<
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/21/under-water-in-denial-is-europe-drowning-out-the-climate-crisis>
"In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in
their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a
restaurant and did not come home.
Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and
Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had
gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair
drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually
tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable
torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed
after an agonising search.
“We are used to some floods. Not many,” said Conchi Navarro, the headteacher of
Los Montecillos secondary school, whom Zea Bravo was supposed to succeed upon
her retirement at the end of the school year. “But since December, these
borrasca [low-pressure storms] have come one after the other.”
The quiet fallout of a broken climate – a book club short of one member, a rock
band without a bassist, a cafe that lacks a pastry chef – has been echoing
around western Europe for weeks. The back-to-back storms that battered Spain
have killed at least 16 people in neighbouring Portugal. Soils across France
have reached unprecedented levels of saturation, with weather forecasters
issuing flood alerts that demand “absolute vigilance”. Parts of the UK have
broken records for the number of days without a break in the rain.
This is Europe’s new reality: under water in winter, withered in summer. Yet
even as the weather extremes worsen, the voices of denial have grown louder and
more influential.
“We’re moving toward self-destruction of the planet,” said Navarro, adding that
at the age of 60 she had witnessed the effects of climate change first-hand.
“It’s not something ‘they’ told me, it’s something I’ve seen. How can anybody
say this is an invention?”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
