Come Helene With High Water

PRESENTED BY RIGOROUS RIGOR

I haven’t been paying attention to the news, but last week was Climate Week, so lemme check what happened . . . oh.

The fossil-fueled Hurricane Helene is a $100 billion disaster with an official death toll that is over 100. Over two million households remain without power along Helene’s track. Almost all of the homes being destroyed by floods are without flood insurance.

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is channeling donations and volunteers to local organizations throughout the region devastated by Helene.

In the other big news of Climate Week, the British government finally took strong action to put climate criminals behind bars. Well, they sentenced two climate activists who threw soup on glass-paneled paintings to two years in prison. Take that, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland!

So maybe not precisely the fossil-fuel-industry criminals profiting from climate destruction, but if you think about it backwards, it’s progress!

Felon and serial liar Donald Trump recommitted to climate denial today while touring the devastated town of Valdosta, Ga. He also said “nobody thought” Helene could happen “so late in the season for hurricanes.”¹  

While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are mobilizing the massive state and federal relief effort, both the White House and Harris for President communications teams are bizarrely silent on the climate pollution responsible for this disaster. The Harris campaign really needs to let its climate engagement team—which has a national climate organizing event with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) tonight— take the wheel.

Meanwhile, fossil-fuel-funded corporate media outlets like CNN are pretending this is the day Trump became president.

Let’s see how the rest of the world has been celebrating Climate Week: there are catastrophic, deadly floods in Nepal and Typhoon Krathon is striking the Philippines. Millions are stranded and thousands dead from extreme flooding in Nigeria, Mali, Senegal and Chad. Floods and mudslides have killed more than 200 in Myanmar. Record floods in Thailand have displaced over 150,000 families. Typhoon Yagi also hit Vietnam, Laos, and the Philippines, affecting millions. In central Europe, Storm Boris dumped a month’s worth of rain in one day, pounding Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary with deadly floods.

Where there isn’t flood, there’s fire. Wildfires are raging in southern California, causing chaos in Portugal, burning through southern Greece, and threatening the capital of Ecuador.

The Amazon River and its tributaries are shrinking to mudflats amid extreme drought, and drought in Indiana, Kansas and Ohio is hitting farmers hard. It’s so bad that Ohio authorities are even restricting frackers from draining the lakes!

Hamilton Nolan has some thoughts on bad climate socialism.

Scientific rigor proponents have retracted their paper on the benefits of scientific rigor due to a lack of scientific rigor.

There’s a giant chemical fire in Conyers, Ga. Toxic smoke is spewing out of the burning Biolab facility and spreading haze over suburban Atlanta.

Andrew Yamakawa Elrod holds a wake for Bidenomics.

Climate Action Today:

• 8 PM: Climate Voters for Harris-Walz
  Climate Action for America Kickoff with Ed Markey and Jay Inslee
  

Thanks so so much for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.

1  It is the middle of the hurricane season.