A flooded street in Verviers, Belgium (photo: Belga)
Residents of Valkenburg, Netherlands, assessing the damage done to their houses (photo: Marcel van den Bergh)
A battered ship at the Maas river in Luik, Belgium (photo: AFP)
An army vehicle removes debris in Aachen, (North Rhine-Westphalia) Germany (photo: DPA)
Damage in Schuld, (Rhineland-Pfalz) Germany, where the Ahr river flooded (photo: EPA)
A woman swims through a flooded street in Luik, Belgium, where the Maas river flooded (photo: Reuters)
Two men in Bad Neuenahr, (Rhineland-Pfalz) Germany, attempt to rescue what they can (photo: AFP)
The running water stacked cars on a roundabout in Verviers, Belgium (photo: AFP)
An auto mechanic in Mechelen, Netherlands, watching the water run into his garage (photo: Marcel van den Bergh)
for who it wasnt clear yet: climate change is no longer something that’ll have catastrophic effects 9 years from now or only in “lesser” (bah) countries that arent as well prepared. the dutch are famous for our water ingenuity and infrastructure and look where we are. eat the rich
Exactly! This disaster, all this material damage, and what the previous posts forgot to mention, a death toll that keeps growing (last I checked it was growing ever closer to 200, and at least a 1000 missing), is fully, completely and provably attributable to both climate change (the sudden torrential rains that fed so much water to the rivers that their level grew by literal metres are exactly what is expected to happen with anthropogenic climate change) and to capitalism (runaway industrialisation, urban growth and industrial farming meant the water had nowhere to go but to flood all those places).
Experts have been warning for years that this would happen, that it wasn’t a matter of if, but of when. But an unwillingness to invest in the measures needed to protect us from such a catastrophe (they didn’t make economical sense was the excuse at the time), politicians who downplayed the effect of climate change or downright denied it was happening, and a population who was lulled in a false sense of security, meant that we now have billions of euros of damage, as well as the loss of many lives, all of which could have been avoided.
And if I sound angry, it’s because as this is happening, there are people out there calling this disaster a hoax, and spreading fake news about it. The disrespect towards the victims and their loved ones, as well as the thousands of people who have lost their houses, their livelihoods, their entire neighbourhoods, makes me fuming! To use the great words of Greta Thunberg: “How dare you?!”
In reality, Triceratops is more closely related to flamingos than rhinos, so just because something ”seems obvious,“ doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the truth.
“Imagine if people had been going ‘don’t fight hate with hate’ back when Hitler was around.”
Fam…let me tell you bout Poland.
Let me tell you about how the entire rest of Europe sat ack and watched the invasion of Poland because they thought it would be “improper” to send military aid. How they were unwilling to enforce the treaties that Germany was breaking, because that would make them “just as bad.” They sat back and wrote strongly worded letters while fascists grew in power because they didn’t want to dirty their hands. They thought reasonable discussion and politics would be enough to stop a fascist dictator from rising to power.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t enough.
like yes, people literally did try that argument then too.
Everywhere there’s fascists there are fascist apologists hiding under the guise of pacifism, ready to enable their shit and demonize resistance.
Child, man, gay, husband, previously a dog owner, language geek, conlanger, Dutch,
French,
polyglot, super hero by day, previous President of the Language Creation Society by night. No, I don't know how that works either.
