Left-wing critics blame Texas flood devastation on 'climate denialism,' warn more to come unless inaction ends
As search and rescue efforts continued after the devastating storm swept through Texas on the July Fourth holiday, former Democratic presidential candidate and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned an op-ed arguing that the Texas floods "were made worse by climate denialism."
"The latest episode of horrific flooding isn't just about a natural disaster in one state. It's also about a political failure that's been happening in states across the country, and most of all in Washington," Bloomberg wrote. "The refusal to recognize that climate change carries a death penalty is sending innocent people, including far too many children, to early graves."
"We are at a crossroads," Ben Jealous, former candidate for Maryland governor andexecutive director at the Sierra Club, wrote in his own op-ed following the tragedy in Texas.
"We can double down on denial and let superstorms, heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires determine our fate. Or we can lead — with science, resilience, courage, and a recommitment to our values," Jealous said.
Meanwhile, Will Bunch, a national opinion columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, said that "so many more lives would have been saved if leaders dropped climate denial and believed in government for the public good."
In response to these arguments, Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the conservative-leaning Energy and Environment Legal Institute, said it was "sad" to see folks politicizing the tragedy in Texas to advance their agenda.
"Just for the record, this area of Texas is known for flash floods," Milloy added. "Extreme rainfall is not correlated with emissions and there hasn't even been any 'global warming' over the past five days." The climate advocacy group Climate Central also added that "it is difficult to directly attribute specific rain events to climate change" in an assessment about understanding the link between the Texas floods and climate change.
Milloy said that while the National Weather Service was "sufficiently staffed" in his view, he thinks a preliminary investigation will show the warning system in place needs improvements.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called it "shameful and disgusting" to see that in the wake of the environmental tragedy in Texas, people were politicizing it.
"The Texas officials who say, 'We couldn'tqaa [sic] see this coming,' are totally oblivious that they should have seen climate change coming, and done something about it. Climate change denial means more torrential rain for Texas, and more flash flooding," former Washington State Democratic Governor Jay Inslee wrote on social media.
"North Carolina. Texas. When will floods finally wash away the climate change denial in DC that is now washing away America's economically productive clean energy industries?" Inslee asked in a separate post.
One climate group, World Weather Attribution, told Axios it was so confident climate change is what caused the deadly flooding that it does not even plan to study the natural disaster to better understand what caused it. Fox News Digital reached out to the group to understand better why it is so certain of the cause, but did not receive a response. The group investigated the climate change impacts of a July heat wave in Europe as recently as this month, according to the New York Times.
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