While thousands of displaced Texans brave hurricane Harvey and continue to flee from deadly, rising flood waters, members of the media are busy politicizing the disaster. On MSNBC, Neena Sajita of the Texas Tribune said the unprecedented storm is damaging Texas because it’s a red state where local leaders don’t favor liberal policy prescriptions for addressing climate change.
“The local officials in Houston didn’t have any plans to study the effects of climate change in the city or think about whether the city needs to plan for more frequent and more intense rainstorms, which most scientists say are a sure thing,” Sajita said.
At least 14 people have died, including a family of six who drowned trying to escape the rising flood waters. Officials anticipate the death toll to increase after the rain ceases and rescue workers are able to recover bodies from flooded homes.
CNN’s John Vause called the timing of the storm and its proximity to President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. participation from the Paris climate accord “ironic.”
“President Trump signed an executive order rolling back an Obama-era regulation which required all government construction to take into account the flood risk which was being caused and the future flood risk being caused by climate change and rising ocean temperatures and sea levels,” Vause said. “The timing now seems almost ironic.”
MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow proved that she can definitely count to six during her coverage of the storm.
“Since 1989, what they call a 100-year storm, a storm that’s only supposed to happen once in 100 years, since 1989 that’s happened six times,” she said.
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said the GOP was to blame for the monster storm because many have questioned the science behind climate change theories.
“Man-made climate change is a myth,” he said. “The Republican Party is united on that. And I think one question we should ask, even if the Republican Party isn’t asking that, is what is the role of man-made climate change in disasters like this one? It doesn’t necessarily create storms like this, but does it increase the intensity of these storms? You know, climate change is part of this story.”
