The floods that hit Valencia on 29 October were unprecedented. In the space of only eight hours, a year’s worth of rain fell, causing flash floods that killed over 230 people. Many victims died some distance away from where all that rain actually fell; they were hit by an unexpected tsunami that roared downstream wiping out bridges and damaging buildings while carrying with it cars, garbage dumpsters, trees, animals, and people.
Well before the deluge, the Spanish government meteorological agency AEMET issued a red alert for the region, warning of torrential rainfall. The Spanish military’s emergency unit readied themselves for action; even crews of firefighters from the neighboring region of Catalunya prepared themselves to head voluntarily to the area. However the premier, Carlos Mazón, told these crews to turn around: they wouldn’t be needed as they are perfectly equipped to handle a storm. Indeed, the regional government of Valencia (a coalition of the conservative Partido Popular and the extreme right-wing political party Vox) only issued cell phone alerts to its population hours after rain had started falling and floods were already catching people off-guard. Earlier in the day, Mazón even stated publicly that the worst was already over, when this wasn’t so. Don’t stop working and don’t stop shopping just because of some rain; business must go on!
This is what happens when climate deniers are elected: they downplay extreme weather events. According to their logic, if there’s no such thing as climate change, then warning people of a possibly disastrous weather event undermines their ideological position. Autumn rains often lash the Mediterranean coast of Spain when cold air from northern Europe blows over sea waters still warm from the summer, creating huge storm clouds. However, this past summer the Mediterranean Sea’s surface temperature set a new all-time record (on 15 August 2024, it reached 28.5ºC). The warmer the sea, the fiercer the autumn storms.
Mazón is in deep shit now, facing several class-action lawsuits for negligience. He went AWOL on the afternoon of the storm, arriving several hours late to an emergency meeting that had been called to deal with the disaster. Members of his own conservative party are even distancing themselves from him. And yet, despite countless calls from the parliamentary opposition for him to resign and step aside, he refuses to do so. After all, the first rule of extreme right-wing politics is: never, under any circumstances, admit wrongdoing. Blame others for your ineptitude instead, in this case the central government of Spain (Socialist) that offered help even before the storm began, but was turned away (they were then requested afterwards, and are still there helping to clean up the shitmess along with armies of volunteers).
This is why the rise of right-wing extremists throughout the world is extremely worrisome: they are willing to do absolutely anything for power, including endangering their own population. They cheat, they lie, they deny all accusations, and they lay all blame on others. They order the censorship of criticism and the ‘silencing’ of journalists and political opponens while rigging the justice system to act in their favor. Just look at how Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Orban, and other autocrats operate.
The worst thing is that these criminals get elected and reelected time and again by voters who have been duped by fake news on social media, where anyone can get away with saying anything. The extreme right, which only acts in the interests of the very richest, has even duped the poor into voting for them by using the old ruse of blaming immigrants for taking their jobs away (when in fact most jobs have disappeared due to outsourcing).
And of course, now that we are all so fossil fuel-dependent, who in their right mind would want to vote in favor of cutting subsidies to fossil fuel companies and curtailing their drilling, which would raise the price of gas? Yet that is precisely one of the things that needs to happen if we want to keep global warming to less than 2ºC above the pre-industrial age (at 1.3ºC, we are already too close to 1.5ºC to stay within the limits of the Paris accord). Nobody wants to pay more for gas, so instead let’s slowly kill all life on our planet, including ourselves. Business must go on! Drill, baby, drill!
Despite what deniers say, the Valencia flash floods, along with other recent unprecedented ‘natural’ disasters, were exacerbated by climate change. But the flooding was also made worse by decades of urban expansion that sprawled into flood zones and wetlands, and this is not only premier Mazón’s fault but also that of his (mostly conservative) predecessors. To slow down climate change and be better prepared for disasters that are only going to get worse, we need political leaders who are not climate change-deniers and who don’t promote reckless urban expansion; something right-wing politicians are never going to do as they then wouldn’t be able to divert as much public money into their reelection slush fund through graft and political corruption. Climate change is already here; time to start doing something about it.
Criticalista 