WASHINGTON — The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has introduced local weather change to the forefront of the presidential marketing campaign after the problem lingered on the margins for months.
Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia Wednesday to see hard-hit areas, two days after her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, was within the state and criticized the federal response to the storm, which has killed a minimum of 200 individuals within the Southeast. Helene is the deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
President Joe Biden toured among the hardest-hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday and Thursday. Biden, who has continuously been referred to as on to survey injury and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and different pure disasters, traveled to the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia to get a more in-depth take a look at the hurricane devastation.
“Storms are getting stronger and stronger,” Biden stated Wednesday after surveying injury close to Asheville, North Carolina. Not less than 70 individuals died within the state.
“No one can deny the affect of the local weather disaster any extra,” Biden stated at a briefing in Raleigh. “They should be mind useless in the event that they do.”
Harris, in the meantime, hugged and huddled with a household Wednesday in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia.
“There’s actual ache and trauma that resulted due to this hurricane” and its aftermath, Harris stated exterior a storm-damaged home with downed timber within the yard.
“We’re right here for the lengthy haul,” she added.
The concentrate on the storm — and its hyperlink to local weather change — was notable after local weather change was solely evenly talked about in two presidential debates this 12 months. The candidates as a substitute targeted on abortion rights, the economic system, immigration and different points.
The hurricane featured prominently in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz had been requested in regards to the storm and the bigger challenge of local weather change.
Each males referred to as the hurricane a tragedy and agreed on the necessity for a robust federal response. Nevertheless it was Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who put the storm within the context of a warming local weather.
“There’s little doubt this factor roared onto the scene quicker and stronger than something we’ve seen,” he stated.
Bob Henson, a meteorologist and author with Yale Local weather Connections, stated it was no shock that Helene is pushing each the federal catastrophe response and human-caused local weather grow to be the marketing campaign dialog.
“Climate disasters are sometimes ignored as a consider massive elections,” he stated. “Helene is a sprawling disaster, affecting hundreds of thousands of People. And it dovetails with a number of well-established hyperlinks between hurricanes and local weather change, together with speedy intensification and intensified downpours.”
Greater than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast within the final week, an quantity that if concentrated in North Carolina would cowl the state in 3 1/2 ft of water. “That’s an astronomical quantity of precipitation,” stated Ed Clark, head of the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Nationwide Water Middle in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Throughout Tuesday’s debate, Walz credited Vance for previous statements acknowledging that local weather change is an issue. However he famous that Trump has referred to as local weather change “a hoax” and joked that rising seas “would make extra beachfront property to have the ability to put money into.″
Trump stated in a speech Tuesday that “the planet has truly gotten little bit cooler just lately,” including: “Local weather change covers every little thing.”
The truth is, summer time 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on file, making it possible this 12 months will find yourself because the warmest humanity has measured, in line with the European local weather service Copernicus. World information had been shattered simply final 12 months as human-caused local weather change, with a brief enhance from an El Niño, retains dialing up temperatures and excessive climate, scientists stated.
Vance, an Ohio senator, stated he and Trump help clear air, clear water and “need the surroundings to be cleaner and safer.” Nonetheless, throughout Trump’s 4 years in workplace, he took a collection of actions to roll again greater than 100 environmental laws.
Vance sidestepped a query about whether or not he agrees with Trump’s assertion that local weather change is a hoax. “What the president has stated is that if the Democrats — particularly Kamala Harris and her management — actually imagine that local weather change is critical, what they’d be doing is extra manufacturing and extra vitality manufacturing in the USA of America. And that’s not what they’re doing,” he stated.
“This concept that carbon (dioxide) emissions drives all the local weather change. Nicely, let’s simply say that’s true only for the sake of argument. So we’re not arguing about bizarre science. Should you imagine that, what would you wish to do?” Vance requested.
The reply, he stated, is to “produce as a lot vitality as potential in the USA of America, as a result of we’re the cleanest economic system in your entire world.”
Vance claimed that insurance policies by Biden and Harris truly assist China, as a result of many photo voltaic panels, lithium-ion batteries and different supplies utilized in renewable vitality and electrical automobiles are made in China and imported to the USA.
Walz rebutted that declare, noting that the Inflation Discount Act, the Democrats’ signature local weather legislation authorised in 2022, contains the largest-ever funding in home clear vitality manufacturing. The legislation, for which Harris forged the deciding vote, has created 200,000 jobs throughout the nation, together with in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz stated. Vance was not within the Senate when the legislation was authorised.
“We’re producing extra pure fuel and extra oil (in the USA) than we ever have,” Walz stated. “We’re additionally producing extra clear vitality.”
The remark echoed a comment by Harris in final month’s presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has overseen “the most important enhance in home oil manufacturing in historical past due to an method that acknowledges that we can not over depend on overseas oil,” Harris stated then.
Whereas Biden hardly ever mentions it, home fossil gasoline manufacturing underneath his administration is at an all-time excessive. Crude oil manufacturing averaged 12.9 million barrels a day final 12 months, eclipsing a earlier file set in 2019 underneath Trump, in line with the U.S. Power Info Administration.
Democrats wish to proceed investments in renewable vitality resembling wind and solar energy — and never simply because supporters of the Inexperienced New Deal need that, Walz stated.
“My farmers know local weather change is actual. They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods again to again. However what they’re doing is adapting,” he stated.
“The answer for us is to proceed to maneuver ahead, (settle for) that local weather change is actual” and cut back reliance on fossil fuels, Walz stated, including that the administration is doing precisely that.
“We’re seeing us turning into an vitality superpower for the longer term, not simply the present” time, he stated.
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Related Press writers Colleen Lengthy in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Christopher Megerian in Augusta, Georgia, contributed to this report.