When We Ignore the Root Causes We Enable the Next Tragedy

Like gun violence, climate disasters keep becoming more likely

Image Credit: Carter Johnston for The New York Times

More than 120 people are dead in Texas. Children swept away. Entire families gone in minutes. And once again, we’re told not to “politicize” the tragedy.

But if we don’t speak out now, we’re complicit in the next one. This was preventable and the people in charge knew it. The region that flooded—Flash Flood Alley—has been known for decades as one of the most vulnerable in the country. Forecasts were accurate. Officials were warned. The risk was clear. But there was no serious effort to prevent this kind of loss, because we’ve allowed prevention itself to become politically inconvenient.

Climate Change Is Amplifying These Disasters

This storm was made far more likely—and far more deadly—by a changing climate we’ve failed to confront.

• Extreme rainfall events like this are now several times more likely than they were just a few decades ago, driven by warmer air that holds and releases more moisture.

• Texas has seen a 5–15% increase in extreme one-day rainfall events since the late 20th century, making floods more frequent, more severe, and more dangerous.

This is the new normal…and we built it.

We’re Stuck in a Cycle of Reactive Band-Aids

Disaster strikes. We scramble for federal aid. Rebuild piecemeal. Repeat. It’s reactive. It’s expensive. And it’s deadly.

This isn’t just a Texas story. All across America, we’re living in a political culture that treats resilience and mitigation as afterthoughts:

• Outdated electrical grids fail in every heatwave

• Fire seasons now stretch half the year

• Critical infrastructure isn’t hardened

• Basic protections—like flood maps and building codes—are ignored or underfunded

Don’t call it bad luck, this is bad governance.

Causation Without Consequence

The officials who failed to prepare deserve to be held accountable, but that’s only half the story. This isn’t just about failing to prevent a tragedy…it’s about helping to cause it. Year after year, the industries driving climate breakdown are allowed to pollute without consequence. There’s no price on the carbon. No penalty for the risk. No accountability for the communities left underwater, on fire, or without power.

Because there’s no single molecule to trace back to this flood, they get away with it.

But the science is clear: these disasters are far more likely because of their actions and they are profiting while others pay the cost. This is climate arson with legal impunity.

And the longer we treat it as a sad inevitability instead of a manufactured crisis, the more permission we give them to keep going.

Like Gun Violence, We Ignore the Root Cause

We’ve seen this before with gun violence. Tragedy strikes. We mourn. We donate. We hold a vigil. But we ignore the root causes, and too often, we make it easier for the next disaster to happen. That’s exactly what’s happening with climate. The danger is rising. And yet we keep subsidizing the industries causing the harm, while underfunding the systems that could protect us.

We need to protect people before the disaster. Not just after.

That means:

• Treating resilience and mitigation as core infrastructure, not soft policy

• Moving money faster—into the ground, into the workforce, into the places at highest risk

• Reforming permitting and procurement to prioritize speed, safety, and climate outcomes

• Rebuilding the public capacity we’ve allowed to wither

• And finally, slowing the crisis at its root—by ending the free pass for industries fueling the climate crisis and decarbonizing the systems that are making these disasters more frequent and more extreme

We are living in the age of compounding risk: climate, infrastructure, economic. We can’t afford to wait for the next tragedy to “learn lessons.” The lesson is right here.

Until next week,
Tom