When is the Point of No Return?
Hurricane Helene is about far more than one devastating storm
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Many of us are following the disastrous aftermath of Category 4 Hurricane Helene. You may have friends or family directly impacted. One of my readers who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, hello Ron, wishing you well, reached out. Two people were lost in his community to the storm. It will take weeks or months to know all the immediate losses, but equally important is the effect on survivors for years to come, from the loss of businesses, homes, life savings, and the heartbreak of loved ones needlessly lost, the unquantifiable attrition from depression over time and resulting health consequences. As these events and others like endemic drought and ravaging fires from our planet becoming too hot increase, millions of victims will not be accounted for. At a global scale, that number will be in the billions.
As I write 215 people are known dead and hundreds are missing. Nearly five million people lost power at the height of the storm, and as of Wednesday, over a million were still without power. Losses were estimated up to $110 billion by Fortune, however AccuWeather estimated a range of $145 to $160 billion. Top rainfalls exceeded 32 inches in 48 to 72 hours in areas of North Carolina. In Atlanta, a record 11.2 inches fell in just two days. Much of that, the majority, is uninsured as massive flooding took place in locations where flooding wasn’t considered a threat. Even in coastal areas, only 21 percent of homeowners carry flood insurance.
When I wrote of Storm Debby, a mere Category 1 event just six weeks ago, I knew it would be forgotten quickly. That was in part why I wrote it. A pedestrian event by comparison, it still caused $12.3 billion dollars in damage, of which only $1.4 billion was insured. Like Helene, it carried far more evaporated water from our overheating planet, making it far more destructive than similar storms of the past. The US is experiencing billion dollar weather disasters every few weeks now, droughts fires, floods, not every few months as years ago. 2023 saw a record twenty-eight billion dollar weather disasters, totaling $92.9 billion. That terrible record won’t stand.
Biden touring the devastation of North and South Carolina said:
“Natural disasters are incredibly consequential. The last thing we need on top of that is a man-made disaster that’s going on at the ports. “We’re hearing from the folks regionally that they’re having trouble getting product that they need because of the port strike.”
Sure, Joe, deflect blame to striking dockworkers, you ass. Helene may have been a natural disaster, but was made far worse from making man-made “product,” buddy. Destroying the planet by burning fossil fuels subsidized by my tax dollars and Helene’s victims to manufacture unnecessary consumer goods destined for our bloodstreams and the landfill is an inexorable path to extinction, you dope. Get it?
Furthermore, US subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, the wanton government underwriting of death, are deliberately obfuscated by a byzantine tax code, making determining an exact figure of this evil virtually impossible. Nice.
According to this 2023 Reuters article, that figure is somewhere between $10 to $50 billion dollars a year. Quite a spread, that. Even a huge news organization can’t figure it out. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute more confidently pegs US oil subsidies at $20 billion dollars a year. It’s difficult to pin down with the previously mentioned labyrinth of laws, written to benefit the wealthiest, our benevolent job “creators” who reward us with non-living wages in jobs that manufacture our own deaths as they jet about the world. Yes, a billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person from their wanton personal consumption and filthy investments. These figures so cleverly veiled can be disputed, but there’s no question our tax dollars subsidize our self-destruction. Worldwide, fossil fuels subsidies amounted to $7 trillion in 2022, a figure projected to rise to $8.2 trillion by 2030. Might this be a problem?
Worldwide fossil fuel subsidies topped $7 trillion last year
The explosion of billion dollar weather events since 1980
Billion dollar weather events by state 2019-2024
Lives have been changed forever, with businesses and homes destroyed. Less than one percent of inland homes had flood insurance. I think of Asheville, which I visited years ago when my wife and I were exploring places to relocate, looking for the best balance of work, environment and a human quality of life. This was two decades before I fully understood the profound consequences of climate change, so carefully obfuscated by our wealthy overlord owned media and its agenda to enforce the status quo. Asheville was a beautiful community of 60,000 at the time with the Blue Ridge Mountains back dropping a warm, thriving, historic business district that recalled better times at least in some ways, certainly not all unless you cast a blind eye to injustices of the past, before the corporatization of our every breath and thought. The charming downtown was filled with conversation, sidewalk cafés and boutique shops, the dreams of small business owners realized. Apparently, Asheville was thought to be one of the safer places to live as climate change worsens. Now we sadly know otherwise.
A study published October 2 in Nature has shown far more people will die years down the road from heartbreak, trauma and loss, on average a shocking 7,000 to 11,000 people in the following fifteen years after events like Helene, a sobering revelation of far greater mortality than the immediate statistics after environmental disasters suggest. One can assume this applies to all natural disasters. These deaths aren’t counted, and Helene is just a single example of what were previously one in 100 year storms becoming commonplace. From 2019, another study concludes that in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, these catastrophes are on course to become yearly by late in this century. In the southeast Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, the study predicts disasters of this magnitude to increase to every 1–30 years.
