Hurricane Helene: Catastrophic storm created by capitalists’ priorities

With a death toll over 230 and rising, Hurricane Helene is the worst regional catastrophe to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, killing nearly 1,400 people and displacing tens of thousands more in 2005.

After making landfall as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26, the hurricane unleashed devastation across Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains area was hardest hit, with entire towns wiped off the map. In these mountains what were once called “100-year floods” have lately become commonplace.

With many areas still impassable and with limited phone communication, confirmed death tolls are expected to climb.

Scientists and politicians will call Hurricane Helene a “natural disaster,” but in many aspects it was human-made, fueled by deregulations of environmental protections, expansion of fossil fuels and coal extraction and reductions in funding for climate change concerns on state and federal levels. Climate-related projects under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act won’t take place until 2025.

Scientists point to extreme rain falls impacting communities across the U.S. in recent years. Warmer ocean temperatures, along with moisture from rain-saturated soil, created the 20 trillion gallons of rainfall that this hurricane dropped in its path.

Experts are already finding evidence that climate change fueled Hurricane Helene’s destruction that included 30 to 35 inches of rain, falling in less than three days across steep mountainous terrain. The sudden rainfall caused rivers, creeks and streams to spill over their banks and carved new watery paths that wiped out roads, bridges, homes and businesses.

North Carolina was once a national leader in renewable energy and climate change resiliency policies. But beginning in the early 2010s, pro-big business lawmakers and corporate interests in North Carolina fought climate control measures and sabotaged projects designed to cut heat-trapping emissions and help communities withstand hurricane-force winds and widespread flooding.

In 2010, the legislature slashed the operating budget for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality responsible for protection standards. In 2012, Pat McCrory, a former executive at Duke Energy, North Carolina’s largest public utility, was elected governor.

Lindsey Graham: Prioritize funding for Israel’s wars

Climate-change deniers including McCrory bear much responsibility, but so too do politicians like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who on Oct. 4 told Fox News host Chris Hannity: “I’ve been going all over South Carolina, and like most people haven’t slept much. But look what’s going on in Israel.” Graham told Hannity he thought it was more important to provide weapons to Israel than fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to rescue workers in the U.S. ruined by the flood.

Graham is not alone among capitalist politicians from both major parties who seem to believe that reducing the annual budget of FEMA was necessary if it meant making more money available for Israel to carry out genocide against Palestinian people.

Voting for a government funding extension through December, bipartisan votes in Congress and the Senate, just before taking a six-week recess on Sept. 25, left out billions of dollars requested for supplemental disaster funding for FEMA and other federal disaster programs. FEMA already faced a nearly $2 billion deficit due to   damage from previous major storms and forest fires. The agency has obligations of around $8 billion that it has been unable to reimburse states for to cover damages from early August storms. (Politico, Sept. 26)

While people in many areas hard hit by past climate disasters, including New Orleans and Puerto Rico, have ample reasons for being critical of FEMA, cutting the agency’s funding, as Congress did in September, just as Hurricane Helene was approaching landfall, only made matters worse.

FEMA’s annual budget for 2024 was around $29.5 billion. AccuWeather on Sept. 30 estimated that total costs for rebuilding after Hurricane Helene could reach $160 billion.

Congress quick to fund wars 

Just as Israel was launching major military attacks on Lebanon and carrying out assassinations of leaders of Hezbollah on Sept. 27, President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress approved $8.9 billion more to support Israel’s expanding wars in West Asia.

On Aug. 13, the Department of State announced that the U.S. had approved a $20 billion weapons package to Israel that included fighter jets and advanced air-to-air missiles. Since 2022, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with almost $60 billion for weapons, and Biden announced another $2.4 billion assistance package on Sept. 26.

In contrast to U.S. imperialism’s abandoning the environment, China has established long-term plans to reduce carbon emissions by funding the production of electric vehicles and low-energy rapid transit and designing green cities to absorb carbon pollution. And socialist Cuba’s planned economy allows the island nation to maximize plans to deal with the ramifications of major hurricanes, with evacuation plans that minimize death tolls.

In the U.S., where capitalists’ profits are always prioritized over people’s needs, potential victims of major storm damage are left on their own to cope.

On Oct. 6, the National Hurricane Center announced that Category 1 Hurricane Milton is “rapidly intensifying” and expected to become a Category 5 hurricane before making landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast Oct. 9.