EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR MONDAY, JULY 19, 2021

‘Against Mother Nature’s Worst Events, Better Infrastructure Is Our Defense’

July 18, 2021 (EIRNS)—The doublespeak media leaders of the United States, New York Times and CNN for example, made clear yesterday their hope that hundreds of Germans will have died in the natural disaster to make it possible for Green Party co-leader Annalena Baerbock to rally and win the Chancellorship. The Times headline—“Germany Floods: Climate Change Moves to Center of Campaign as Toll Mounts”—is sufficient to give you the idea.

The lead article in the German weekly Neue Solidarität spoke instead to reality: “Gegen die Launen der Mutter Natur, hilfts nur der Ausbau der Infrastruktur!” (The Takedown of Infrastructure Helps the Moods of Mother Nature) That article says: “The worst flood to date in Central Europe, the so-called Magdalene flood in July 1342, occurred long before CO2 levels rose in the atmosphere. At that time the water was in the cathedrals of Würzburg and Mainz, the cities on the Rhine, Main, Weser and Elbe were overrun by floods, and thousands of people were killed....

“The reconstruction of infrastructure must be used to rebuild the businesses hit by the floods, so that the people in the region can get back their jobs and thus their livelihoods. The goal must be that the people affected should be better off after the reconstruction than before the disaster....

“Whether such natural events, which are always to be expected, turn into catastrophes depends above all on whether people have created the necessary infrastructure in time to enable them to cope with them. We do not need a vague ‘climate protection,’ but rather concrete measures to protect people.”

Touring the flood area, Chancellor Angela Merkel fell headlong into a torrent of climate hysteria, featuring the absurd statement, “The German language hardly knows any words for the devastation that has been caused here.” She might have tried Nachlässigkeit, German for “negligence.” The government apparently had meteorological warnings beginning July 12-13 that heavy rains were likely to cause serious flooding in tributaries of the Rhine-Meuse River systems, but the warnings were turned into public service bulletins largely through certain apps rather than all-points alerts. Large numbers of people did not evacuate, despite being in known danger of inundation. Moreover these tributary rivers are, from EIR reports, not dredged or canalized, nor are the dams on them maintained.

But to Merkel, the storms’ force “had something to do with climate change. We have to hurry, we have to get faster in the fight against climate change.” So Europeans in the Rhine and Meuse watersheds cannot expect in this government’s “recovery” package, any improvements in the flood-control and water management infrastructure, but only faster bans on energy sources and faster increases in their electric bills.

The floods in the Elbe River system in the East of the country in 2002 followed a full week of heavy rains, and were more devastating and much more widespread than these; they spread across Eastern Europe and even into Russia. Perhaps global warming became even more extreme by 2002 than it had been back in 2021, when there were already hardly any German words to describe it?

The situation is exactly the same in the North American West, where a gradually intensifying drought condition has been known to be developing for 25 years, with no action ever initiated to build “great projects” of water transfer infrastructure from wet regions of the continent, nor to build power plants capable of desalination along the surrounding oceans and seas of water. Instead, “global warming” (now “climate change”) is pronounced the reason that nothing can be done but sacrifice to “save the planet.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, federal chairwoman of the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party in Germany, said that the European Union’s so-called climate-change recovery package “could only have been devised by people who have no interest in people, who do not care about the development of the developing sector, but who want to continue the colonialist system.”

Mark Carney, the UN’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and former Governor of the Bank of England, proposed buying CO2 emission rights from developing countries—provided that they renounce economic development and the expansion of agriculture. There is already an agreement between Norway and Gabon, in which Gabon has committed itself to forgoing economic development of its rainforests—which cover 90% of the country’s area. For this they will get a ridiculous €150 million over ten years! Said Zepp-LaRouche: “I find that absolutely disgusting and I hope that the legitimate will of the majority of people in the world will prevail instead, to claim their right to development.”