The Texas Floods Were Made Worse by Climate Denialism

The tragic news out of central Texas has been heartbreaking, but it’s also been maddening — because so many lives could have been saved if elected officials had done their jobs. They owe the families who lost loved ones — the death toll from the Fourth of July floods is now at more than 100 — more than thoughts and prayers. They owe them a sincere commitment to righting their deadly wrong, by tackling the problem they’ve turned their backs on for too long: climate change.

The scientific evidence is clear that the more frequent extreme weather we are experiencing is being driven by climate change — and that it’s only going to get worse. As the director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University put it, the storms and flooding in central Texas are “exactly what the future is going to hold.” And yet so many elected officials are pretending otherwise.