Year in review: Climate change and flooding hit home in California
CalMattersDec 21, 2023
Flash Floods Hit San Diego
The Facts
Flash flooding hit San Diego on Monday, after the city saw three inches of rainfall in three hours. Mayor Todd Gloria declared a state of emergency as hundreds of people were rescued from the submerged San Diego River, Tijuana River Valley, and low-level areas on the coast.
Preliminary data suggested the San Diego International Airport saw 2.7 inches of rain within the first four hours of Monday, making it a record for any day in January and the fifth wettest day ever recorded in the city. With neighborhoods from the South Bay to Oceanside underwater, some schools were canceled and freeways shut.
The Spin
Left narrative
Climate change has hit California particularly hard given its intensifying effect on droughts as well as the rare but severe rainstorms making landfall. The state government has already begun cracking down on local water managers and agreed on regional state-to-state water sharing, but it must also pass more bills to force lower carbon emissions if it wants to tackle the broader climate issue.
Right narrative
Instead of working on ways to help Californians defend against high winds and rain, the state government has chosen to inundate them with fear over the world ending so it can impose power-grabbing laws. People are so afraid of the climate apocalypse that they've allowed their lawmakers to force companies to track not only their business-related emissions but those of their employees. The world isn't ending any time soon, so the public should take a moment to question if authoritarianism prompted by a changing climate is actually justified.
Nerd narrative
There is a 50% chance that California will carry through with Governor Newsom's plan to sell only zero-emission electric cars and passenger trucks by 2035, according to the Metaculus prediction community.