From the October 2 study, lightly edited for clarity:
Tropical cyclones — that is, hurricanes and tropical storms—are widespread globally and have lasting economic impacts, but their full health impact remains unknown. Here we conduct a large-scale evaluation of long-term effects of tropical cyclones on human mortality in the United States for all tropical cyclones between 1930 and 2015. We observe a robust increase in excess mortality that persists for 15 years after each geophysical event. We estimate that the average tropical cyclone generates 7,000–11,000 excess deaths, exceeding the average of 24 immediate deaths reported in government statistics. Tracking the effects of 501 historical storms, we compute that the tropical cyclone climate of the US imposes an undocumented mortality burden that explains a substantial fraction of the higher mortality rates along the Atlantic coast and is equal to roughly 3.2–5.1% of all deaths. These findings suggest that the tropical cyclone climate, previously thought to be unimportant for broader public health outcomes, is a meaningful underlying driver for the distribution of mortality risk in the US, especially among infants (less than 1 year of age), people 1–44 years of age, and the Black population. Understanding why tropical cyclones induce this excess mortality is likely to yield substantial health benefits.
Of course these increasingly violent and destructive storms, killer heat waves and fires, a million acres burned in California so far this year, South America suffocated by endless smoke from the burning rainforest, recent floods in Central Europe and fires in Portugal are courtesy of Exxon and friends who knew the consequences of CO2 and global warming in the 1970s, but continued because these companies are run by soulless, sociopathic monsters. Let’s credit our cretinous enabling government as well, of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, whose lifelong tenures, not intended by the founding fathers, hell, even slave owner James Madison went back to being a farmer after he left office dammit, living with his policies, not above them, are made possible by filling campaign chests with blood money that buys willful ignorance and promotes endless extermination level growth on a finite planet advertised as somehow a meaningful and something to strive for. How’s your mental health? Is this system working for you? Are you fulfilled? Did you fill that pothole with steaming blacktop in increasingly unbearable temperatures, or complete that financial spreadsheet showing wonderful company growth for your boss? Did you have time or energy for those you love today? Are you ready to fight for a future? The psychos who created and benefit from this mess aren’t going to suddenly play nice. Many of them will make money from Helene. Disaster capitalism in full glory.
Every year we hear this is the most important election ever. This year it’s actually true. In addition to the climate crisis, plastic in our brains, and the Sixth Great Extinction, we have to beat back unhinged Christian Fascism, Neo Nazis, and garden variety neoliberal economics promoted by both parties destroying our Earth, our life support system.
I’m unsure of Kamala Harris’ grasp of our situation, given that she touted fracking in her debate with the Diapered Clown. Hopefully, she’s just garnering votes in the fracking swing state of Pennsylvania. However, I do know that Obama unleashed fracking and bragged about it, so there’s that. Worse, I know should the Orange Thing attain office again, it’s game over.
Fascism will have triumphed and the last zombie feeding frenzy on our sweet Earth will take place. Trump’s Project 2025 ghouls will destroy what’s left of Democracy as he golfs, remove all environmental and social protections resulting in soaring death rates of despair, disease and cancer. So will state violence. The Gestapo, Proud Boys, whatever, will be at your door, at my door. We will have to choose between our safety and turning in our friends and family. Anyone with the courage to stand up will be disappeared, just like in Pinochet’s Chile in the 1970s, when neoliberal capitalism was first installed by Milton Friedman’s Chicago School disciples with the full backing of the criminals named Nixon, Kissinger and the CIA.
Savor these words, difficult as they may be. My safety in writing them is in danger. We’re all in danger. In a month, an election will be held. It will likely be disturbingly close. If Harris wins, don’t be surprised by ensuing chaos and violence. There is a seething, exploited minority in this country ready to explode.
Oh my such gloom and I agree with all of it.
I lived just north of Asheville for 14 years and now, of all places I live in central Fla. for 8 years now, with Milton picking up speed and heading my way.
It worries me, but so does right wing politics, greed, violence, social media, AI, climate change and the ignorance and apathy of oh so many of our citizens.
I am just grateful I’m old and have no offspring to worry about. But I cry for the earth and only can hope once man is gone, the earth will heal and life will flourish once more and hopefully, without humans.
Really enjoyed your analysis, and your previous post, too, about the disappearing Permian basin oil. Also, some gratitude for not taking the position that our broken political system means we should sit out the election. Letting Trump in will be checkmate.
I suspect Kamala is simply playing for votes in Pennsylvania. I learned a very long time ago not to take what a presidential candidate says on the stump seriously. Biden's actual policies have been the closest to FDR's since FDR, but that's not how he campaigned. If he had, he probably would have been clobbered, because Americans, even though they support the majority of the leftish policies he's enacted, don't seem to realize that they do, so they veer hard to the middle every election.
Trump is an anomaly in that regard, of course, as he has no policy other than deranged levels of grief politics.
Kamala spoke out against fracking when she first ran in 2020. She's also young enough to have kids she must be worried about. The door will at least be open to change. I hope so. If not, Trump will in prison and we can safely show her the door in the next primaries.
One minor footnote. The dock strike is over. They reportedly accepted a 61% (or so) pay increase. I would argue that Biden's comments were probably directed at the employers, rather than striking workers, especially given that the longshoreman's union credited Pete Buttigieg with helping push an agreement through that they could sign off on.
The strike is officially postponed until January, after the inauguration, so even if they hit snags tightening up the terms of the contract, it won't affect the election. Frankly, I'm breathing a sigh of relief, because Americans are much more concerned about the cost of their toilet paper than the general welfare of the country. Your readers and readers of similar substacks excepted of course.
So a strike could have done real damage to Kamala's candidacy.