or devolving it to the states.
Public services are caught in a lose-lose situation: Regardless of their performance, they face calls for budget cuts.
But the politicians that spew this rhetoric often aren’t interested in having efficient public services or reducing the federal debt. While they cry that there’s no money to fully fund and staff environmental agencies, they don’t think twice about passing a Pentagon budget that’s now over $1 trillion a year, or extending trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Attending summer camps are some of my fondest memories from growing up. But for hundreds of families in Texas, that experience has become a nightmare. It didn’t have to be this way—and we can still change course.
Public services can prevent and mitigate disasters, but they’re being prevented from doing so by politicians like President Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who’d rather fund tax breaks for the wealthy and the war machine.
We need to change the rhetoric around public services in this country, and shine a light on all the good “invisible” services do.
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.