In Hurricane Helene’s deadly wake, a crucial question lingers: When will we start taking climate change seriously? | Editorial

After making landfall on the western coast of Florida last week, Hurricane Helene moved north into the Appalachian Mountains, bringing flooding and torrential rain to inland, upriver communities long thought to be exempt from extreme weather events.

Until they weren’t.

More than 150 people have died in the storm’s wake, hundreds are missing, and thousands more have seen their homes and livelihoods disappear. As the shocking videos, images, and stories trickle out and aid is flown in, it is worth asking: Can anything change the apparent widespread sense of apathy toward finding solutions for systemic issues like climate change?

Sadly, the early indications say otherwise. For too many of us, these calamities represent just another opportunity to bash our ideological foes, when these crises should be a call to action.

For the MAGA right, which currently dominates the Republican Party, the flooding was yet another sign that we are spending too much money on supporting Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders. Never mind that the surplus military equipment that represents most of our expenditures in that war wouldn’t be much use in the flood zones, or that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is already on the ground assisting survivors.

For the discontented left, a different country was to blame. While the world mourned with Israel after the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, the resulting war in Gaza, which now threatens to spread to a regional conflict, has led to a humanitarian crisis that has rightfully shocked the consciences of many Americans across the political spectrum. Still, American aid to Israel is not an obstacle to delivering assistance to Appalachia and the Gulf Coast, either.

This kind of finger-pointing is anathema to solving problems, but it has become an increasingly popular way to conduct politics.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance indulges in the blame Ukraine game, as well, but his preferred target has been immigrants — despite being married to the daughter of foreign-born parents. Vance has blamed immigrants for everything from rising housing costs to the surge in traffic fatalities. Just get rid of those people, Vance seems to be saying, and all of America’s problems will go away.

Beyond the danger to real people sparked by this kind of demonization (just ask folks in Springfield, Ohio, or Charleroi, Pa., for details), it also produces a kind of inaction in the face of real problems, an inaction that guarantees these challenges will remain unaddressed. After all, who needs speed cameras or traffic calming when you can just scapegoat an entire community? Who needs to formulate a coherent immigration policy when you can build a 1,900-mile border wall?

While the Biden administration has touted the Inflation Reduction Act as a climate bill, it represents a long overdue first step, not a comprehensive solution. The message also hasn’t been received by everyone in public office. In Pennsylvania, transportation officials are ramming through an unpopular and unnecessary highway expansion in South Philadelphia, while the state legislature holds funding for transit hostage.

This combination will force many residents off the trains, buses, and trolleys they currently ride and into the driver’s seat, worsening local pollution and congestion and increasing the carbon footprint of every affected resident.

Still, at least climate activists have some wins to point to. On other issues, like gun violence, America has given up completely.

After a brief pandemic-era respite, mass shootings have resumed at their regular horrific pace. Lawmakers no longer even pretend to support solutions to this problem. After a September school shooting in Georgia left four people dead, Vance called them a “fact of life.”

Donald Trump and Vance would surely find a way to blame the rise in shootings on immigrants, as well, if only the shooters weren’t straight out of MAGA central casting. Nearly all mass shooters are men, and most are also white.

This fact is a painful reminder that America’s biggest problems are not the result of people coming across the border or raging wars abroad. They are homegrown, and the solutions must be, as well. But until the finger-pointing stops and the self-reflection begins, these systemic problems will remain.