PLEA Network

29 August 2017, VOX, Climate change did not “cause” Harvey, but it’s a huge part of the story, Nine things we can say about Harvey and climate. Several people have written some version of “what you can say about Hurricane Harvey and climate change” in the past few days. I’ll link to some of them below. But I think they are all saying too little. There’s much more to say, so much more! In fact, here are nine things you can say about Harvey and climate change. 1) Harvey is not centrally about climate change Talking about climate change during a disaster always runs the risk of insensitivity. The story that most matters about Harvey right now is the effect it’s having on lives and land in Texas and the efforts underway to prevent more suffering. More broadly, climate is never going to be central to a story like this. There have always been hurricanes and floods in Texas. The things making the state’s coastal developments vulnerable to severe weather — heedless development, sandy subsoil, insufficient drainage — would be problems even in the absence of climate change. Climate is not central, but by the same token it is grossly irresponsible to leave climate out of the story, for the simple reason that climate change is, as the US military puts it, a threat multiplier. The storms, the challenges of emergency response, the consequences of poor adaptation — they all predate climate change. But climate change will steadily make them worse. Read More here