Hurricane Helene is bringing climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) – The damage caused by Hurricane Helene has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after the issue sat on the sidelines for months.

Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia on Wednesday to see the worst-hit areas, two days after her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, was in the state and criticized the government’s handling of the storm, which has killed. at least 180 people. Thousands of people in the Carolinas still lack running water, cell phone service and electricity.

President Joe Biden toured some of the hardest hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday. Biden, who has often been called upon to survey the damage and comfort victims after hurricanes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters, traveled to the Carolinas to find take a closer look at the hurricane damage. He is expected to visit Georgia and Florida later this week.

“The storms are getting stronger,” Biden said after surveying the damage near Asheville, North Carolina. About 70 people died in the state.

“No one can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore,” Biden said at a rally in Raleigh, the state capital. “They must be insane if they do.”

Harris, meanwhile, hugged and hugged family in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia.

“There’s real pain and trauma that came from this tornado” and its aftermath, Harris said outside a storm-damaged home with trees downed in the yard.

“We are here for the long haul,” he added.

The outlook for the storm – and its link to climate change – became known after climate change was just around the corner little mention in the two presidential debates this year. The candidates instead focused on abortion rights, the economy, immigration and other issues.

The storm featured prominently in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were asked about the storm and the larger issue of climate change.

Both men called the hurricane a disaster and agreed on the need for a strong federal response. But it was Walz, Minnesota’s governor, who put the storm in a warm climate context.

“There’s no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and more powerful than anything we’ve seen,” he said.

Bob Henson, a climate expert and author of Yale Climate Connections, said it’s no surprise that Helene is pushing the federal disaster response and human-caused climate change into the campaign conversation.

“Weather disasters are often overlooked as a factor in major elections,” he said. “Helene is a major disaster, affecting millions of Americans. And it coincides with several well-established links between hurricanes and climate change, including increased speed and continued rainfall.”

More than 40 trillion of rain flooded the Southeast in the past week, so much so that if it concentrated in North Carolina it would cover the state in 3 1/2 feet of water. “That’s a lot of rain,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

During Tuesday’s debate, Walz thanked Vance for past statements acknowledging that climate change is a problem. But he noted that Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and joked that rising seas “will make more beachfront property investable.”

Trump said in a speech on Tuesday that “the planet has gotten a little cold recently,” adding: “Climate change is taking care of everything.”

In fact, the summer of 2024 went down as Earth’s hottest on record, making this year likely to end up as the hottest humans have recorded, according to the European weather service Copernicus. International records they were broken just last year as caused by humans climate changeand extension of time from and El Niñocontinues to make calls on temperature and extreme weather, scientists said.

Vance, the Ohio senator, said he and Trump support clean air, clean water and “want the environment to be clean and safe.” However, during Trump’s four years in office, he took several steps back more than 100 environmental regulations.

Vance shrugged off a question about whether he agreed with Trump’s assertion that climate change is a hoax. “What the president said is that if the Democrats – especially Kamala Harris and her leadership – really believe that climate change is bad, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America. And that’s not what they’re doing,” he said.

“This idea that carbon (dioxide) emissions are causing all climate change. Well, let’s say that’s true just for the sake of argument. So we’re not arguing about fantastic science. If you believe that, what would you like to do?” Vance asked.

The answer, he said, is to “produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we are the cleanest economy in the world.”

Vance argued that the policies of 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 into the United States.

Walz denied the claim, noting that Anti-Inflation ActDemocrats’ ambitious climate legislation passed in 2022 includes the largest-ever investment in clean domestic energy production. The legislation, which Harris voted for, has created 200,000 jobs across the country, including in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz said. Vance was not in the Senate when the legislation was approved.

“We’re producing more natural gas and more oil (in the United States) than we’ve ever had,” Walz said. “We’re also producing cleaner energy.”

The comments echoed Harris’ remarks in last month’s presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has done it oversaw “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of the perception that we can no longer depend on foreign oil,” Harris said at the time.

While Biden does not say so, domestic oil production under his administration is very high. Crude oil production averaged 12.9 million barrels per day last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2019 under Trump, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Democrats want to promote investment in renewable energy such as wind and solar power – and not just because supporters of New Green Deal they want that, Walz said.

“My farmers know climate change is real. They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back to back. But what they’re doing is adapting,” he said.

“The solution for us is to keep moving forward, (accept) that climate change is real” and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, Walz said, adding that the administration is doing exactly that.

“We see ourselves as a major energy force for the future, not just for the present,” he said.

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Associate Press Writers Colleen Long in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Christopher Megerian in Augusta, Georgia, contributed to this report.