Kansas lawmakers can deny climate change, but that won’t stop the extreme flooding

Kansas has a lot of work to do to get out ahead of flooding that’s lasting longer and causing more damage.

A special committee chaired by Kansas Senate Vice President Jeff Longbine on Tuesday heard from experts and then recommended that the state improve and centralize its emergency communications through the Kansas Water Office. The special committee also said the Legislature should fully fund the state’s water plan, which addresses conservation, flooding and irrigation, and pass a joint resolution to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund the 100 or so new watershed dams the state needs.

All of that makes sense.

But arguments over whether the climate crisis is or is not a factor in the more intense and extreme weather events we’re seeing all over the world are absurd at this point.

“I’m not prepared to make that call because we don’t know enough” to say whether that’s a factor in Kansas flooding, Longbine said in an interview on Wednesday. Though no one event can be tied to the climate crisis, the trend of a hotter world with many more extreme storms certainly can be.

“Yesterday’s meeting was not about climate change or what causes it,” Longbine said, “but we did have testimony that last year was a perfect storm” after a major melt backed up rivers, and then 22 inches of rain fell in May, the wettest single month in recorded Kansas history. The year before was also unusually wet, but for the five years prior, there was a drought. “The National Weather Service testimony basically said, ‘I don’t have any scientific evidence to prove’” that’s a factor in flooding.

Plenty of scientific evidence does suggest that as warming continues to contribute to both extreme weather and a rise in sea level, floodplains in this country are expected to nearly double by the end of the century. Droughts, wildfires and storms of all kinds will worsen, too, and the new studies linking violence and heat are nothing to laugh off, either.

“We can’t legislate Mother Nature,” Longbine said on Tuesday, “but what we can do is be better prepared for the extremes.”

We actually can and should legislate to mitigate the effects of the damage we’ve done to Mother Nature, to be better prepared for the extremes. Denial hasn’t worked, and won’t.

We’ve got to call what’s happening by its name, because it’s hard to mobilize the kind of urgent effort that’s needed without a grasp of the scope of change, and of the mass migrations and mass extinctions we’re looking at.

Do we really have to call it limate-cay, ange-chay so as not to upset anybody?

If we hadn’t given into this unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious years ago, we wouldn’t still be having a conversation in which Longbine’s Democratic colleague, Rep. Annie Kuether, even has to say, as she did on Tuesday, “I certainly believe in climate change.”

It believes in us either way. And Kuether doesn’t need a peek at the Farmers’ Almanac to know that “we’re going to be dealing with a whole lot more of this.”

Meanwhile, a vacation in Venice might not be the best idea. Or California. Or Kansas?

Flooding this year caused at least $15 million in damage to Kansas infrastructure, including 11 dams, and led to $3.8 million in federal flood insurance claims. About 1.3 billion gallons of sewage flowed into Kansas waterways in May. FEMA is still assessing damage to infrastructure.

Lakeside Village, near Lawrence, is still having to have its entire water supply — 40,000 gallons a day — hauled in by the Kansas National Guard.

And just as unfortunately, some of those responsible for addressing the effects of climate change are still pretending we don’t know why.