Byron Blake | Texas tragedy: Lessons for regional diplomacy and survival

In a mere 95 minutes, in the early morning of July 4, torrential downpours in Kerr County, Texas, caused the Guadalupe River to overflow. Floodwaters rose 20 feet. Warning systems were overwhelmed while sleeping campers and residents were swept to their deaths. Ten days later, Officials in Texas’ rural and flood-prone Hill County confirmed 132 dead and at least 161 people missing. Most of the missing are presumed dead.

This, country with the most sophisticated weather forecasting and warning systems, and financial and technical capacity in unlimited supply.

Governor Abbot, Senator Ted Cruz, and President Donald Trump visited the area in those first 10 days after the disastrous event. They lamented the tragedy and acknowledged this to be one of the worst disasters they have witnessed.

No surprise. Meteorological data suggest that the last comparable event in the flood-prone Hill County was some 37 years ago, in 1988, and before that, it was over one 100 years. In the pre-1988 era, changes in global ambient temperatures were hardly noticeable. However, by 1988, conditions had changed markedly.

Perceptible change was first recognised in the Copenhagen Conference on the Environment in 1972. 132 World leaders, including Texan, President George Bush Sr., in Rio, Brazil, 20 years later, in 1992, at the Second World Conference on Environment and Development, went further.

They accepted that human action, specifically industrial and large-scale agricultural activities, was leading to accelerated global warming. They agreed that the industrialised countries were responsible. They decided that those countries would begin to take mitigating actions so that by 1999, a process of reversal would begin. The Industrialised Countries would also provide additional financial resources to assist developing countries in adapting to any negative impacts arising from climate-induced events.

AMBIENT TEMPERATURE

Most fundamentally, they agreed that increases in ambient temperature would be held at below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Industrialised countries have increased their CO2 emissions every year since 1992. At the same time countries with large populations like China, India, and Brazil increased their total emissions to raise living standards towards UN agreed targets. Further, for at least the first 25 years after, developed countries’ contribution to official development assistance declined as a percentage of their gross domestic product each year. That fact was confirmed at the International Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002.

One effect of the continuous increase in greenhouse gas emissions is that the 1.5 degrees Celsius guardrail was breached in 2024. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has posited that the 2.0 level could be exceeded by 2030 on the present trajectory. This might be a cautionary note for some, but an existential reality for Caribbean small islands and low-lying coastal states.

Let’s go back to Texas, where the historic flooding can, without question, be attributed to climate change. After the initial shock and deflections of responsibility, Texan and visiting Republican policymakers to the devastated Hill County have had two responses. One, Texans are resilient people; they will rebuild. Two, GOP policymakers will spare no financial resources to help them rebuild. Rebuild, presumably, in the same flood-prone Hill County. In all my research, no United States policymaker or commentator has raised the issue that with a 100-year event shortened to 37, and with increases in climate change, whether this could shorten further. There has been no effort to consider recent climatic events, which have been aplenty, in nearby states and counties.

Those would have been logical lines of inquiry if morality or logic were the drivers of policy. Unfortunately, GOP policies and those of many oil (hydrocarbon) producing countries are driven by a desire to convert that natural wealth into current financial wealth as fast as possible. There are no concerns for the financial health of future generations or the lives of their fellow citizens. That, incidentally, is the same desire that has driven the trade in guns in Texas and the US.

LESSONS

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in his address to the opening session of the 49th Regular Meeting of CARICOM, as the incoming Chairman, asserted, “As we prepare for COP 30 in Belém, Brazil, our call is urgent and clear: the promises of the Paris agreement must be met both in emission reduction and access to climate finance at the level and scale required”.

“Our discussions will give special attention to COP 30 preparations and climate finance which remain the defining issues for our region’s survival and prosperity.”

The commitment, not the promise, in the Paris agreement of 2015, was for greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced sufficiently to keep the increase in ambient global temperature below 1.5 Degrees Celsius. As stated earlier, that commitment has not been kept.

The second element of the Paris agreement was for the Developed Countries to deliver on the promise they made in Copenhagen in 2009 to provide US$100 billion per year to facilitate mitigation and adaptation by developing countries. As of COP 29 in 2024, that promise had not been kept in any year.

Despite the failure of the international community, the Chairman maintained correctly that “CARICOM will engage the world through the second CARICOM Africa summit in Ethiopia and during the 80th anniversary of the United Nations”.

That is giving diplomacy the maximum opportunity to protect their vital interest – their continued existence as viable members of the international community. CARICOM and other Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) members have pursued a diplomacy based on science, actual climate-induced disasters like the Maui, Hawaii wildfires of 2023 and California wildfires and floods of 2024/25, and record-breaking temperatures, floods, droughts, and wildfires across all continents over the last 6 years to demonstrate the extreme vulnerability of their people and homelands.

There are some chilling realities from the Texas tragedy as these states go into COP 30. If the loss of over 200 Texans in less than 2 hours did not move policymakers to mention mitigation, what arguments and what realities will move them to do so at the global level?

And, if the highest per capita and the second highest gross polluter refuse to commit, what would be the prospect of an overall reduction?

In such a situation, Jamaica, CARICOM, and AOSIS will need to review their diplomacy.

Ambassador Byron Blake is former deputy permanent representative of Jamaica to the United Nations and former assistant secretary general of CARICOM. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com