In the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, a maelstrom of disinformation tore through American political discourse. Even just on X the flood of deceitful posts—some viewed over 160m times—included fake AI-generated and CGI images, the jaw-dropping claim by one congresswoman that “they”, presumably meaning Democrats, “control the weather”, and Donald Trump’s lie that FEMA, the US emergency-management agency, was rerouting aid for devastated communities to illegal immigrants. One commentator called this slew of falsehoods “a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality”.
The disinformation seemed chaotic, but Trump mobilised it in a coherent story that made himself seem heroic, his opponent Kamala Harris dangerous, and climate change invisible. Harris produced no narrative at all and never mentioned climate change, offering instead vague platitudes about the power of institutions in moments of crisis. And when the legacy news media tried to fact-check the lies of Trump and others they ended up repeating them, thereby amplifying them. Neither Harris nor the US reality-based commentariat provided a counter-narrative, and their climate silence enabled disinformation to be the loudest story in the room.
Late in the evening on 26th September, Hurricane Helene made landfall at the Gulf Coast of the United States and ploughed 400 miles north into the Appalachian mountains, dumping 40 trillion gallons of water over the towns nestled into the mountains’ narrow valleys, which filled up like bathtubs and flooded. An estimated $47bn of property was destroyed and around 250 people died. Just under two weeks later, Hurricane Milton smashed into the west coast of Florida. Its Category 3, up to 130-mile-an-hour winds turned debris still left over from Helene into flying shrapnel and sparked a frenzy of tornadoes that killed unsuspecting Floridians on the east coast, nearly 200 miles from where the storm hit. In the years ahead, thousands more are likely to die from the after-effects of these disasters.
Preliminary scientific analysis showed that without climate change Milton would have made landfall as a Category 2 instead of a Category 3 storm. And it is estimated that climate change caused over 50 per cent more rainfall over some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas during Helene—and that it made such catastrophic rainfall up to 20 times more likely. The fingerprints of climate change were all over these storms.
Former president Trump never mentioned any of this. Instead, he recast the hurricanes as a story of good and evil, placing himself in the role of saviour coming to rescue the American people from the murderous incompetence and partisanship of the Biden-Harris administration. Pretending that “the Federal Government” and “the Democrat Governor” of Georgia were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas”, Trump dishonestly insisted that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants”, whom he called “killers”. Trump obliquely called Harris a killer too. Ignoring the nearly $350m in disaster aid and more than 8,000 federal workers mobilised for assistance, Trump insinuated that the Biden/Harris administration simply let people die. “She didn’t send anything or anyone at all,” he lied: “Days passed. No help as men, women and children drowned.”
In contrast, Trump suggested that he alone would marshal the supplies and personnel that would save American lives: “We are now heading to Valdosta, Georgia,” he said, “in order to pay my respects and bring lots of relief material, including fuel, equipment, water, and other things, to the State. Many politicians and Law Enforcement will be there.” On the day of his visit, however, he did not deliver much more than a 20-minute campaign speech. And of course the Republican party’s climate agenda would dismantle what progress the US has made in decarbonising its economy and expand fossil-fuel production, despite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s finding that the world already has more coal, oil, and methane gas that we can use and still halt global heating at 2°C, a relatively safe level. This would mean that many Americans would die from extreme weather who might otherwise survive. Still, Trump’s rhetoric gave his supporters a story that made narrative sense out of the chaos and insecurity suffered by many in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Harris never tried to villainise her opponent or cast herself as a hero. Rather she tried to sidestep controversy and downplay partisanship. Regretting in an unspecific way that “there has been a lot of mis- and disinformation about what we have been doing over the last two weeks, and what we are going to do going forward”, Harris insisted that the aftermath of a disaster was not the time to “play politics”. (Pushed to criticise Trump for lying, she simply called his behaviour “extraordinarily irresponsible”.) Indeed, Harris tended not to give credit for life-saving assistance to any person or group. She instead focused on institutions, and celebrated “the reality” that, “FEMA has so many resources that are available to folks who desperately need them now and resources that are about helping people get back on their feet and rebuild.”
Harris spoke like an elected official who knows how to marshal federal resources effectively. Hers is not the rhetoric of a storyteller. There is no conflict in her tale, no heroes or villains. Her main character is the vague, bureaucratic noun “resources”. She does not even present a shared challenge that Americans might overcome together. And she makes no mention of climate change.
Doubtless, Democrats rarely accuse their opponents of malfeasance. (Biden, for instance, also used the passive voice in calling out hurricane falsehoods, saying that “there’s been a reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies”.) Their reluctance seems to stem from their belief that Democratic and swing voters place a high value on bipartisanship. Harris is certainly campaigning on unity rather than division, and of course she must target the few thousands of Americans in states who will ultimately decide the presidential election. These voters place climate change low on their list of priorities, and often support expanding fossil-fuel extraction. Yet by not even mentioning climate change, ignoring its role in storms like Helene and Milton, Democrats leave a void in public discourse that gets filled solely by Republican disinformation.
Republicans have a story about climate change, and they repeat it constantly: America must “drill baby drill”; Republicans must criminalise immigration to shut the border against climate refugees; they must undermine institutions like FEMA or NOAA lest they implicitly acknowledge the harms of burning fossil fuels; they must speak to people’s sense that the weather is deeply weird—from monster storms to disappearing winters—by accusing scientists and Democrats of engineering it. It is all climate denial, of course. But it’s still a story.
If the Democrats counter this story only with vague platitudes—if they try to sidestep the climate crisis and their opponents’ role in exacerbating it—they will never disabuse Trumpian fascism of some of its dark glamour. Those who live not in conspiracy but reality must offer voters a story, grounded in facts and pointing to America’s loftiest ideals, about the threat of climate change, the villainy of those who are making it worse, and the new, clean-energy economy that can be built with hope and ingenuity, which will bring immediate benefits to the working and middle classes and a redeemed future to America’s children. As long as climate silence is the response to the false climate story, disinformation will continue to circulate with impunity.
