This week, Hurricane Helene swept in from the Gulf of Mexico and devastated communities in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. It killed more than 160 people, displaced thousands, and caused yet uncounted damage to homes and infrastructure. More than 600 people remain missing. Search and rescue operations and disaster relief efforts are still underway.
The immediacy of this disaster led to a question about climate change early on in Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. As moderator Norah O’Donnell pointed out, scientists overwhelmingly agree that the planet is warming at an unprecedented rate, fueling more frequent and stronger hurricanes.
Moderators O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan attributed Helene’s deadly impact to climate change. An analysis from scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory supported this, suggesting that climate change boosted rainfall in parts of the U.S. Southeast by up to 50%. (That analysis has not yet been peer reviewed, but used methods published in a peer-reviewed study.)
Thinking that the United States has to either create jobs or go green is “a false choice.”
O’Donnell asked Ohio Senator J. D. Vance (R), who is former President Donald Trump’s running mate, what responsibility a Trump administration would have to combat climate change. Vance acknowledged that “people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns.”
He then cast doubt on the notion that human-caused carbon emissions are driving climate change, but suggested that even if they were, the way to reduce emissions is to reshore domestic manufacturing and increase domestic natural gas production. (Scientific studies have repeatedly attributed climate change to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.)
Vance noted that he and Trump “want the environment to be cleaner and safer.”
In his answer to the same question, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), who is Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, praised the passing and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by the Biden-Harris administration, hailing it as the biggest climate investment in global history. The IRA provides billions of dollars to combat climate change and grow domestic green energy production. Walz said that in a Harris administration, the way forward for the United States is to maintain oil and gas production while growing clean energy production. Thinking that the United States has to either create jobs or go green is “a false choice,” he said.
“My farmers know that climate change is real.”
Walz reminded viewers that U.S. production of oil and gas is the highest it’s ever been and that Harris is not calling for a moratorium on domestic fossil fuel production or use (both of these things are true).
The governor also criticized former President Donald Trump for calling the climate crisis a hoax and for promising favorable policies to oil and gas executives in exchange for campaign funds.
Walz added that “My farmers know that climate change is real.”
Vance was then asked whether he agrees with Trump that climate change is a hoax. He did not answer, but instead said that manufacturing solar panel parts in China leads to a dirtier, rather than cleaner, economy.
“We can be smarter about that, and an all-above energy policy is exactly what [Harris is] doing, creating those jobs right here,” Walz countered.
—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@AstroKimCartier), Staff Writer
Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2024), Hurricane Helene brings climate into the spotlight in vice presidential debate, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240443. Published on 2 October 2024.
Text © 2024. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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