Hurricane Helene blows climate deniers Trump and Vance off course again

JD Vance has been forced to cancel two campaign events in Georgia due to the threat posed by Hurricane Helene, in the latest instance of Donald Trump’s presidential bid being affected by extreme weather worsened by a climate crisis that both Trump and Vance have routinely mocked.

Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, scrapped plans to make a speech in Macon, Georgia, and then hold a rally in Flowery Branch, Georgia, on Thursday due to the hurricane, which has surged across the Gulf of Mexico and hit Florida’s west coast as a category 4 storm.

Hurricane Helene has threatened a storm surge of as much as 20ft along Florida’s Gulf coast, with flooding and tornadoes expected in Georgia as it sweeps inland. “Say a prayer for our friends in Florida and Georgia who are bracing for what seems to be a very bad storm,” Vance posted on X on Thursday.

The Trump campaign said that Vance’s events would be rearranged “as soon as possible”, but climate campaigners claimed the Ohio senator had been hit in ironic fashion by the consequences of global heating. Vance has said he is “skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man” and called efforts by Joe Biden to address it a “green scam”.

Not only is the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity the cause of 100% of warming since 1950, scientists say it is also causing hurricanes like Helene to become fiercer and accelerate more quickly.

The average intensification rate of hurricanes today is nearly 30% greater than it was before the 1990s due to a hotter atmosphere and oceans, according to a study published last year. The path of Helene across the Gulf of Mexico has been exceptionally hot this year, with this increased heat made at least 200 times more likely due to human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central.

Vance’s campaign cancellations expose “the dangerous hypocrisy of climate deniers”, said Cassidy DiPaola, a campaigner at the Make Polluters Pay Campaign. “Vance and Trump can run from a storm, but they can’t hide from the reality of the climate crisis they continue to deny.”

Trump supporters seek shade while waiting in 92F weather for the start of a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 2024. Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Vance attended two fundraising events thrown by oil industry executives in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday. He was at a lunch hosted by Cody Campbell, co-chief executive of Double Eagle Energy Holdings and then a $100,000-a-couple dinner organized by Ray Washburne, chair of the fuel distributor Sunoco.

Trump has promised the oil and gas industry a rollback of environmental rules in return for campaign donations, along with the deletion of “insane” spending on clean energy projects flowing from landmark climate legislation signed by Biden, should he return to the White House.

However, the former president’s campaign has still had to contend with the scorching temperatures, as well as severe storms, that are being spurred by the burning of fossil fuels. In June, 24 people at a Trump rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, required medical attention due to severe heat, while a further 11 people were sent to hospital for heat exhaustion at a separate Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona.

“I’m up here sweating like a dog,” Trump complained from the podium during the Las Vegas rally, where temperatures hit 102F (38C). “They don’t think about me. This is hard work.”

Political campaigning, much like other activities such as outdoor work and recreation, is being complicated by the climate crisis, according to Jesse Keenan, an expert in climate adaptation at Tulane University.

“These extreme weather events make it harder to get large groups of people together, particularly outside,” said Keenan. “People aren’t used to standing for hours outside in the sun, and to see people collapsing with heatstroke is an eye-opening experience. We are now seeing smaller, indoor events being held by Donald Trump.

“Campaigns now need infrastructure such as icing, shading, first aid stations, triage for heatstroke, and that isn’t cheap. If there’s flooding, it’s hard for people to get their cars to muddy fields in rural areas, and if it’s hot onstage, it’s harder for candidates who are constantly on the move and need to remain mentally sharp. When storms hit, it can displace people, which makes it more difficult for them to vote, too.”

The future tracking of storms such as Hurricane Helene could be radically different under a new Trump administration, with Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto drawn up by multiple former Trump aides, calling for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Weather Service, which currently provides free public information on weather events, to be broken up and commercialized.

“Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity,” reads the Project 2025 document, which Trump has attempted to distance himself from.

Privatizing the weather service would be a “very bad idea”, Keenan said, because it would risk eliminating important extreme-weather warnings for the public if these weren’t deemed profitable by a private entity. “If you leave it to the private sector, we wouldn’t have the assurances that forecasts were being made in the best interests of the wider public,” he said.

The National Hurricane Center, also part of Noaa, is “critical to coordinating evacuations and emergency response”, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s just one example of how dangerous, deadly and disastrous Project 2025 would be if Trump were elected and it were implemented.”

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which published the policy blueprint, on Wednesday defended Project 2025’s positions. He also dismissed the overwhelming consensus that humans are warming the planet, telling a New York Times event that “it sounds like weather to me”.