{"id":74214,"date":"2025-07-16T12:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T19:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=74214"},"modified":"2025-07-28T12:50:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T19:50:45","slug":"when-disaster-calls-will-fema-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=74214","title":{"rendered":"When Disaster Calls, Will FEMA Answer?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Sunita Sohrabji<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Environmentalist Bill McKibben discussed the impact of the new budget and spending bill signed into law July 4 by President Donald Trump. \u201cIt’s a great paradox that, just at the moment that the rest of the world is moving decisively in the direction of clean energy, the U.S. is trying to move decisively against it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rising waters from the Guadalupe River in Texas. (Credit: U.S. Coast Guard District 8 Copyright: Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency\u2019s uneven response to the Texas floods \u2014 which killed 132 people, including children \u2014 has left states wondering whether they can continue to rely on the agency amid an environmental disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FEMA director (David Richardson, the agency\u2019s acting administrator) hasn\u2019t even bothered to show up in Texas yet,\u201d said noted environmental activist Bill McKibben, at a July 11 American Community Media news briefing. \u201cAnd around the country, every state and local official is now in a state of suspense about whether there\u2019ll be FEMA funding as disasters happen in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Texas floods are the worst in the state\u2019s history: 100 people were still reported missing as of press time July 15. Several girls enjoying an annual summer camp at Camp Mystic were killed in the disaster, which has also displaced 400 families.<\/p>\n

Can States Take Over?<\/h2>\n

\u201dThe Trump administration has said that they think states should pay for disasters instead of the federal government, but that\u2019s obviously silly. Though there are disasters every year in the United States, there\u2019s not disasters in every state every year. It makes no sense for each state to have its own fully funded, fully prepared disaster core. This is something we should do as a country,\u201d said McKibben, founder of Third Act, which encourages older people to get involved in environmental issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the most likely outcome, what seems to be happening, is that the president will dispense disaster aid henceforth as a political favor to people in groups and places that he favors and not to places that he doesn\u2019t. This sounds strange and un-American, but it seems to be the path that we\u2019re on right now,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

The New York Times first reported that on July 5, as flood waters were receding, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.<\/p>\n

Budget Cuts<\/h2>\n

That evening, however, FEMA did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent. And on July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, as reported by the Times.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to disband FEMA; the agency has received budget cuts to grant programs since January. But Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem said July 13 that Trump now wants to \u201cremake\u201d the agency, instead of shutting it down. She characterized The New York Times report as \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Rapidly Warming Planet<\/h2>\n

At the July 11 ACoM news briefing, McKibben noted that floods of the magnitude seen in Texas are becoming a more common occurrence. \u201cThe planet is now warming very rapidly, and we\u2019re seeing the effects around us on a regular basis. This kind of flooding now occurs quite often simply because warm air holds more water vapor than cold, loading the dice for increased flood events.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re very much on a timetable to try and somehow limit the damage from climate change, which would require a very fast phase out of coal, gas, and oil,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Oil and gas combustion create carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas driving climate change. Fossil fuel combustion also produces particulate matter, which kills 1 out of 5 people globally each year.<\/p>\n

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Particulate matter, produced by fossil fuel combustion, kills 1 out of 5 people globally each year, says environmentalist\u00a0@billmckibben<\/a>\u00a0@ThirdActOrg<\/a>\u00a0https:\/\/t.co\/iLW6gl7T9A<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 American Community Media (@AmCommMedia)\u00a0July 15, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The Resurgence of Solar<\/h2>\n

Countries around the world \u2014 led by China \u2014 are rapidly phasing out their dependence on fossil fuels, relying instead on solar energy. However, President Donald Trump gave a boost to the fossil fuel industry in the spending and budget bill he signed into law July 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big, beautiful bill is absolutely stuffed with provisions that are designed quite clearly to slow the transition to renewable energy,\u201d said McKibben, noting the cessation of tax breaks for sun, wind, and EV batteries that were part of former President Joe Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act. The credits were supposed to last for a decade, but they will mostly phase out by the end of this year, some of them sooner, said McKibben.<\/p>\n

The tax credit for electric vehicles expires as early as the end of September, he added, predicting there would be mass layoffs at clean energy companies and the cancellation of renewable energy projects.<\/p>\n

Consumers will feel the impact in their energy bills. \u201cThe cheapest way to make power on our planet is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. That\u2019s why it\u2019s expanded so rapidly in blue states as well as red. Texas actually is expanding renewable energy even faster than California at this point,\u201d said McKibben, noting that families will pay hundreds of dollars more in their utility bills.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sun Day\u2019<\/h2>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s a great paradox that, just at the moment that the rest of the world is moving decisively in the direction of clean energy, the U.S. is trying to move decisively against it,\u201d said McKibben. He pointed to an initiative known as\u00a0\u201cSun Day,<\/a>\u201d which will be held on Sept. 21 \u2014 the Fall Equinox.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be a day of all kinds of festivities and protests, all designed to drive home the most important fact: that sun and wind are no longer alternative energy. They\u2019re the obvious, straightforward, common sense, and cheap way to produce power in this world,\u201d said McKibben.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySunita Sohrabji Jul 15, 2025 Environmentalist...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74215,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74214\/revisions\/74215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}