{"id":16624,"date":"2025-07-17T19:20:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T19:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=16624"},"modified":"2025-07-17T19:20:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T19:20:04","slug":"rising-waters-will-not-drown-the-american-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/17\/rising-waters-will-not-drown-the-american-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Waters Will Not Drown the American Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Ben Jealous
\n<\/em><\/strong>Guest Column<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On the Fourth of July, Donald Trump signed his \u201cmegabill.\u201d\u00a0The law boosts the dying fossil fuel industry with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It invites\u00a0an additional 470 million metric tons<\/a>\u00a0of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2035 \u2013 that\u2019s the equivalent annual emissions of more than 100 million gas-powered cars. And it aims to stop dead in its tracks the clean energy transition and the green manufacturing jobs boom the Inflation Reduction Act was already starting to create.<\/p>\n

Just hours later, a climate-fueled storm settled over and dumped\u00a0four months worth of rain<\/a>\u00a0on Texas Hill Country. The Guadalupe River\u00a0rose 26 feet within 45 minutes<\/a>. The resulting flash floods killed at least 104 people \u2013 at the time of this writing, although that number will go up \u2013 mostly in Kerr County. That death toll includes dozens of young girls attending the\u00a0Camp Mystic<\/a>\u00a0youth camp.<\/p>\n

This disaster was not a random event. It was a crisis written by the climate crisis and made far worse by the types of policies being pushed by this administration everyday.<\/p>\n

Before the absurdly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act landed on Trump\u2019s desk, his administration had already begun gutting America\u2019s\u00a0frontline defenses against climate disasters\u00a0<\/a>\u2013 like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s climate labs, the National Weather Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As questions abound about why parts of the flood-impacted region did not receive adequate warning about the floods,\u00a0Trump insisted that<\/a>\u00a0“nobody expected it\u201d and it was a \u201conce in 100 years\u201d event.<\/p>\n

But storms like this, as well as increased flooding from the Guadalupe River, were expected \u2013\u00a0and predicted<\/a>. The US Geological Survey \u2013 another\u00a0vital body Trump is trying to eviscerate<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0issued a report to that effect in 2019. The science is clear: warmer air holds more moisture, intensifying storms and accelerating flood risk. We\u2019re now witnessing the violent proof of these predictions.<\/p>\n

According to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, “this kind of record-shattering rain (caused by slow-moving torrential thunderstorms) event\u00a0is *precisely* that which is increasing the fastest<\/a>\u00a0in [a] warming climate.”<\/p>\n

As for the \u201cone in 100 years\u201d claim, those once-in-a-century extreme weather events are now\u00a0happening far more often thanks to the climate crisis<\/a>! Between just 2015-2019, one St. Louis suburb had three major floods and at least two of them were considered \u201c1-in-100-year events.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not hard to see how the climate crisis became a political debate. Decades of anti-science propaganda from the coal, oil, and gas industries. Politicians bought and paid for by fossil fuel oligarchs. A current administration with\u00a0a cabinet full of industry shills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Big Oil alone\u00a0spent a whopping $445 million<\/a>\u00a0through the 2024 election cycle to influence Trump and Congress. A staggering figure to be sure, that does not include donations funneled through dark money groups (likely tens of millions of dollars more \u2013 at least). And it still falls short of the $1 billion Donald Trump\u00a0asked the country’s oil executives to kick in<\/a>\u00a0to his campaign — an amount Trump insisted would be a “deal” for the industry because of what he was willing to give them.<\/p>\n

But it is high time that our leaders, at every level and of every party, stop kowtowing to a toxic and unnecessary industry built on death, illness, and poisoning our communities. It is time they treat this crisis as a struggle for survival \u2013 a fight for the future our children deserve.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the people of Texas grieve and the country grieves with them, their pain is our warning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are at a crossroads: We can double down on denial and let superstorms, heatwaves, droughts, floods, and fires determine our fate. Or we can lead \u2013 with science, resilience, courage, and a recommitment to our values.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If we harness our outrage and come together to fight like hell for our collective future, we will win. Because when people stand up and demand a safe planet, nothing \u2013 not even rising water \u2013 can drown the American spirit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, former president\/CEO of the NAACP and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Jealous Guest Column On the Fourth of July, Donald Trump signed his \u201cmegabill.\u201d\u00a0The law boosts the dying fossil fuel industry with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It invites\u00a0an additional 470 million metric tons\u00a0of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2035 \u2013 that\u2019s the equivalent annual emissions of more than 100 million gas-powered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[302],"class_list":["post-16624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16625,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624\/revisions\/16625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16624"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=16624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}