The
Guardian view on climate-linked disasters: Spain’s tragedy will not be the last
Editorial
More than
200 deaths and widespread destruction in Valencia are the latest sign of danger
in a warming world
Fri 1 Nov
2024 18.30 GMT
The death
toll from floods in Spain’s Valencia region has topped 200. A huge clean-up is
under way amid desperate conditions, with severe weather warnings still in
place. The storms which caused this devastation – with roads turned into muddy
rivers, thousands of homes deluged and cars swept into piles – were
unprecedented. The gota fría, or “cold drop”, is a regular occurrence when cold
autumnal air moves over the warm Mediterranean, causing dense clouds to form.
But this rain, according to the Spanish weather service, was 10 times stronger
than a normal downpour.
Extreme
weather in Spain, and the rest of southern Europe, is more commonly understood
to mean dangerous heat, drought and wildfires. The regional government is under
attack regarding the lack of sufficient warnings and there is no doubt that the
severity of these floods came as a terrible shock.
But in
another sense, the events of the past week are part of a pattern. While the
destruction is unprecedented, the analysis from climate scientists is familiar.
Peer-reviewed attribution studies – which use computer models to ascertain the
impact of global heating on specific events – take time to produce. But the
head of the World Weather Attribution project said initial calculations suggest
that rising temperatures made this week’s floods twice as likely. Another
scientist, Stefano Materia, said the reduced absorbency of parched earth means
droughts and floods should be viewed as two sides of the same coin. Like
Hurricane Helene, which caused chaos and killed more than 220 people in the
south-eastern US in September, and Storm Boris, which led to severe floods
across central Europe, Spain’s deluge is proof of the havoc wreaked by climate
instability.
This week
also brought some more hopeful news. Greenhouse gas emissions in the EU fell by
8% in 2023, taking them to 37% below 1990 levels thanks to the boom in
renewables. But the worrying lack of progress at the UN biodiversity summit in
Colombia, combined with warnings about the likely impact on global
environmental negotiations of a Trump victory, mean that expectations for this
month’s climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, are not high. The fact that the host
country is set to expand gas production, while energy giants Shell and BP are
both scaling back green investments, points towards a political climate of
resurgent denial.
The Cop
biodiversity process, which runs in parallel to the Cop climate talks, has
never gathered the same momentum, despite the vital importance of protecting
nature – including forests and oceans – and the way this is linked to the
climate threat. Despite the framework agreed two years ago in Montreal, most
countries do not even have an action plan to set alongside their emissions
targets. Much of the argument in Colombia has focused on funding for poorer
countries, and the role of government subsidies for environmentally harmful
industries.
In Spain, a
large majority of the public recognises the threat from climate change and
favours policies to address it. There, as in much of the world, catastrophic
weather events that used to be regarded as “natural disasters” are now,
rightly, seen instead as climate disasters. Policies that support people and
places to adapt to heightened risks are urgently needed. Clear and timely
warnings and recovery plans are part of this. But reducing the threat from
dangerous weather, such as that which struck eastern, southern and central
Spain this week, remains the greatest political challenge.
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