The flooding that has hit Central Europe is beyond any experience in this part of the world. Central Europe has known nothing like it: in Prague, the flooding was the worst in 500 years; in the eastern German city of Dresden, it is the worst ever. For all their efforts to save lives and protect historic buildings, there has been nothing that the various authorities could do to stop the floods. They were overwhelmed. Nature is, as we too often forget, far more powerful than anything human agencies can accomplish.
Nor is it not over yet. In Germany, further flooding is expected along the Elbe all the way to Hamburg on the North Sea. The overflowing Danube, now flooding parts of Austria and menacing the Slovak capital Bratislava, threatens disaster downstream: the people of Hungary and Serbia, even faraway Romania, are bracing themselves. It is not just Central Europe that is suffering from such bizarre weather. Recent days have witnessed disastrous flooding in Russia’s Black Sea and in the Far East where no less than four typhoons battered the Pacific; in China, 8,000 hectares of farmland have been flooded and one-and-a-half million people have been affected.
But in other places it is the opposite. In India, the monsoon finally arrived 12 days ago, too late to prevent half the country suffering a massive drought, with huge crop losses threatening to put the brakes on growth. There is drought too across much of Siberia. And back in Europe, while the northern part of the continent experiences rain and hailstorms on an almost unprecedented scale, southern Italy suffers its worst drought ever. It is hardly surprising then that people say that the weather has gone insane.
To make matters worse, it appears to be beyond the climatologist’s ability either to predict or explain such bizarre weather patterns. They refer to global warming, to a reactive El Niño and to an Atlantic equivalent (the North Atlantic depression), but such explanations do not convince: global warming, for example, is supposed to result in less rain over Europe in summer, not more.
One thing that can be predicted is that in Europe the bizarre weather will have serious ramifications. Cleaning up is going to cost billions of euros. While there may be a silver lining with reconstruction programs boosting local economies, there is a real danger that those costs could engulf the budgets of several governments. The Austrians have already taken the decision to cut back their order for 24 Eurofighter jets to 18 to ease the burden, but for Germany, with an election next month, this is hardly the time to cut spending. There is the alternative of higher taxes to pay for the cleanup and meet the inevitable demand for future flood prevention measures, but it is the last thing the sluggish German economy needs. Something will have to give, though: the budget deficit is already over the limit permitted by the EU and the cost of cleaning up is certain to be far higher than was already planned to invest in the former communist eastern part of the country, the most affected area.
Meanwhile, there is one other probable consequence: with their environmental stand, the flagging Greens are sure to see their fortunes in the elections revived by the floods.
