The Dana that will return and the climate crisis that some deny

Dana's birthday, which is being commemorated today, comes as images of the hurricane are shown on television. Balm, which is devastating Jamaica, combined with archival footage of the floods and Carlos Mazón's poker face, pretending he was on the ball. They are two very distant and distinct tragedies, but in both cases there are common points. One is the fact that the intensity is greater due to the climate crisis, which is warming the sea at an increasingly alarming rate and causing, in turn, greater frequency and virulence of the extreme rains and winds that have always accompanied these atmospheric phenomena. It's true, as the deniers say, that hurricanes and hurricanes, formerly known as cold drops, have always existed. But they are wrong if they think these are isolated cases, because it has become clear that the global warming caused by the use of fossil fuels and other polluting materials makes them more abundant and dangerous now.

This is, in fact, the other coincidental element between the hurricane Balm and the damage: which occur in a context where there is no clear understanding of the seriousness of the situation. The Valencian government downplayed the storm, following the Popular Party's line in considering climate experts alarmist. And in the Caribbean countries, many of which are impoverished and long mistreated, scientists and their own politicians have been warning for years that, despite not being responsible for the emissions that cause global warming, they are in one of the areas hardest hit by the climate crisis because, precisely, it is there where these major storms reach their greatest intensity. However, in a few weeks another COP, the UN climate summit, opens, and the need to help these and other poorer countries prepare for the effects of a crisis they did not cause will once again come up. With a bit of luck, there will be promises, but beyond immediate solidarity in the face of the disaster, which will soon be over, it will be difficult for the promised funds to actually appear. Instead, with Donald Trump's United States at the forefront, the number of deniers and countries withdrawing funds is growing. There is no room, they say, for solidarity, and they question the greatest, namely, whether all this really has to do with human action.

But it is. Not only in terms of the climate, but also in terms of the way the territory has been managed. Much of the blame for what happened in Valencia, for example, has to do not only with the incompetence of the Mazón government, which failed to react in time, but also with the management of many other governments, of all administrations, which have allowed speculative urban planning that has built where it shouldn't without considering the consequences. Now, in many of the affected towns, it has been decided to demolish houses to renaturalize the edges of the ravines in preparation for future floods. The same is also being considered in Alcanar, where, after the ravages of the last flood, theAliceThe decision has been made to relocate ten families whose homes were built in flood zones, for whom other solutions will have to be found. They are our first climate refugees, but they certainly won't be the last. No matter how much you try to deny it, reality, the facts, eventually prevail. And the sooner everyone becomes aware of it, the faster we can address it.