![\"Portugal](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Portugal_flood_drone_loop_--2fca9fad-afa4-48ec-a240-203f16bf166a-2.0.0000000.jpg\")
Portugal flood drone loop <\/p>\n
This is Europe\u2019s new reality: under water<\/a> in winter, withered<\/a> in summer. Yet even as the weather extremes worsen, the voices of denial have grown louder and more influential.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re moving toward self-destruction of the planet,\u201d said Navarro, adding that at the age of 60 she had witnessed the effects of climate change first-hand. \u201cIt\u2019s not something \u2018they\u2019 told me, it\u2019s something I\u2019ve seen. How can anybody say this is an invention?\u201d<\/p>\n Donald Trump at the White House in Washington earlier this month as rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles were repealed in the US. Photograph: Will Oliver\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n The answer, particularly in the US, is with breathtaking ease. The president, Donald Trump, has ramped up his attacks on climate policy in recent weeks \u2013 quitting<\/a> the Paris agreement again and repealing<\/a> a finding that underpins pollution controls \u2013 while going global with his \u201cdrill, baby, drill<\/a>\u201d policy. Chris Wright, the US energy secretary and former fracking executive, has pressured Europe to roll back methane standards and sustainability rules that could threaten American exports of liquefied natural gas. On Wednesday, he urged spreadsheet-wranglers at the International Energy Agency to \u201cdrop the climate\u201d from its models.<\/p>\n Even in Europe<\/a>, where polls show citizens overwhelmingly accept climate science and support stopping planet-heating pollution, a quiet but deadly form of denial has emerged.<\/p>\n Far-right parties have gained ground across the continent, even as they make fighting climate policy \u2013 aided by the Heartland Institute<\/a>, a US thinktank funded by fossil fuels \u2013 their second priority after immigration. Centrist leaders, alarmed by their success and anxious to placate polluting industries, are rolling back green rules with a vigour that has surprised even some lobbyists. This month, ahead of a meeting in Antwerp between the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and business leaders, the EU\u2019s carbon price \u2013 the cornerstone of its pollution-cutting efforts \u2013 found itself in the crosshairs of the powerful chemical industry.<\/p>\n All the while, evacuation alerts are lighting up phones and rivers are bursting their banks as new storms form before the waters from the last have receded. Alice, Benjamin and Claudia were the storms named by meteorologists that started the season in southern Europe in October and November. David, Emilia and Francis led to a wet December. In January, five storms struck in quick succession \u2013 Goretti, Harry, Ingrid, Joseph and Kristin \u2013 while in February there were just as many \u2013 Leonardo, Martha, Nils, Oriana and Pedro \u2013 in the first two weeks. The season is one storm shy of the record 17 that hit in the 2023-24 season, with forecasters having reached the second half of the alphabet in far less time.<\/p>\n Cars partly submerged in flood waters on 15 November in Monmouth, Wales. Photograph: Christopher Furlong\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The storms lashing the Iberian peninsula and the relentless rains in the UK are the result of a southward shift in the jet stream, a conveyor belt of fast-moving air, which has coincided with high pressure over northern Europe and blocked weather systems in place. Global heating amplifies the damage as warm air can hold more moisture. As water pounds sodden soils that have not had time to dry out, the risk of floods increases exponentially.<\/p>\n Scientists complain that European governments are in denial about the scale of the threat. Christophe Cassou, a climate scientist and research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said the flooding in France was unprecedented in terms of area and the result of record cumulative rainfall since the start of the year.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is surprising is that the authorities are surprised by such an outcome,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are not experiencing the worst possible scenario, but simply a probable one, entirely within the range of what can be expected from climate simulations.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents clean the street next to cars piled up after being swept away by floods in Valencia, Spain in October 2024. Photograph: Alberto Saiz\/AP<\/p>\n In Spain, the consequences of such negligence are fresh in people\u2019s minds. On 29 October 2024, Empar Puchades listened to a lunchtime press conference in which the president of Valencia said the storm sitting over the region would soon move on. Puchades still felt troubled. The 70-year-old former healthcare worker looked up the rainfall on official meteorological platforms. Worried about the volume of water and conscious that she lived on flat farmland in a highly urbanised region, she spoke to a friend in a higher-up village who told her an \u201cunimaginable flood\u201d was coming.<\/p>\n Puchades dutifully warned her neighbours and asked her middle son not to work the night shift, but he told her he had to relieve a colleague, and set out early instead. \u201cIf my son had left at his usual time, he would have been caught in the full force of the water,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The floods that evening killed 229 people in Valencia. The disaster sparked public fury at authorities, who delayed sending alerts, and hammered home the harm that fossil fuel pollution is causing rich countries. Global heating increased rain intensity by 21%, a study<\/a> in Nature Communications found on Tuesday, and expanded the area under 180mm of rain by 55%.<\/p>\n The night the floods struck, Puchades grabbed the dog, went upstairs, and opened the shutters to see a tongue of water \u2013 \u201cnot very high, with a lot of debris, making a very strange noise and with an unrecognisable smell\u201d \u2013 approaching her home. It came slowly at first, and then quickly. \u201cI will always say that what struck me was how fast it was.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Spain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Spain_flood_evacuation_-_loop--ef78b38f-bba2-4aaa-8035-f58a78a612a7-1.0.0000000.jpg\")
Spain flood evacuation – loop<\/p>\n