A massive storm, Hurricane Helene, made larger and more destructive due to super-heated ocean temperatures caused by climate change, is due to slam into Florida Thursday. The enormity of this storm (and others like it) is partly the inevitable result of former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party‘s nihilistic and irresponsible climate policy. The fallout will include billions of dollars in new disaster costs for the already beleaguered Sunshine State, and should be a late-campaign reminder to voters that critical public safety and economic issues around climate policy are very much on the ballot this November.
The difference between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more dramatic. Vice President Kamala Harris has made climate protection a centerpiece of her energy and economic policies. As she noted this week, “Our young leaders have grown up knowing only the climate crisis. They understand what’s at stake for their future. As president, I will confront the climate crisis with bold action, building a clean energy economy, advancing environmental justice, and increasing resilience to climate disasters.”
In contrast, as president, Trump rolled back every climate protection he could. In fact, Trump has made attacking the Biden-Harris Administration’s climate actions central to his 2024 campaign. He has called fast-growing, inexpensive, homegrown American renewable energy “a scam business,” and ignored the urgent need to limit emissions. Instead he is proposing a deliberate doubling down of a fossil fuel economy, and asking the oil industry for a billion dollars in contributions in exchange for expanding fossil energy. Trump continues to falsely question proven climate science and has vowed to overturn the successful new Biden-Harris climate and clean energy programs.
Tallahassee State professor Pamela Andrews bags sand in preparation for possible flooding as Hurricane Helene heads toward the state’s Gulf Coast on Sept. 25, in Tallahassee, Florida.
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Meanwhile the economic costs of climate change have a negative impact on Americans that continues to skyrocket. Three-fifths of Americans now report that climate impacts and costs are undermining their quality of life, public safety, health, or family finances. Last year alone, the United States suffered a record 28 separate billion-dollar weather disasters of increased severity caused by record high temperatures. More than $800 billion in extra U.S. health care costs each year can be attributed to climate and pollution. A new Senate report finds that flooding made worse due to climate change is costing Americans between $180 billion and $500 billion every year. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners, including in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, are being priced out of insurance because insurers either refuse to provide any coverage or have increased premiums due to climate costs.
Climate change is causing unprecedentedly high Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea temperatures, standing at record high levels for over a year. Such extraordinarily hot oceans, reaching 100 degrees off the coast of Key West last year, have been made 200 to 500 times more likely compared to the preindustrial era due climate change, according Climate Central, a leading scientific nonprofit group. Warmer waters mean much bigger, wetter, more destructive hurricanes.
Just this week President Joe Biden gave a major speech touting the climate accomplishments of the last four years. Biden and Harris have consistently warned that punishing heat waves, massive wildfires, record flooding, and huge storms will only grow worse unless we lead the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades.
But the Republican party has been backtracking on climate policy since Trump first became its presidential nominee in 2016, since he punishes those in the GOP who dare to question his climate nihilism. For example, not one single Republican in Congress voted for the landmark Inflation Reduction Act legislation that has resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in new private-sector clean energy investment in just the last two years.
While all Republicans voted against the IRA, it turns out that red states are benefiting more than blue states from these new investments. So now at least 18 Republican members of Congress say they want to keep the IRA. But not Trump. If elected, he has vowed to repeal the IRA through Congress and undo regulations based on it through the executive branch.
Hurricane Helene is a brutal and expensive reminder that climate change is already exacting massive costs from the U.S. economy and the lives of average Americans. And worse impacts are ahead, unless we cut emissions deeply, and convince the rest of the world to do the same. Harris recognizes this clear and present danger and is determined to protect Americans from the worst of climate disasters. But Trump doesn’t seem to care, at all.
Paul Bledsoe is a professorial lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. He served as a staff member in the US House of Representatives, US Senate, the Interior Department, and the White House Climate Change Task Force under former President Bill Clinton.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
