Now we have a moral duty to talk about climate change

This is what climate change looks like. Entire metropolitan areas – Houston in the United States and Mumbai in India – submerged in catastrophic floods.

Record-breaking rainfall: Harvey’s 50-plus inches of torrential deluge set a new national tropical cyclone rain record for the continental United States.

They used to make Hollywood disaster movies about this sort of thing. Now it’s just the news.

PHOTO: JIM WATSON/AFP/AFP/Getty Images

US President Donald Trump speaks at the Texas Department of Public Safety Emergency Operations Center in Austin, Texas on August 29, 2017, as rains from Hurricane Harvey continue to flood parts of Texas. US President Donald Trump flew into storm-ravaged Texas Tuesday in a show of solidarity and leadership in the face of the deadly devastation wrought by Harvey -- as the battered US Gulf Coast braces for even more torrential rain. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSON / The erroneous mention appearing in the metadata of this photo by JIM WATSON has been modified in AFP systems in the following manner: [Austin, Texas] instead of [Corpus Christi, Texas]. Please immediately remove the erroneous mention[s] from all your online services and delete it from your servers. If you have been authorized by AFP to distribute it to third parties, please ensure that the same actions are carried out by them. Failure to promptly comply with these instructions will entail liability on your part for any continued or post notification usage. Therefore we thank you very much for all your attention and prompt action. We are sorry for the inconvenience this notification may cause and remain at your disposal for any further information you may require. (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Related Article As tragedy unfolds, Trump faces test of counselor-in-chief

Officials as senior as Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, have suggested that now – during a natural disaster – is not the time to raise the divisive and highly politicized issue of global warming. But if not now, when? After the waters subside, the news crews pack up, and the long task of rebuilding begins, the world’s attention inevitably moves on.

Watching Trump tour the flooded areas, I was reminded of his Rose Garden press conference less than three months ago announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty. In that act of wanton international vandalism, Trump was helping condemn millions more people to the threat of intensified extreme events in future decades.

It is not politically opportunistic to raise this issue now. Instead we have a moral duty not to accept the attempted conspiracy of silence imposed by powerful political and business interests opposed to any reduction in the use of fossil fuels. We owe this to the people of Texas as much to those of Bangladesh and India, and Niger – which was also struck by disastrous flooding this week.

Climate disasters demonstrate our collective humanity and interdependence. We have to help each other out – in the short term by saving lives and in the longer term by cutting greenhouse gases and enhancing resilience, especially in developing countries.

01:14 - Source: CNN

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