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Climate Crisis Killing Children: Flooding Edition [1]
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Date: 2023-01-19
Thanks to Nightcafe AI Art Generator for this image of flooded London...
On September 5 last year, Save the Children reported that about 458 children had died in the devastating floods in Pakistan (which at the time of that report had been ongoing since June). That horrific toll accounted for nearly one third of the fatalities (1,300) known up to that date.
The floods would go on to claim more lives – as many as 1,739 people died – and were declared the worst in Pakistan’s history.
“Worst in… history” is, of course, a moving target.
Humans seem to share an inbuilt assumption that, once disaster has struck, the affected systems will “go back to normal.” We seem also inherently to assume that calling an event “the worst” or “the most severe” somehow captures it in amber – memorializes it as an event so dreadful that surely its like will not soon come again.
In the case of natural disasters caused by the changing climate, neither of those assumptions are true.
In the September 5 report, Save the Children’s Country Director for Pakistan, Khuram Gondal, said:
With each new day the impact of this horror show just gets worse and worse… We dread the coming days in which we may hear even worse news – particularly if we cannot get lifesaving aid to people in time. The aftermath of the floods will bring even more risks to children: disease, hunger, lack of healthcare and protection risks. Many children are now wandering around on their own, have lost their homes and their families, vulnerable to horrors like trafficking.
Oh – and diarrhea. Which is a disease, but I just thought that I would call it out again here.
Considering each devastating event being supercharged by the warming atmosphere as a one-off is also an unfortunate wrinkle of the way humans think. We tend to hear news reports as separate stories, each with their own narrative arc, unconnected except in the wider sense of “wow – long wildfire season this year,” or “I feel like I am hearing about a lot more landslides lately.”
And with each disaster there is already a locked in pattern to the way we consume it, the way it is reported, and who is allowed to say what, and when.
Disaster strikes – who could have imagined this coming?
Reports flood in – frantic tweets and videos are shared. We see people struggle and flail frantically, flee on foot or in their cars, with their pets and hastily assembled belongings crammed higgledy-piggledy inside.
The media arrives. Reporters get as close as they can to “the action,” whether in those comical stand-ups we see each hurricane season, when intrepid reporters get blown sideways on a wind-scoured beach, or in front of police barricades, behind which play out scenes of frantic panic – or its grisly aftermath.
Social media is filled with “marked safe” posts, urgent pleas to find missing loved ones, and calls for prayer. Encomiums ring out to “our first responders.” Local officials hold gut-wrenching news conferences.
A child is missing.
“My dad left for work on Friday, and he hasn’t called.”
They were last seen…
Mr. O’Dell said he would “ride it out” alone and refused to leave.
“The bridge south of Quincy washed out just as residents were frantically trying to cross to safety.”
“Bodies found include those of Treisha Collins and her twin brother Barry. They were five.”
At no time during this progression is talk of climate change welcome .
At first, we must wait for the disaster to unfold.
Then, we must respect the calls for prayer.
We must let police and firefighters do their jobs without muddying the conversation with our “doomsaying.”
During the following 72 hours, as rescuers go door-to-door, we must not “spread panic and despair.”
The clean-up begins, and the media retreats. Now, the story will fade from the national news, uncontextualized. The few reporters or anchors who mention climate change still do so either as an aside, or as just a small part of what happened, and not as part of a larger, existential story that urgently needs telling.
And as we move forward, the trail of bodies lies scattered behind, safely out of mind, doomed to oblivion by our attention span.
From Science.org in 2021:
At least 196 people had died as of 20 July—165 in Germany and 31 in Belgium—and the number is expected to rise. On 18 July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the stricken town of Adenau. The scene was "terrifying," she said. "The German language can barely describe the devastation." That same day more flash floods struck Bavaria, in southern Germany.
In China, the Henan provincial government said 302 people died and 50 remain missing. The vast majority of the victims were in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, where 292 died and 47 are missing. Ten others died in three other cities, officials said at a news conference in Zhengzhou.
And on and on. And many – heartbreakingly many – are children.
The climate crisis does not CAUSE these floods. Many of them would have occurred anyway. But do not be deceived: the impact of the climate crisis is already huge.
The NRDC has reported that climate change makes some flooding incidents 40% more likely, and 10% more intense.
And children are dying. They are not politely waiting to die “until 2100” or “until we cross the 1.5C threshold.”
They are dying NOW. Kids – and tweens, and elders, and middle-aged folk – PEOPLE – are dying in their hundreds and thousands, right now, around the globe.
The question is – what we do now. And when do we do it?
Do we wait for tech to swoop in and save us? Do we wait for carbon capture technology, and the “market forces” behind large-scale adoption of EV cars and solar and wind? Or do we decide that too many people have died, and it is time to take drastic measures to step up the pace of change?
I know which side of the debate I fall on.
_______________________
Thank you for reading.
-Kira Thomsen-Cheek
Twitter: @KiraOnClimate
Instagram.com/climaterevolutionary
If not us – who? If not now – when?
Asking did not work.
Voting did not work.
Marching did not work.
Emissions keep going up.
Our leaders have failed us.
#ClimateRevolution
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/19/2148143/-Climate-Crisis-Killing-Children-Flooding-Edition
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