Sustainability First: Spain Floods Prompt Calls for Climate Action

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NASSAU, BAHAMAS – It was described as a year’s worth of rainfall, in just eight hours. In Valencia, Spain, cars left piled up on top of each other in debris filled streets, and roads left crumbling after the flash floods ripped across the eastern region.

That catastrophic flooding leaving the death toll in the triple digits.

It’s cause? Something the Spanish call a “gota fria” or cold drop, when cold air collides with the warmer waters of the Mediterranean sea creating strong rainstorms that can also produce hail and tornadoes.

With this week’s floods being the most deadly spain has seen in decades, it’s worth mentioning that the mediterranean sea’s temperature hit its highest on record at 83 degrees fahrenheit. 

Ernesto Rodrigues camino, a senior state meteorologist in Spain, saying “in the context of climate change, these types of intense and exceptional rare rainfall events are going to become more frequent and more intense and, therefore, destructive.”

In 2021 Spain was the fourth largest polluter in the European Union. 

The Bahamas is no stranger to the consequences of climate change fueled storms, and lately the country has been hailed as a leader in the push for climate action, taking center stage in many of the international discussions about the global crisis. 

Just last month Prime Minister Philip Davis addressed the united nations general assembly, calling on larger countries to take the Climate crisis more seriously, criticizing their ability to “somehow quickly find eye watering sums of money for bullets and bombs” while using small change for climate action. 

Now with larger European countries like Spain and Germany feeling the pressure from the climate crisis, will we see more meaningful progress in climate action?

The next United Nations climate change conference takes place in less than two weeks, We’ll just have to wait and see.