An Urgent Climate Wake-Up Call

In the aftermath of the deadly Texas floods, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse prepares to give his three hundredth climate-warning speech; Elizabeth Kolbert reports. And, then, John Cassidy on the economic consequences of Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill.” Plus:

Heavy rain was again forecast to fall in parts of Texas today, as the stunning toll of the recent floods becomes clearer. More than ninety people have been confirmed dead, including twenty-seven campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp situated along the Guadalupe River, in Kerr County. The flash floods, caused in part by torrential rainfall fuelled by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, rank among the deadliest in the past century, and the number of confirmed victims is expected to rise. The tragedy has sparked debates about what warning systems were (or were not) in place to alert residents of the pending danger, and has drawn renewed attention toward the Trump Administration’s gutting of federal programs dedicated to climate science and disaster response.

For some public officials, climate change, and our collective failure to take meaningful action to combat it, has been a constant cause. As Elizabeth Kolbert writes today, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, is set to make the three hundredth speech in his series dubbed “Time to Wake Up.” He has been giving these speeches, often in front of a near-empty Senate floor, since Barack Obama’s first term in office. Now, “depending on how you look at things,” Kolbert notes, “the timing couldn’t be better or it couldn’t be worse.” Using executive actions and provisions in the newly passed tax bill, the Trump Administration has—among scores of other potentially disastrous measures—cancelled the fees that businesses were required to pay for leaking greenhouse gases, revoked California’s ability to set its own strict vehicle-emissions standards, and eliminated tax credits for clean energy. Whitehouse is still working on the final draft of his latest remarks, which he is scheduled to deliver on Wednesday, but he gave Kolbert a preview. “We’ve now entered the era of consequences of our climate negligence,” he said. “The stuff that the scientists predicted is actually starting to happen, and now that it’s so real and immediate, we should consider how it is that we failed so badly.”

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