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CLIMATE CHANGE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR BORDERS  
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Kate Aronoff
September 30, 2024
The New Republic
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_ Already we can draw two big lessons from Hurricane Helene’s
catastrophic fallout. _

A woman stands on a flooded street in front of downed power lines.
Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images Heavy rains from Hurricane Helene
caused record flooding and damage in Asheville, North Carolina, on
September 28., Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

 

More than 110 people
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are now believed to have died as a result of Hurricane Helene, the
storm that swept through the Southeast over the weekend and left some
500 miles of destruction in its wake. Hundreds are missing, and
millions
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still don’t have electricity. Cell phone service is spotty, while
incapacitated roads and bridges are complicating an already strained
recovery effort. Asheville—recently dubbed
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haven
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for its historically mild climate and perch within the Blue Ridge
Mountains—is among the areas worst hit; so far, 30 people
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have been reported dead there.

The idea of a “climate haven” is a seductive one: that some places
will be relatively insulated from extreme heat, stronger hurricanes,
and any number of other threats posed by rising temperatures. That’s
all the more enticing if you’ve got the means to move to one of
those places. Some cities have even started advertising
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themselves
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as “climate refuges” in order to attract warming-weary—and
relatively well-off—new residents. There’s a kernel of truth in
all this. It is, of course, more pleasant to be in Burlington,
Vermont, than Phoenix, Arizona, in July. As western North Carolina can
attest, though, the climate crisis isn’t especially good at
respecting either municipalities’ marketing pitches
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or borders.

The nature of global warming is that it is, well, global: Nowhere will
be spared. This reality makes a mockery of our geographical
boundaries. But it shows how arbitrary other boundaries are, as well:
specifically, the bounds of what counts as “climate policy.”
Policymakers and media outlets, for example, typically treat fuel
efficiency standards as climate policy. They’re less likely to view
financial regulators’ intervention in insurance companies’ risky
speculation
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Yet those in the Southeast who’ll attempt to pick up the pieces over
the coming weeks, months, and years will probably be less worried
about miles per gallon than whether they can afford skyrocketing
premiums
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In recent years, the definition of what counts as climate policy has
gotten even stranger in the United States. On the campaign trail,
Democrats haven’t talked about global warming
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all that much. To the extent that they do mention climate policy,
it’s mainly discussed as a means to spur investment in low-carbon
technologies like electric vehicles and solar panels. The Harris
campaign’s website [[link removed]] cites the
Inflation Reduction Act’s “historic work” in “lowering
household energy costs, creating hundreds of thousands of high-quality
clean energy jobs, and building a thriving clean energy economy.”
The site makes brief mention of increasing “resilience to climate
disasters,” holding “polluters accountable,” and “continuing
and building upon the United States’ international climate
leadership.”

But next to images of entire downtown areas half-submerged in flood
waters, or homes
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moving faster than a river tube, touting the administration’s
successful boost of the construction of manufacturing facilities
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rings hollow. Framing climate action primarily as a good-news story in
which the U.S. will come to dominate green export sectors overlooks
the very real pocketbook struggles the climate crisis is already
causing.

Climate change isn’t a discrete issue so much as the foundation on
which all politics happens. All policy, in other words—from housing
to trade and financial regulation—is climate policy. Rather than
acting as if these “natural disasters” are one-off tragedies,
Democrats could treat disasters like Hurricane Helene as a chance to
hammer Republicans on any number of fronts: for having spent decades
colluding with fossil fuel companies to block federal
emissions-reduction efforts, for showering insurance companies with
giveaways
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while their own constituents struggle to afford policies, for failing
to fund
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essential disaster relief. The GOP has no plan to help Americans
survive a hotter and wetter world other than to make it a meaner
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one
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too. In response, Democrats should debut a vision for our
climate-changed country that’s meaningfully different—something
they’ve struggled
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with so far—and which makes communities safer in the long run, not
just filled with more factories.

Kate Aronoff [[link removed]]
@KateAronoff [[link removed]]

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at _The New Republic._ She is the
author of _Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—and How We
Fight Back
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and co-author of _A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
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Kate is also a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and serves in
_Dissent_’s editorial board.

* Hurricane Helene; Asheville
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* N.C.; Climate Change;
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