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BEFORE HELENE, A PERFECT STORM OF CLIMATE DENIALISM  
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Lucy Dean Stockton, Freddy Brewster
October 2, 2024
The Lever
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_ North Carolina was once a climate leader, but more than a decade of
Republican and corporate obstruction left the state ill-prepared for
the historic disaster. _

The immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Marshall, N.C., AP
Photo / Jeff Roberson

 

In the years before Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina last week,
the state’s Republican lawmakers and corporate interests continually
fought climate adaptation and mitigation measures that could have
helped communities withstand the storm’s tidal surge,
hurricane-force winds, and widespread flooding. 

While North Carolina was once a national leader in renewable energy
and climate change resiliency policies, that changed in the early
2010s when Republicans secured control of both chambers of the
state’s legislature and a former utility company executive moved
into the governor’s mansion. Since then, GOP politicians and their
big-business allies have sabotaged climate resiliency projects,
delayed plans to embrace renewable energy, and stonewalled efforts to
prepare the state for stronger storms and a rising sea.

“The Republican approach to climate change has been much like an
ostrich with its head in the sand,” said Dan Crawford, director of
governmental relations at North Carolina’s League of Conservation
Voters, a nonprofit group focused on environmental policy. “And if
you’re ignoring all of these things that are happening in the world,
it’s going to have effects.”

On Sept. 27, Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 hurricane, wrought havoc
throughout the state. On the coast, homes
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were washed into the ocean ahead of the hurricane making landfall. And
in western North Carolina, the storm caused what one county executive
called “biblical devastation
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Using increasingly precise attribution science
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experts are already finding evidence that climate change fueled
Helene’s destruction, including that warmer ocean temperatures
likely exacerbated the storm’s rain. The most recent national
climate assessment, completed last year, found that the amount of
precipitation in the most intense rainstorms has increased 37 percent
in the Southeast [[link removed]] since
1958.

Asheville, a city of nearly 100,000 people tucked into the state’s
Smoky Mountains, was hit by historic floods
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ripping through neighborhoods, destroying the city’s water system
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and leaving residents cut off
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from most outside access due to mudslides and washed-out roads. The
death toll has so far reached 57 people
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in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located. 

Asheville was once billed as a climate haven
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given its elevation and distance from the state’s collapsing
shoreline — but increasingly intense flooding is making hurricanes
more dangerous
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inland. 

“I’m actually from that area,” said Crawford. “I’ll be
honest, I’ve gotten teary-eyed multiple times seeing the devastation
miles from where I grew up. I’m lucky my family survived.” 

But Crawford is clear-eyed that the Republicans’ anti-climate
legislation may have made this crisis worse. 

“If you’re stopping progress on the coast,” he said, “then
you’re stopping progress in the mountains.”

Now, as North Carolina digs out from Helene, Republicans’
anti-climate efforts in the state could have ripple effects in other
communities facing similar disasters in the future. A current employee
at the lobbying firm for one of the state’s major power utilities
wrote the chapter on energy policy in Project 2025, the conservative
blueprint to roll back climate protections and other government
safeguards during a second Trump presidency.

NORTH CAROLINA GOES OFF-TRACK

In the early 2000s, North Carolina, with Democratic control of the
governor’s office, was considered an outpost of “Southern
progressivism
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and was seen by many as leading the charge
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on climate policy. 

“We used to be a leader in the South on energy issues,” Crawford
said.

In 2002, Crawford and his colleagues helped pass
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Clean Smokestack Act, which limited emissions from coal plants beyond
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the pollution standards set by the national Clean Air Act.
Then-Attorney General Roy Cooper used the law to help reduce emissions
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in neighboring states, too.

“We were the first state in the Southeast to have a renewable
portfolio,” said Crawford, a mandate that required
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electric utilities to supply 12.5 percent of their electricity retail
sales from renewable energy sources by 2021 — a goal the state met
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Municipal electric suppliers and rural electric cooperatives achieved
similar targets.

In 2006, the state’s General Assembly convened a Legislative
Commission
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on Global Climate Change to study issues related to climate change in
the state. In its final report
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released in 2010, the Commission asked
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the state legislature to pass a climate adaptation strategy
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would include a statewide climate vulnerability assessment and
adaptation plan on matters
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such as “more frequent and intense hurricanes, flooding, extreme
temperature, drought, saltwater intrusion, and beach erosion.” 

