Entire towns have been wiped off the map in the last 48 hours. Thousands of terrified residents in Asheville, North Carolina and across the state are trapped by flash floods after politicians failed to take Hurricane Helene seriously. 

The storm has damaged thousands of homes and left millions without power. Working-class people have been hardest hit because more affordable housing is often built on less-desirable, low-elevation, flood-prone land.

The official death toll from Helene has already risen to 120. But official deaths don’t measure the total cost of natural disasters. One study that took into account stress-related deaths found that hospitals see between a doubling or even quadrupling of deaths up to two weeks after the official end to the disaster.

Climate Policies Lose In November

And yet, neither Trump nor Harris are talking about policies that can actually solve the problem. Trump has only cynically attacked Harris for campaigning in Nevada during the storm. 

Instead of addressing polluting industries, Harris and Walz are pushing for policies that will make storms like Hurricane Helene worse and more frequent. After once promising that she would ban fracking, she insisted during the most recent presidential debate, “As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.” 

Furthermore, Harris justifies her support for expanding domestic oil production with the need to prepare for war. Despite promises not to, the Biden/Harris administration has approved widespread drilling on federal land, including in delicate wilderness areas and dirty, inefficient tar-sands. US oil and gas production has reached record levels on their watch, which is something Harris celebrates.

At the same time, Harris and Walz try to pose as climate-friendly, and talk frequently about the rising costs of home insurance due to climate change. Home insurance rates have skyrocketed by 18% over the last year because of “extreme weather events.” This is essentially a tax on working families for the costs of climate change, and it’s made buying a home unaffordable for many. On top of this, most Americans have little in savings and can’t get loans to repair their homes after a disaster hits.

Harris and Walz might pay lip service to this issue, but they will never take on the big insurance companies that are making record profits while working people lose everything.

Putting the planet first this election means voting against both corporate politicians who will never do what is necessary to address climate change. It means voting for left-wing independent candidates like Jill Stein, who opposes fracking, oil and gas drilling, and the massacre in Gaza.

We Need A New System Now

No serious person expects storms like Helene to stop getting worse. Scientists are even proposing a “Category 6”, because the scale developed in the 1970’s is becoming meaningless. A new study, published in the journal Earth’s Future, found that warming oceans have caused storms to gain strength more quickly in recent decades as they draw nearer to coastlines. 

Other research shows severe storms may be moving more slowly, dumping more rainfall, intensifying more quickly, and causing more damaging coastal storm surges as sea levels rise.

While billionaires are planning to weather climate change by sheltering in sophisticated bunkers, moving to new cities, vacationing in second homes in the Swiss Alps, and even renting from a billionaire-owned space colony, working class people can’t wait any longer for action. 

Beyond “once in a lifetime” storms happening almost every year, capitalism-driven climate change is threatening whole regions with starvation, mass migration, and devastating wars. Capitalism can’t solve a crisis it created and perpetuates. There’s no time to lose—join us in the fight for a socialist economy that is democratically planned in the interests of the planet and all working people.

Socialist Alternative Calls For:

• Immediate relief for stranded residents. Fully-funded accommodations like emergency housing, meals, schools, and mental health support for displaced residents.
• Committees made up of unions, infrastructure workers, construction workers and displaced residents to manage disaster relief—not corporations and corrupt politicians. 
• Building a mass movement to take the 100 top polluting corporations into democratic public ownership, end all oil and gas drilling, expand free public transit, and immediately transition to green energy with a massive infrastructure program employing union workers.
• A vote for left independent, anti-war candidate Jill Stein in November, and building a new working class party that doesn’t take a penny from billionaires or fossil fuel corporations.