A state of emergency

Hello, and welcome to the last issue of Grist’s special series on how climate disasters are shaping elections. I’m Zoya Teirstein.

I was at an election night watch party in Asheville, North Carolina, last week when it became clear that Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to victory had become impossibly narrow. On the drive back to my hotel, I detoured around roads that had been carved away by Hurricane Helene two months prior. It’ll take years for Asheville, Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and other hard-hit communities in western North Carolina to recover from that storm. Residents will be reliant on the next White House administration to ferry them safely through this disaster and any others that may strike in the next four years.

As the final ballots were counted, evidence mounted that Donald Trump had swayed a significant number of U.S. voters to the right. But political observers pointed out that a handful of the very few counties nationwide that bucked the trend — actually moving further left this presidential election cycle — happened to fall along Hurricane Helene’s path.

Research has shown that people who endure a shock event like a hurricane and then receive a benefit from the federal government tend to vote for the party that delivered them that benefit. But experts I spoke to said that it’s far more likely that these blue shifts in Helene’s path are explained by factors that have nothing to do with the storm — at least in the short term. 

“Remember that many of these Appalachian towns that were hit by Helene are really popular places for people to retire,” said Jowei Chen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan. “Trump was less popular among retirees in 2024 than he was four years ago. So this alone might explain some of the shifts you’re seeing in the Appalachian counties.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of reporting this series, however, it’s that disasters like Helene have political consequences that manifest over the course of years, even decades. In July, I wrote about Lake Charles, Louisiana, where a string of back-to-back storms in 2021 fundamentally restructured the city. City council members, elected before the disasters, are still struggling to figure out how many people live in their districts today. On the 19th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this August, my colleague Jake Bittle wrote about what happened in Houston after an influx of Katrina evacuees reached the city in 2005. Houston’s mayor at the time, Bill White, faced immense backlash for helping resettle those displaced people, as a racially charged social panic over alleged gang violence imported from New Orleans spread through the Texas city. 

We’ve written about the chaos that ensues for communities trying to cast their ballots after a climate-fueled disaster, the floods that create housing crises, the droughts and wildfires that have given rise to a new cadre of solutions-focused politicians, and why a warmer, more erratic planet is a fertile breeding ground for authoritarianism. “In order to navigate future climate disruptions, politicians will have to be prepared to deal with concerns about housing, jobs, and crime — concerns that may cross over into outright racism or xenophobia,” Jake wrote a couple of months ago. 

The thing is, while Trump and many of the people around him are proud climate deniers, climate change has become all but impossible to ignore. Disasters will continue to rip communities apart; the federal government, no matter who runs it, will struggle to deliver the aid people need; and more and more disaster victims will become very, very angry. The growing chorus of those demanding reform will likely become deafening — in some places it already has.

“It’s no longer just Florida and Louisiana, and it’s no longer just the states that deal with wildfires,” Vermont’s Republican housing commissioner told me several weeks ago. “Everybody is facing this. We need to completely rethink how we address disasters.” 

After collectively traveling to six states and interviewing dozens of people, one thing has become clear: We’re just beginning to see the political consequences of climate change. 

Until next time,
Zoya

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A state of emergency on Nov 12, 2024.