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For years, the clearest impacts of a warming climate across the U.S. were seen in bigger and more frequent western wildfires, droughts and heatwaves in the Southwest, coastal erosion and increasingly powerful hurricanes hammering Florida’s low-lying coastline. But the monster storm generated by Hurricane Helen that dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain across the Southeast, killed hundreds, destroyed roads and infrastructure and left millions without power has dramatically reframed things.
The destruction caused by the worst U.S. storm since Hurricane Katrina was notable not simply for the scale but where it was concentrated: communities like Asheville and surrounding towns in North Carolina that are far inland, at a higher elevation, are more temperate and generally perceived as less prone to extreme weather events. Just as Canada’s vast and brutal wildfires demonstrated in 2023, the effects of hotter, drier weather and intense, stronger and wetter hurricanes fueled by warming oceans that take longer to dissipate over land mean that no region is safe from a changing climate.
In the current presidential election, there’s been far too little discussion about the climate crisis and need for the U.S. to accelerate the transition to zero-carbon energy, with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris offering no new plans to build on or expand the work done by President Biden through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Meanwhile, Republican nominee Donald Trump talks mainly about boosting production of carbon-spewing oil and gas and suggesting rising sea levels are good because they create more ocean-front property (seemingly unaware his beloved Mar-a-Lago sits in a flood zone on Florida’s porous bedrock).
Whether it’s Asheville or Palm Beach, there are no climate havens.
The Big Read
Nuclear Power Is Gaining Favor—But Won’t Replace Fossil Fuels Anytime Soon
Microsoft’s recent announcement that it has inked a 20-year deal to buy power from a retired nuclear reactor at the notorious Three Mile Island site graphically illustrates a seismic shift in political attitudes toward nuclear power. Three Mile Island, of course, is where a nuclear reactor experienced a partial meltdown in 1979. There were no injuries and no permanent damage.
Nonetheless, the accident freaked out the public, and the construction of new nuclear power facilities became politically radioactive. Attitudes are changing, in no small part because high tech—once a font of antinuclear sentiment—is a power hog and needs all the juice it can get. However, this segment of What’s Ahead cautions that the realities of suffocating regulation and the time it takes to construct such facilities mean that no rapid energy rescue is in the offing.
Read more here
Hot Topic
Washington Governor Jay Inslee on AI, clean energy and the climate crisis
What’s your view of the conjunction between AI and climate and its benefits and risks?
I’m a lot more worried about natural stupidity than artificial intelligence because there’s way too much of that going on right now. This is a double-edged sword because AI in many ways will help the clean energy revolution. It’s going to help us decide what’s the most effective silicon anode battery. It’s going to help develop fusion. And by the way, I’m bragging about my state: we have three of the leading fusion companies in the United States within 10 miles of each other near Seattle, Washington.
AI can really help in the development of these things. To stop the development of a system that can help you develop clean energy technologies is probably not a really good idea.
But if you look at the [energy] numbers, they are massive. They are absolutely massive. One major company in our state had a reduction of about 30% of their goals just because of the AI requirements. We’re facing this big time because I’m having trouble siting facilities for wind, storage and solar just to feed the AI centers.
It’s not hard to site an AI center. Nobody objects to them. It’s a black box. There’s hardly anybody in the parking lot. They just sit there. But people do object to some of these other technologies. So we’ve got to find a way to cite these, the clean energy projects, in my book.
We’re not going to stop the use of technology in my view.
What Else We’re Reading
‘Weird Science’: Climate change takes center stage in VP debate after Helene disaster
An ‘elegant’ idea could pay billions to protect trees in Brazil
Why isn’t the IRA more of a political winner for Democrats?
U.K. closes last coal power station after 142 years
Where Americans have been moving into disaster-prone areas
Pollution, wind, EVs: Trump risks upending Biden’s climate work
When it comes to water, cattle farming is a much bigger problem than AI data centers
North Carolina’s EV owners are using their cars to keep the lights on
SunZia, America’s largest renewable energy project, is nearly finished. The remaining challenges—and lessons learned
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