CNN and MSNBC have been working double time to turn the Hurricane Harvey disaster into a conversation about climate change.
“12 years ago was Katrina. We’ve now had three storms in 12 years that were as bad as this,” The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza said on CNN. “A lot of Democrats will be saying, you know, climate change is actually…this is the kind of flooding you would predict based on the climate change models.”
CNN host John Berman pressured a Republican congressman to blame the disaster on climate change, asking if hurricanes are “really just a part of life.”
“Is this something that’s just a part of life?” Berman asked, claiming he didn’t want to “get into the politics of climate change.”
“Is this something the federal and local government need to have a bigger conversation about?” he pressed.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin went a step further and claimed that the entire Republican Party doesn’t believe in manmade climate change.
“One question we should ask ask, even if Republicans isn’t asking that, is what is the role of manmade climate change in disasters like this one?” Toobin said, arguing that climate change may increase the intensity of storms.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spoke to Neena Satija, an investigative reporter who predicted that Houston may not be prepared for a natural disaster, to point to climate change as an issue.
“The local officials in Houston didn’t have any plans to study the effects of climate change or think about whether the city needs to plan for more frequent and more intense rainstorms, which many scientists say are a sure thing for Houston, so there was a lot of shock about that as well,” Satija stated.
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