I was finally able to reach my friends in Boone, North Carolina and Damascus, Virginia by text today. They said that they are physically fine, but they have no power, no internet, no water, scant cell service, and no way out, really, right now. Both towns are flooded, mud-covered, devastated. One texted that he's "emotionally wrecked" as he waited in a line to get a shower at a truck stop. Because he's my friend, of course he added, "Just found out I didn't have to blow the attendant." We went back and forth a bit on this lucky truck stop employee before I figured I should let him go for the sake of his battery. He probably had more important things to take care of, like getting the tree off his car. I didn't get to ask him how his dogs did.
Hurricane Helene was going to be a motherfucker of a storm. Forecasters saw that from the moment it formed, and they predicted the storm surge and the wind damage that would hit Florida, which was, in context, pretty fortunate that Helene didn't turn slightly more east and directly hit Tampa/St. Petersburg. The area that was hit is not densely populated, but it badly fucked up towns in the Big Bend coast, like Cedar Key and Steinhatchee, wiping a couple off the map.
Helene was a fast storm, which not only meant a significant storm surge, but also that its wind and rains would last as it headed inland. So, yeah, parts of Georgia, NC, SC, Virginia, and Tennessee got drowned. Appalachia was hit ridiculously hard; a good chunk of the tourist town of Chimney Rock in NC is just gone. Weather experts predicted flash floods, landslides, and death, and that's exactly what happened, with roads, bridges, and highways just slammed, making getting supplies in that much harder. This is a catastrophe that will change regions of the country.
And it was made significantly worse by the climate crisis that we've been warned about widely for a couple of generations. If you wanna read the science about how warming waters and seas rising has made things worse for Helene and other recent storms, you can do much better than me summarizing smarter people.
The climate crisis is the most significant issue facing the world. Period. It's more important than immigration (although it's tied to migration because of how climate change is rendering places unlivable). It's more important than the wars going on or crime or inflation. How can that be? Because you can end wars in a heartbeat if the people at war want to. You can arrest criminals. You can do shit that has an immediate impact on almost anything. But not the climate crisis. You're not shooting your way out of a typhoon. We're a few decades behind where we should be in doing anything, and even if we go full force into mitigating the things that cause climate change now, we're a few decades, at least, from preventing shit from getting worse, let alone better. It's possible (see the ozone layer, which is healing but is about 40 years from finally being whole again).
But before we get anywhere close, we are going to have to deal with the clusterfuck of awfulness that's going to tumble down on us like a Jenga game we couldn't help but play until the end. That means more weather events - floods, fires, droughts, and more - and it means dealing with the massive refugee crisis that is going to play out as areas of South Asia and elsewhere become too hot for human habitation.
So you'd think that we might want to hear more about their plans to deal with the climate crisis from our presidential candidates. Well, I mean, really, we should hear more from Democrat Kamala Harris because Donald Trump and his Republican death cult have just decided, "Fuck it. Burn it all. We don't fucking care."
Trump has stopped calling the climate crisis a "hoax" because someone finally told him it didn't poll well (Trump has no problem sounding like a fucking moron if people applaud the moronic statements). Instead, we get snide obnoxiousness. His brain ever stuck in the 1980s, Trump likes to say, as he did in Michigan this month, that the real global warming is the possibility of nuclear war, "not that the ocean’s going to rise in 400 years and eighth of an inch, and you’ll have more seafront property if that happens. I said, is that good or bad? I said, isn’t that a good thing? If I have a little property on the ocean, I have a little bit more property. I have a little bit more ocean." It's all so obviously false that it's shameful to have to fact check it. Otherwise, all Trump says is "Drill, baby, drill" (which is a line he stole from Michael Steele, who coined the phrase in 2008) and both he and Project 2025 talk about eliminating any restrictions on oil, gas, and coal and just basically letting the earth die as rich fucks get ready to leave for Mars in Elon's rockets or what the fuck ever. In other words, more "Fuck it."
It's a perfect opening for the Harris campaign, perhaps another way to appeal to young people, and Hurricane Helene provides the opportunity to bring up how Trump wants to kill any effort to shift to greener energy. Yes, oil production is higher under Joe Biden than under any other president, but Biden is also lighting a fire under the green economy, using the climate crisis as a way to develop new industries and more jobs. Trump would cancel all of that. It's a perfect foundation for Harris.
On her campaign website, here's the entirety of what it says about the climate crisis: "As President, she will unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she builds on this historic work, advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs, and continues to hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water for all. As the Vice President said at the international climate conference, COP28, she knows that meeting this global challenge will require global cooperation and she is committed to continuing and building upon the United States’ international climate leadership. She and Governor Walz will always fight for the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis." Her economic plan only mentions it in terms of those jobs. It's honestly a little more vague than it should be.
At the presidential debate, asked directly about it, Harris said, "Well, the former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up. You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue." And then she said, "And I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels" before using that to pivot to manufacturing and autoworker jobs in a clean energy economy.
That's all well and good. I mean, hey, jobs that might help are awesome. And, obviously, when it comes to climate policy, Harris is not just head and shoulders above Trump. In terms of relatively giving a damn, she's a goddamn superhero while he's a dried up turd. And I get that campaigns have to respond to the issues that people say they care about, but mostly they care about those because politicans (and right-wing media) are lying to them, hyping things that aren't real. There is no crime problem. There is no immigration problem (other than the need to fund so many pieces of the immigration system better, from courts to caring for migrants). And, yes, there was an inflation problem, but the rate has slowed tremendously.
The climate crisis is very real. People are far more likely to be victims of a weather-related event than they are ever going to be victims of violent crime or get their throats cut by migrants (which Trump actually said yesterday). Voters deserve to hear how fucked things are and how fucked things are getting and they deserve to know Harris is going to work to unfuck it and Trump is going to ensure that they are fucked even more.
It's more than just oil vs. wind or coal jobs vs. battery plant jobs. It's about communities and lives being wiped away.
