Climate Change Causes Major Floods in California

A flooded neighborhood in Merced, California {Source: CNN}

In the past few week’s, storms that hit California led to torrential rains and major flooding. The storms shut down power for hundreds of thousands of people and resulted in over 20 deaths. Images of people’s cars floating down inundated streets or residents using surf boards to get from one house to another filled the internet. People struggled to get to work and manage their lives with no power or ability to do essential things. And of course the people hit worst by the flooding and storms are poor and working people who cannot afford to deal with the cost of the damages caused by the storm.

These storms are another symptom of the ongoing ecological destruction that is disrupting the climate, causing greater circumstances of unpredictability. As the unpredictability intensifies, more and more states will have to deal with disasters that they are not traditionally equipped to handle.

And we can only expect more horrific flooding and disasters in the future. In California, a central valley flood protection plan has been proposed which estimates future flooding could result in more than one trillion dollars of damages, and catastrophic death and destruction. A 2022 report suggested that along with experiencing significant periods of drought, California will face increasing flooding events like this more often.

It is clear that climate change has begun to have disastrous effects on the world. These floods are just one of the many ways we can see this happening. And all of these catastrophic weather events reveal that the infrastructure of this society is not at all equipped to withstand these disruptions, which only intensifies the damages. For every human being on the planet, this poses an urgent question: what are we going to do to fight for our future?

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