It was William Shakespeare who, in Troilus and Cressida, wrote, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” And yet, in the polarized news cycle since Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States and the hurricanes have kept coming, we’ve heard a tale not of shared humanity, but of ruin, discord, and political polarization.

Hundreds are dead from that storm—the deadliest to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005—hundreds more are missing, and hundreds of thousands of residences are still without power or clean water. And in addition to the staggering human loss and physical damage, a hurricane of misinformation and division has continued to pummel the region.

There’s Elon Musk’s politicized deployment of Starlink satellite internet access, which he’s used to credit Donald Trump less than one month before the November election, while undermining the legitimacy of federal recovery efforts. Indeed, listen to Fox News or read Musk’s claims on his social media platform X, and there’s no mention of the pre-arrangements the federal government made with Starlink through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide internet access—for local governments and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.

The economic disparities that are laid bare and intensified by the climate crisis are absent from the supposed “economic populism” of climate-change deniers like Donald Trump and JD Vance.

Then, of course, there’s Donald Trump falsely claiming that the federal government’s response to Helene was delayed and insufficient because the funds that might have gone to hurricane victims are instead being used to house undocumented immigrants. (FEMA does spend some money on migrant housing, but through an entirely different program.) With this outrageous fearmongering, he’s fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hate that are already raging during this election season. His racist and xenophobic rhetoric has also forced FEMA and the White House to spend precious time and energy trying to counter his lies, rather than focusing their full attention on saving lives and rebuilding broken communities.

And don’t forget Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who insisted that the government actually controls the weather. This ludicrous claim is taken from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (notorious for arguing that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax), who suggested that the government directed Helene towards North Carolina “to force people out of the region so it could mine the state’s large reserves of lithium, a key component in the batteries that power electric vehicles and store renewable energy.”

Such hateful lies and conspiracy theories (and there are more like them!) conveniently ignore the fact that conservative Republican lawmakers passed a funding bill that failed to allocate additional money to FEMA just days before Helene hit, even though the country was entering peak hurricane season in a time when the weather is growing ever more extreme. And it’s no surprise that these lawmakers are backed by billionaires who own some of the very companies most responsible for climate change. Through their scare tactics and anti-government misdirection, they have also provided rhetorical cover for the Christian nationalists and other extremists who were some of the first responders after the hurricane. The Southern Poverty Law Center confirms reports I’ve heard from local sources that “far-right militias and white supremacist organizations are moving into the region to provide assistance—and, if past disasters are any indication, drum up sympathy for their cause.”

Hurricane Helene (like Hurricane Milton that followed it in a devastating fashion) should be a brutal reminder that none of us are truly safe from the worsening effects of the climate crisis. For years, local officials and real estate developers marketed Asheville, North Carolina, as a “climate haven.” With its temperate weather and mountain vistas 300 miles from the ocean, many falsely believed the area would be shielded from storms like Helene. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the last few weeks have also served as a stark reminder that the climate devastation increasingly coming for all of us is experienced most intensely by poor and low-income communities. Just look at the (lack of) full-scale evacuation plans for Hurricane Milton in Florida and it’s clear that those who cannot afford a $2,400 flight or have access to a car and enough gas money to wait out the massive traffic jams of those fleeing such storms may just be out of luck.

In western North Carolina, as rising waters from Helene consumed entire communities, many had nowhere to evacuate. Poor people living in rural areas, often with preexisting health conditions and without health insurance, skipped hospital visits in the chaotic days immediately after the storm. Thankfully, some hospitals opened up beds for patients whose homes were destroyed. But those who don’t have flood insurance—and the residents of the areas hit hardest by Helene were the least likely to have such insurance—and can’t afford to rebuild may soon find themselves joining the many others who have been displaced and made homeless by the storm.

Truly, as the experiences of Hurricane Helene—and now Hurricane Milton, Nadine, and potentially others, too—have proven, the economic disparities that are laid bare and intensified by the climate crisis are absent from the supposed “economic populism” of climate-change deniers like Donald Trump and JD Vance. In fact, it was Vance who called the study and analysis of climate change “weird science” during the vice-presidential debate. He has also praised the lead author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which proposes gutting FEMA, making it harder for states to get disaster relief, and blocking federal agencies from fighting climate change (not to mention 400 pages of other suggested cuts to this country’s social safety net).

And although they claim that the Harris-Walz ticket is looking after the interests and profits of the wealthy, it’s Vance and Trump who have regularly belittled the poor and cozied up to venture capitalists, tech billionaires, and others among the nation’s corporate elite. In fact, the decades-old abandonment of rural Appalachian communities destroyed by Helene has long been justified by the patronizing and classist “culture of poverty” arguments that Vance himself helped keep alive with his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

Storms like Hurricane Helene are a force amplifier of deep societal inequities that will worsen if Trump and Vance are elected in November, but in truth the issue runs deeper than just one political party. Indeed, over the last few years, extreme weather events, pandemics, and other public emergencies have exposed a deep societal disease that has only grown worse after decades of neoliberal policies. Worsening poverty and widening economic inequality should be considered preexisting conditions that are only magnified during moments of crisis. Manoochehr Shirzaei, an associate professor of geophysics at Virginia Tech, recently put it this way: “The tragic flood event in the southeast U.S. is a poignant example of the confluence of multiple factors, including development in floodplains, inadequate infrastructure maintenance and management, and the specter of climate change, whose compounding effect can amplify the disaster.”

In the face of so much loss and destruction, the heroism of impacted communities, which have joined together in........

© Common Dreams