Overloaded storms

Powerful hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall in Florida within days of each other, killing more than 256 people and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage across several states.

Scientists later confirmed that climate change supercharged these storms.

“All aspects of this event have been amplified by climate change to varying degrees. We will see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” said Dr Ben Clarke, researcher at Imperial College London.

Dr Clarke co-authored a report which found Helene’s winds were 11 per cent stronger and rainfall 10 per cent heavier due to climate warming.

Despite these findings, Trump continued to express his skepticism about climate change, calling it “one of the biggest frauds in history” during a speech in Manhattan after the disaster.

“The storms are getting stronger,” President Joe Biden said at a briefing in North Carolina as he surveyed the damage from Helene.

“No one can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore. They must be brain dead if they do,” he said.

However, to observers, Ms. Harris has failed to recapture her image of being a strong advocate of climate issues throughout the campaign period to be president.

She only made a passing reference to her party’s green agenda while being nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate in August.

In fact, climate change debates or speeches, even as part of the IRA, barely appeared in either candidate’s election campaign.

The IRA is directing about $400 billion to clean energy initiatives as part of the country’s goal of achieving a zero-carbon economy by 2050. This includes tax incentives, infrastructure funding and community support, and projects to create up to 1 million new jobs by 2030.

However, despite the large sums of public funding already allocated to industries that install wind turbines and solar panels, build electric vehicles and assemble batteries, Ms Harris appeared reluctant to take a pro-planet stance on the hustings .

This is partly due to fears of a public backlash against an overly green agenda perceived to threaten certain communities that depend on the fossil fuel industry in key battleground states and the powerful lobbyists behind the industries themselves, according to Dr. Carolyn Kissane, founder. director of the SPS Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab and associate dean at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.

“It’s a very fine line in the United States for a politician when it comes to energy and climate,” she said.

“Harris is viewed more on climate and has historically been tougher on big oil. However, as the nominee, it would be a mistake for her to come out as an ardent opponent of big oil and gas, because one, they are a very large lobby, and two, it is very scary for most Americans to imagine that their energy prices will be higher.

“I think her campaign has to balance being a supporter of addressing climate change without coming across as very anti-hydrocarbons and the production of hydrocarbons in the United States,” Dr. Kissane said.

In 2022, the oil and gas industry spent about $124.4 million on federal lobbying, according to analysis by Open Secrets, an independent group that tracks money in American politics.

The industry’s combined lobbying, political contributions and advertising efforts to oppose climate change legislation outnumbered climate change advocacy groups 27 to 1 between 2008 and 2018, the Pennsylvania news site Capital-Star found.