The Beach Party at the Threshold of Helene

PRESENTED BY SHELLENE

Eco-fascist JD Vance was forced to cancel his neo-Nazi rally planned for today in Georgia thanks to the climate hoax of the mega-monster Hurricane Helene, which makes landfall near Tallahassee, Florida tonight.

The fossil-fueled Helene’s tropical storm-force winds span an absurd 480 miles. Tornado watches stretch across Florida. There is already flash flooding in northwest North Carolina, with 24 more hours of rain to come. There is going to be catastrophic flooding from Saratoga, Fla. to Atlanta to hundreds of miles inland in Chattanooga, Tenn.  School systems are closed from Florida through Georgia up to North Carolina. NOAA issued this urgent warning of “catastrophic, life-threatening inland flooding”:

The White House has declared a federal emergency in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina; a local state of emergency has been declared in South Carolina and Virginia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is working on limited funds and has cut back on long-term recovery projects, as the federal disaster relief fund only received stop-gap support by the short-term government-funding deal approved by Congress last night.

The Sunrise Movement has taken up the call demanding that President Joe Biden or his successor declare a national climate emergency. Although we should have taken action decades ago to end the scourge of carbon pollution, there’s no time like the present.

The very real climate emergency of Helene is seizing the headlines from the polite conferences of Climate Week NYC, where Project 2025 architect and Obadiah Stane cosplayer Kevin Roberts mocked global warming at the New York Times Climate Forward Summit yesterday. “I enjoy my high carbon lifestyle,” he smirked under the mild questioning of David Gelles, whose paper regularly runs greenwashing ad campaigns from the fossil-fuel industry.

Gelles also respectfully hosted Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub, who fled from the presence of Climate Defiance protesters who took the stage and chanted, “We charge you with ecocide.” Climate Defiance activists have also challenged York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to divest the state’s pension funds from fossil fuels, confronted Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and called out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “climate criminal” for his support for Canada’s tar-sands industry. Trudeau lied in response, saying “we’ve moved on from that stuff.”

Thanks to fossil-fuel disasters like Helene, the country is undergoing a widespread collapse of household and municipal finances. Clyde, Texas is “is the latest U.S. city to suffer a climate-related default” and this November “Californians will vote on whether to borrow $10 billion to address issues such as rising sea levels and forest fires,” writes Heather Gillers in the Wall Street Journal, part of Rupert Murdoch‘s right-wing climate-denial media empire.

The Wall Street Journal’s Shane Shifflett and Jean Eaglesham have a devastating take on how the giants of the American insurance industry—State Farm and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway—are investing billions in Big Oil even as they raise rates on homeowners or even abandon them because of the climate disasters their investments are causing:

Allstate (“We’re reducing climate risk”) has fossil-fuel investments worth “$1.8 billion, which made up 4.3% of its overall portfolio, more than double the industry median.”

Our polluted climate is key to the “sexiest race on the ballot” in North Carolina in November, Grist’s Jesse Nichols writes—the state insurance commissioner. State insurers, battered by years of rising storms and sea levels, have requested an average 42 percent increase in home insurance rates, double that along the coast.  Democratic state senator Natasha Marcus, challenging the Republican incumbent Mike Causey, is a climate hawk who wants greater transparency from the industry in addition to climate action.

At a Climate Week event, the young Climate and Community Institute debuted a report proposing the creation of Housing Resilience Agencies, “to coordinate and oversee comprehensive disaster risk reduction activities in the state, and to provide public disaster insurance that offers fair and equitable protection.”

OTHER NEWS: “Firefighters in Ecuador are working to contain a number of wildfires outside the country’s capital, as several South American nations struggle with the effects of widespread drought and record-setting blazes. Record-setting blazes have broken out in countries across South America, including Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru, as the region has been hit by severe drought.”

“The Department of Energy’s wholehearted support for carbon capture and storage rests on vaporous assumptions about the technical capabilities of unbuilt projects,” writes Dennis Wamsted.

"The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced a partnership with AmeriCorps to form the Environmental Justice Climate Corps, an offshoot of the previously-announced American Climate Corps aimed at recruitment in low-income areas.

“A federal judge on Wednesday signed off on a $600 million payment from the Norfolk Southern railroad to settle claims related to the infamous 2023 derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.”

At 10 am, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) chaired an Environment subcommittee hearing examining the public health impacts of PFAS exposures with witnesses Laurel Schaider, a senior scientist at the Silent Spring Institute and Sue Fenton, Director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University

All day, House Natural Resources subcommittees are pushing Kevin Roberts’ Project 2025 eco-fascist agenda in three separate hearings:

• At 10 am, the Indian and Insular Affairs subcommittee held a hearing examining Puerto Rico’s electrical grid with Puerto Rico power officials, who highlighted the now 100,000 rooftops with community solar. There was bipartisan disdain for environmental protections as “red tape.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called out Genera CEO Brannen McElmurray for touting dependence on natural gas in contravention to Puerto Rico’s commitment to moving to 100% renewable energy;

• At 10:15 am, the Federal Lands subcommittee held a legislative hearing on Federal Lands Amplified Security for the Homeland (FLASH) Act from Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), which is the latest GOP attempt to further Trump’s Mexico wall by stripping environmental protections along the border;

• At 2 pm, the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee run by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) holds an openly racist hearing claiming that pro-Palestinian protests on National Park Service lands are a “violent disgrace” and “desecrating Old Glory,” a trope pushed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Fox News.

And if that’s not eco-fascist enough for you, then Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) spelled out the Republican Party’s white-supremacist nativism in a dehumanizing post about Haitians (“…Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters…”), for which he steadfastly refused to apologize. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation), blocked efforts to reprimand Higgins before adjourning the House until after the November election last night.

Early voting has begun in Pennsylvania.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources
  Indian and Insular Affairs
  Examining Puerto Rico’s Electrical Grid and the Need for Reliable and Resilient Energy

• 10 AM: Senate Environment and Public Works
  Superfund, Waste Management, and Regulatory Oversight
  Examining the Public Health Impacts of PFAS Exposures

• 10:15 AM: House Natural Resources
  Federal Lands
  Legislative Hearing on Federal Lands Amplified Security for the Homeland (FLASH) Act

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources
  Oversight and Investigations
  Pro-Palestinian Protests on National Park Service Lands

Climate Action Today:

• Climate Week NYC

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