That bill was never signed into law. 

“It all took a turn in 2010 when leadership changed and Republicans
took over,” Crawford said. 

That year, Republicans secured majorities in the state House of
Representatives and the state Senate — and since then, “it’s
been a constant fight” to adopt or preserve climate policies for
both mitigation and adaptation efforts that could have helped the
state better weather the storms, he added.

In 2010, Republicans slashed
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the operating budget for the state’s Department of Environmental
Quality, which upheld environmental protection standards. The
department’s bloodletting continued in the years that followed,
leading to some of the steepest cuts
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to a state environmental agency in the country.

Then, in 2011, Republicans proposed a bill
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that prohibited
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the communities in the state from using the state’s own updated
sea-level-rise risk data in their planning decisions, forcing them to
rely on outdated data that showed lower risk. The legislation gained
national notoriety, with one pundit declaring
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the state had just “outlawed climate change,” when it passed in
2012.

When Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina’s coast in 2018,
experts claimed communities’ lack of up-to-date flooding plans was
one of the reasons
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the storm caused a record-breaking $17 billion
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in damage.

DUKE ENERGY IN THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION

In 2012, North Carolina voters replaced Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue
with Republican Pat McCrory, a former executive at Duke Energy, the
state’s largest public utility, which donated
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$29,000
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McCrory’s election
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efforts. 

As a result, said Crawford, “It felt like Duke Energy moved into the
governor’s mansion.”

McCrory held meetings
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behind closed doors with the utility and eased safety and remediation
rules
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related to toxic coal ash pollution from Duke Energy’s coal
operations. 

In 2014, under McCrory’s tenure, Republican state lawmakers, along
with many Democrats, backed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline
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a project helmed by Duke Energy and another major state power utility
that would have carried natural gas through some of the state’s
poorest eastern communities
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Following six years of litigation and escalating costs
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the companies abandoned the project
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2020.

The following year, Duke Energy led an ad blitz, largely targeting
low-income residents
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to fight a bill
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that would have expanded access to solar power for North Carolina
residents by allowing third-party companies to install panels rather
than the energy companies themselves. While the legislation had
bipartisan support and was supported by large corporations
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like Walmart and Target, it stalled in committee
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and never received a vote. 

The development stalled a decade of solar growth
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spurred by the state’s landmark 2007 renewable energy portfolio,
which helped North Carolina rank among the top states in the nation
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for renewable energy capacity.

While McCrory lost reelection in November 2016, Duke Energy has
continued to stonewall climate adaptation efforts in the state.

Last year, Duke Energy implemented new bill payment rules
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that critics say could gut the state’s solar usage by allowing the
company to upend a 20-year arrangement and pay residents a lower rate
on their solar energy generation. Residents and environmental groups
sued Duke to stop the rule change, but last month, a North Carolina
Appeals Court sided
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with the energy company.

“This ruling directly harms our once-growing solar power industry
and the communities constantly battered by climate change driven by
polluters like Duke Energy,” said
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Jim Warren, executive director of NC WARN, a climate change awareness
group, in a statement.

SABOTAGING CLIMATE PROGRESS

While North Carolina Democrats regained the governor’s office in
2016 when Cooper, the Democratic former attorney general, defeated
McCrory
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Republicans have since used their supermajorities in the legislature
to overturn Cooper’s vetoes
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and push through additional legislation slowing climate mitigation
efforts. 

Even after 2020, when the state’s own Climate Risk Assessment and
Resilience Plan
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highlighted the risks posed by climate change, Republican lawmakers
have continued to block climate legislation and ease environmental
restrictions. 

In 2023, for example, Republican lawmakers in the state overrode a
gubernatorial veto and passed legislation
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barring home sheathing inspections outside of coastal areas that
determine whether new homes can withstand hurricane-force winds. By
not requiring building codes to be updated, the law also risked
jeopardizing the state’s ability to qualify for federal emergency
aid in the aftermath of natural disasters, according to a statement
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released by Cooper’s office.

The North Carolina Home Builders Association, a trade group
representing home-building companies, fought hard for the bill,
arguing
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that upgrading housing to withstand hurricane-force winds wasn’t
needed outside of coastal areas and would increase home prices.

