As Hurricane Helene devastates much of the Southeast, hitting hard a state whose governor (and government) has banned the words “climate change” from most official documents, some might be wondering when President Biden will pull out a sharpie and whether nuclear weapons are being discussed in the White House Situation Room.
For any failing to understand the reference, some reminders:
- #SharpieGate trended in 2019 when Trump edited the map projecting Hurricane Dorian’s path using a Sharpie pen. What really mattered here was that the editing was, well, simply wrong and thus provided — from the Oval Office — explicitly false information about a life-and-death issue. Worsening the situation were Trump operatives attacking National Weather Service professionals who sought to get correct information out to protect lives (and uphold their responsibilities). The egregious nature of Trump political appointees defending Trump’s actions led the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chief Scientist to take the incredibly unusual (and, well, courageous) action of issuing a public statement defending the NWS personnel.
- What would a President Trump do in a hurricane in September 2025? What would he (and his team) do to any public servant audacious enough to put public safety and American lives before helping make Trump look better and avoiding any hint of Trump making mistakes?
- How laughable is it to even reflect for a moment to think that President Biden would do anything so anti-science and stupid as Trump’s deploying that Sharpie? And, just as ridiculous is to suggest that President Harris would do anything like that or that a Harris Administration would act to suppress maliciously the work of civil servants working to protect Americans.
- When briefed on a hurricane, Trump queried about blowing it up with a nuclear weapon. Oh, btw, that happened multiple times.
- First, let’s recognize that this is part of Trump’s lifelong fascination with nuclear weapons (and card-carrying membership in the Dr. Strangelove crowd of ‘why have ’em if we won’t use them’) along with Trump’s other looks to nuclear weapons during his White House occupation that concerned even his appointees. Putting aside that reckless dalliance considering nuclear weapons use against other countries, attempting to blow up hurricanes with nuclear weapons is, simply, a bad idea. Looking again to those scientists at NOAA who Team Trump attacked, this is an idiotic idea:
“aside from the fact that [using nuclear weapons to destroy a hurricane] might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
Again, does any rational human being think that President Biden and Vice President Harris are asking why we haven’t blown up Hurricane Helene with nuclear weapons?
Consider Trump’s Project 2025 and climate
Despite continued GOP climate science denialism, Ron Desantis’ and Florida Republican legislature’s ‘don’t hear, don’t see, don’t speak’ approach to climate change, and Trump’s Project 2025 cohort celebrating fossil foolish pollution, the science is clear: burning fossil fuels has heated (and is heating) the planet and there are mounting risks for humanity (let along the rest of the earth’s ecosystem). Hurricanes like Helene are, honestly, best described as unnatural disasters. The damage that burning fossil fuels has done to the climate system has created conditions for worsened and stronger storms. Hurricane Helene’s storm surges across much of the Florida Gulf coast are, for example, the largest ever recorded. Additionally, sea level rise increased due to fossil fuel burning impacts on the climate have further worsened the storm surge. (As an example illustrating this impact, about $8B of Hurricane Sandy’s $45B in damage is attributable to human-caused increases in sea level.)
There is a painful reality that we must recognize: humanity has already done significant damage to the climate system and, no matter what we do going forward, the pain will worsen before the situation stabilizes and then, hopefully, improves.
A corollary reality: we have a very clear choice in the election about that future:
- If he again occupies the White House, Trump (and his Project 2025 cohort) will disregard science (including Project 2025’s agenda to dismantle NOAA) and glorify ignorant measures to accelerate the climate crisis while undermining paths to mitigate pollution and adapt to the increasingly significant climate impacts.
- The Harris-Walz Administration, in glaring contrast, will respect (and promote) scientific conclusions and experience, pursue measures to mitigate (reduce) climate-impacting (and, honestly, other) pollution, execute programs for greater resilience to climate emergencies, and develop paths for adaptation to the climate change impacts that cannot be mitigated.
The choice is ours to make.