Water from the Gulf of Mexico floods a road as Hurricane Helene churns offshore in St. Pete Beach, Florida. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Scientists had predicted a hyperactive hurricane season this year. Then, August and the first few weeks of September were eerily quiet in the Atlantic.
Enter Hurricane Helene.
The punishing force of the Category 4 storm has left millions of power customers without electricity in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. At least 20 people have been confirmed killed, and the damage assessments are just beginning. Strong winds and heavy rainfall are expected throughout the day across the Southeast and southern Appalachians, even after the storm was downgraded to a depression.
Helene is the third hurricane to strike the Big Bend region of Florida in the past 13 months. Residents of Dixie County had just finished cleaning up the debris from last month’s Hurricane Debby just a few days ago, writes Chelsea Harvey. And many coastal residents are still rebuilding after 2023’s Hurricane Idalia walloped the area.
“There’s a sense of trauma for those communities, a sense of demoralization,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a briefing today in Tallahassee.
In an interview with Fox News, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said south Georgia communities saw very heavy damage, particularly from snapping trees falling onto houses and power lines across the densely forested region. “We know we still have people trapped in homes that we are trying to cut our way into right now,” he said.
The climate link: The world’s oceans are heating up, acting as jet fuel for tropical cyclones. Last year set a new annual record for global ocean heat. Warmer waters are also increasing the heat and humidity in nearby land areas, posing additional risks to human health — especially during power outages in warm weather.
While the oceans have been slowly warming for years as humans have released greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, scientists have been startled by the record acceleration. Last year’s temperatures were decades ahead of most experts’ predictions.
Thank goodness it's Friday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@eenews.net.
Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Zack Colman takes the temperature of the corporate energy world ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
Power Centers
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) riding an ATV in the northern part of the state last month. | Garrett Downs/POLITICO's E&E News
Meet Maine’s maverick Democrat Democratic Rep. Jared Golden has been an anomaly in his party. Now, he’s on the cusp of becoming a power broker, writes Garrett Downs.
The combat veteran is running for a fourth term in Maine’s sprawling, largely rural and deeply purple 2nd District as an outsider unbeholden to his party. If he proves victorious over Republican Austin Theriault, a former NASCAR driver, Congress could see a revival of the once venerable Blue Dog Coalition.
Golden is refashioning the coalition from an outdated relic into a dynamic group of young independents willing to use their leverage and buck leadership when necessary.
How Trump 2.0 would use an energy emergency declaration Donald Trump has vowed to reverse parts of President Joe Biden’s largest-ever federal investment in clean energy, reviving his old the idea of declaring an “energy emergency” and using a second term to expand fossil fuel power generation to keep up with competition, writes Peter Behr.
“We will build new power plants,” he said during a stop in Savannah, Georgia, this week. “China is already building plants, electric plants, and we have a problem because we have things called environmental impact statements and various things that you have to go through. I will get them approved so fast.”
Climate soup-throwers jailed Two climate protesters who threw soup at Vincent van Gogh's painting "Sunflowers" were sentenced to prison, the latest in a series of hefty punishments for activists in the U.K., writes Karl Mathiesen.
On October 14, 2022, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw two cans of Heinz tomato soup over the masterpiece in the National Gallery in London, though it was ultimately unharmed. Plummer, who faces several other criminal cases for protest actions, was given two years behind bars. Holland was handed 20 months.
In Other News
Hurricane watch: With Helene's storm surge, Florida state leaders hope EV drivers found high ground.
Underestimating climate change: Why climate scientists are so concerned about aerosols, not just greenhouse gases.
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FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell speaks about Hurricane Helene at the White House on Thursday. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
The federal government is facing potentially catastrophic shortcomings in its ability to pay for disaster response due to increasingly costly damage from hurricanes, flooding and wildfires.
Pro-climate government officials and environmental activists have had months to think about a strategy for preventing a second Donald Trump presidency from disrupting their efforts to save the world. What they've mainly come up with: Hope Kamala Harris wins.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is urging artificial intelligence companies to provide their own clean energy for new data center projects to avoid further straining the electric grid.
That's it for today, folks. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