The builders’ association spent more than $346,000 lobbying state
lawmakers
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in 2023 and has given more than $28,000
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in campaign donations to state Rep. Mark Brody (R), the bill’s
author, throughout his career. According to emails obtained by the
Energy and Policy Institute, an environmental watchdog group via a
records request, the lobbying group also helped write the bill
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“It was kind of a clear example of industry capture, where the
legislator who introduced the bill, Rep. Brody, essentially just
served as an industry puppet, as a conduit that allowed industry to
get its way,” said ​​Itai Vardi, research and communications
manager for the Energy and Policy Institute.

During Hurricane Helene, some of the mountainous areas near Asheville,
hundreds of miles from the coast experienced wind gusts potentially up
to 80 miles per hour
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within the parameters of a Category 1 hurricane
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In 2023, the North Carolina Home Builders Association also backed
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Republican lawmakers’ passage of a bill to open 2.5 million acres of
the state’s wetlands for development, despite the fact that the
state’s own climate resilience plan mandated the government to
protect wetlands in the state. 

Scientists say wetlands are essential for absorbing water in storm
surges like the one that accompanied Hurricane Helene. Some research
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suggests that a single acre of wetlands about one foot deep can absorb
up to 330,000 gallons of water
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— enough to flood about 13 homes downstream with several feet of
water.

According to Crawford, because of Cooper’s progressive stances on
climate, from “executive orders on clean energy mandates” to
creating “environmental justice aspects in all departments of state
government,” Republican lawmakers have taken aim at his appointments
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to boards and commissions, including those that set electricity rates
and environmental regulations. 

The Republicans’ legislative attempts to stop these appointments are
moving through the state’s court system
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after Cooper’s administration filed a lawsuit challenging the
efforts. 

Cooper is reaching the end of his second term this year.
Republicans’ choice to replace him, the Trump-endorsed
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current Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson, has called climate change
“junk science
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Following a series of scandals, Robinson is now trailing
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the state’s current attorney general and Democratic candidate Josh
Stein — and is on track for a historic defeat
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LOOKING FORWARD (TO NO GOOD)

Project 2025 — the sprawling blueprint for a second Trump term
crafted by corporate-backed
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right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation — seeks to increase
the country’s use of fossil fuels, roll back environmental
protections and weaken disaster-response efforts. 

In the manifesto’s section on energy policy, chapter author Bernard
McNamee claims
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that the “new energy crisis is caused not by a lack of resources,
but by extreme ‘green’ policies.” 

McNamee, a former commissioner
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at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Trump, currently
works as a senior advisor at lobbying firm McGuireWoods Consulting
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previously advocated
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on behalf of Dominion Energy, North Carolina’s second-largest energy
provider.

“In the name of combating climate change, policies have been used to
create an artificial energy scarcity that will require trillions of
dollars in new investment, supported with taxpayer subsidies, to
address a “problem” that government and special interests
themselves created,” McNamee wrote
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Along with aiming to “stop the war on oil and natural gas” and
“ending government interference in energy decisions,” Project 2025
calls for the gutting of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
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the federal department in charge of preparing for and responding to
disasters. In order to “shift the majority of preparedness and
response costs to states and localities instead of the federal
government,” the plan aims to slash disaster-preparation grants,
privatize the country’s flood insurance and mitigation program and
reduce federal aid in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane
Helene. 

As North Carolina struggles to recover from the storm, questions
remain on how the state will confront climate change. And while some
Republican lawmakers in the state have recently thrown their support
behind
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renewable energy and climate adaptation, Vardi with the Energy and
Policy Institute believes more work needs to be done to ensure the
state can withstand future climate disasters.

“Lawmakers are public servants, they are elected by the public to
serve the public,” Vardi said. “In this case, the public good is
trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically so the citizens of
North Carolina won't face the most catastrophic consequences of
climate change, as we saw them face just a few days ago.”

_Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct
date when Hurricane Helene impacted North Carolina._

_The Lever_ is a nonpartisan, reader-supported investigative news
outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating
the levers of power. The organization was founded in 2020 by David
Sirota, an award-winning journalist and Oscar-nominated writer who
served as the presidential campaign speechwriter for Bernie Sanders.

* Hurricane Helene
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* North Carolina
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* Climate Deniers
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