{"id":32944,"date":"2024-10-03T02:55:09","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T07:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=32944"},"modified":"2024-10-31T20:55:36","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T01:55:36","slug":"hurricane-helene-brings-climate-change-to-forefront-of-the-presidential-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=32944","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Helene brings climate change to forefront of the presidential campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene<\/u><\/a> has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after the issue lingered on the margins for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia Wednesday to see hard-hit areas, two days after her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, was in the state and criticized the federal response to the storm, which has killed at least 180 people<\/u><\/a>. Thousands of people in the Carolinas still lack running water, cellphone service and electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Joe Biden toured some of the hardest-hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday. Biden, who has frequently been called on to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters, traveled to the Carolinas to get a closer look at the hurricane devastation<\/u><\/a>. He is expected to visit Georgia and Florida later this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStorms are getting stronger and stronger,\u201d Biden said after surveying damage near Asheville, North Carolina. At least 70 people died in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody can deny the impact of the climate crisis any more,\u2019’ Biden said at a briefing in Raleigh, the state capital. \u201cThey must be brain dead if they do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris, meanwhile, hugged and huddled with a family in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is real pain and trauma that resulted because of this hurricane\u2019\u2019 and its aftermath, Harris said outside a storm-damaged house with downed trees in the yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are here for the long haul,\u2019’ she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus on the storm \u2014 and its link to climate change \u2014 was notable after climate change was only lightly mentioned in two presidential debates<\/u><\/a> this year. The candidates instead focused on abortion rights, the economy, immigration and other issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hurricane featured prominently in Tuesday\u2019s vice presidential debate as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were asked about the storm and the larger issue of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both men called the hurricane a tragedy and agreed on the need for a strong federal response. But it was Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who put the storm in the context of a warming climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we\u2019ve seen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Henson, a meteorologist and writer with Yale Climate Connections, said it was no surprise that Helene is pushing both the federal disaster response and human-caused climate change into the campaign conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWeather disasters are often overlooked as a factor in big elections,\u2019’ he said. \u201cHelene is a sprawling catastrophe, affecting millions of Americans. And it dovetails with several well-established links between hurricanes and climate change, including rapid intensification and intensified downpours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 40 trillion gallons of rain<\/u><\/a> drenched the Southeast in the last week, an amount that if concentrated in North Carolina would cover the state in 3 1\/2 feet of water. \u201cThat\u2019s an astronomical amount of precipitation,\u201d said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Tuesday\u2019s debate, Walz credited Vance for past statements acknowledging that climate change is a problem. But he noted that Trump has called climate change \u201ca hoax\u201d and joked that rising seas \u201cwould make more beachfront property to be able to invest in.\u2033<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump said in a speech Tuesday that \u201cthe planet has actually gotten little bit cooler recently,\u201d adding: \u201cClimate change covers everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, summer 2024 sweltered to Earth\u2019s hottest on record, making it likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, according to the European climate service Copernicus. Global records were shattered just last year<\/a> as human-caused climate change<\/u><\/a>, with a temporary boost from an El Ni\u00f1o<\/u><\/a>, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance, an Ohio senator, said he and Trump support clean air, clean water and \u201cwant the environment to be cleaner and safer.\u201d However, during Trump\u2019s four years in office, he took a series of actions to roll back more than 100 environmental regulations<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance sidestepped a question about whether he agrees with Trump\u2019s statement that climate change is a hoax. \u201cWhat the president has said is that if the Democrats \u2014 in particular Kamala Harris and her leadership \u2014 really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America. And that\u2019s not what they\u2019re doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis idea that carbon (dioxide) emissions drives all of the climate change. Well, let\u2019s just say that\u2019s true just for the sake of argument. So we\u2019re not arguing about weird science. If you believe that, what would you want to do?\u201d Vance asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer, he said, is to \u201cproduce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we\u2019re the cleanest economy in the entire world.\u2019’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance claimed that policies by Biden and Harris actually help China, because many solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and other materials used in renewable energy and electric vehicles are made in China and imported to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walz rebutted that claim, noting that the Inflation Reduction Act<\/u><\/a>, the Democrats\u2019 signature climate law approved in 2022, includes the largest-ever investment in domestic clean energy production. The law, for which Harris cast the deciding vote, has created 200,000 jobs across the country, including in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz said. Vance was not in the Senate when the law was approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are producing more natural gas and more oil (in the United States) than we ever have,\u201d Walz said. \u201cWe\u2019re also producing more clean energy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comment echoed a remark by Harris in last month\u2019s presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has overseen \u201cthe largest increase in domestic oil production in history<\/u><\/a> because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil,\u201d Harris said then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Biden rarely mentions it, domestic fossil fuel production under his administration is at an all-time high. Crude oil production averaged 12.9 million barrels a day last year, eclipsing a previous record set in 2019 under Trump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats want to continue investments in renewable energy such as wind and solar power \u2014 and not just because supporters of the Green New Deal<\/u><\/a> want that, Walz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy farmers know climate change is real. They\u2019ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back to back. But what they\u2019re doing is adapting,\u2019’ he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe solution for us is to continue to move forward, (accept) that climate change is real\u201d and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Walz said, adding that the administration is doing exactly that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are seeing us becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the current\u2019\u2019 time, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after the issue 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 in the state and criticized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":32945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4148,22039,5989],"class_list":["post-32944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-climate-change","tag-hurricanes","tag-presidential-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32977,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32944\/revisions\/32977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}