People Denying Global Warming Will In Time Be Held Accountable

Climate Change Denial Should Be A Crime

In the wake of Harvey, it's time to treat science denial as gross negligence--and hold those who do the denying accountable.

In August 2016, months after Houston had been hit by the second of two back-to-back “hundred year floods,” Mike Talbott, then the head of Houston’s flood control district, told The Texas Tribune and ProPublica that he still had no plans to study climate change or its potential impacts on the county — Harris, the third-largest in the nation — that he was charged with protecting. Talbott criticized scientists for being “anti-development,” and not only ignored but denigrated studies — even those conducted by his own department, one of which he called “absurd” — that suggested development was worsening flooding, or that urged him to leave prairies intact to absorb floodwaters. When the Tribune told Talbott that a host of scientific experts had said the contrary, his reply was blunt. 

“You need to find some better experts,” he said. When asked for names, the Tribune reported, Talbott would only say, “starting here, with me.” 

Almost exactly one year later, Harvey made landfall.

Hurricane Harvey has drowned the paved, populous sprawl of Houston to an extent that, to most Americans, is all but inconceivable. Our fourth-largest city is now a sunken, subdivided ghost ship. Tens of billions of dollars of damage done. Countless homes, the vast majority uninsured, lost. Thirty-eight people killed (so far).

Jason Vargas carried belongings on his back after evacuating his home due to severe flooding following Hurricane Harvey in north Houston August 29, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Win McNamee / Getty Images

Scientists knew a disaster like Harvey was coming. Those in power who refused to listen — who refused to use the best available data to do their jobs of protecting their constituents from disaster — should be held accountable. Mike Talbott’s department could have acted on sound evidence and saved lives. They did not. They repeatedly favored development over public safety, going so far as to allow 7,000 homes to be built in low-lying, flood-vulnerable areas since 2010. It is impossible to determine how many have died as a result of any official's refusal to appropriately prepare the city for disaster, but there is little doubt some of the blame for the scale of this calamity is theirs. The Washington Post generously calls it “ignorance.” But it's high time to start taking this pointed refusal to prepare, this refusal to observe the basic tenets of science seriously — and call it what it is: Negligence. Criminal negligence, even.

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The list of ways in which Talbott and his office should have been aware of the substantial risk of ignoring a robust body of scientific evidence, at the tragic expense of the people of Houston, is stunning. As a climate change skeptic, Talbott, who is trained not as a scientist but as an engineer, refused to consider projections of rising sea levels and heavier rainfall. He let developers pour concrete over prairielands that used to soak up that rainfall, exacerbating flooding. He refused to acknowledge that constructing elevated buildings in a floodplain was probably redirecting floods elsewhere. All of the above led to a sharp rise in complaints from increasingly flooded homeowners, activists, and scientists. Instead of preparing Houston for a climate-changed, flood-prone era, Mike Talbott and his office helped it evolve into a deadly urban aquarium waiting to happen.

The negligence described here is happening everywhere.  The impact of global warming in Florida, New Orleans, the Arctic, Greenland, and many other places is well documented.  People who have responsibility for our safety must take whatever actions are required.  Those who fail should be held accountable.