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6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025

Original article by Joe Fassler republished from DeSmog

More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.

Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found. 

More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies. 

In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.  

“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release. 

But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.

Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the foreword to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known. 

These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.

Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment. 

The Coors Family 
At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

In 1972, Joseph Coors, grandson of Coors Brewing Company founder Adolph Coors, kick-started the Heritage Foundation with an initial gift of $250,000. For years, he supported the conservative think tank’s growth, ultimately funneling his funds through the Adolph Coors Foundation, the nonprofit he started with his brother Bill in 1976. 

“There wouldn’t be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors,” former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner wrote in a 2003 tribute.  

Joseph Coors meets with Ronald Reagan in 1981. Credit: Wikipedia

The tradition continues today, with billionaire Peter H. Coors — retired beer magnate and Adolph’s great-grandson — at the helm. The Adolph Coors Foundation funded 22 Project 2025 advisory groups between 2020 and 2023, including $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation. Vance has been connected to Heritage since at least 2017, when he wrote the forward to that organization’s “Index of Culture and Opportunity” and gave a keynote address at a Heritage event promoting the report.  

Of the Project 2025 groups, Coors funded Hillsdale College, which The New Yorker called “the Christian liberal-arts college at the heart of the culture wars,” most heavily, with nearly $900,000 in donations since 2020. Former Heritage staffer James Braid, today Vance’s deputy chief of staff and legislative director, spent 10 months as a James Madison fellow at Hillsdale College in 2021. Braid appeared on camera in a Project 2025 training video recently obtained by ProPublica and Documented. Braid was also an advisor at American Moment, another Project 2025 group. 

The Coors Foundation gave an additional $5.9 million to DonorsTrust, a not-for-profit that describes itself as a philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors — and that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes annually, including to numerous Project 2025 advisors, as well as other organizations that downplay or deny the science and urgency of climate change. 

Charles G. Koch 
At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

In terms of raw numbers, Charles Koch — the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, a sprawling conglomerate with an oil refinery focus — isn’t the biggest donor to Project 2025 groups in the past few years. But his support for the vast fundraising apparatus that powers conservative charities, including dozens of the initiative’s coalition partners, goes back decades, and his influence can’t be underestimated. A review of public financial disclosures by Greenpeace found that the network of charitable foundations linked to Koch and his late brother, David Koch, donated more than $165 million to climate-change-denying groups between 1986 and 2018. That includes more than $23 million to 16 nonprofits that Project 2025 lists among its advisors. 

Throughout the 1990s, Koch Industries was also a “vital supporter” of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Project 2025 advisor. A membership group that connects more than 2,000 state legislators to over 300 corporations and private foundations, ALEC calls itself “a forum for stakeholders to exchange ideas”; New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, in her book Dark Money, describes it as an enormously successful effort “aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country.” Foundations linked to Charles G. Koch donated more than $1.2 million to ALEC since 2020, Desmog’s review found, mostly through his Stand Together Trust. 

Charles Koch in 2019. Credit: Wikipedia

Koch’s largest donations to Project 2025 groups since 2020 included $3.8 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a climate-change-denying nonprofit with close links to both the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump tapped Brooke Rollins, TPPF’s CEO since 2003, for a post at the Office of American Innovation; in 2020, he named her to lead his administration’s domestic policy strategy. By 2019, there were so many connection points between TPPF and the Trump administration that Politico’s E & E News wrote a story about it. 

Rollins was succeeded at TPPF by Kevin Roberts, who had been promoted to CEO by 2021, when he left to become president of The Heritage Foundation. Koch-linked nonprofits also donated $845,000 to Heritage since 2020. 

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. They donate heavily to conservative causes through the Ed Uihlein Foundation, named after Richard’s father, a packaging company entrepreneur whose grandfather was an original founder of the Schlitz beer company. 

Among its donations to 13 different Project 2025 groups since 2020, Uihlein’s largest grants went to the Foundation for Government Accountability ($6.6 million), a limited-government think tank that has railed against “the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda,” and the American Cornerstone Institute ($2.5 million), founded by neurosurgeon and former Trump cabinet member Dr. Ben Carson. Carson has called climate change “irrelevant” as recently as 2015. 

Outside the nonprofit sphere, the Uihleins are major donors to the Trump campaign. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data showed that the couple donated $10 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in May 2024. 

The Scaife Family
At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. A billionaire heir to the vast Mellon fortune, which was created thanks to his progenitors’ exploits in oil and aluminum production, banking, and other industries, Scaife provided years of critical financial support to the Heritage Foundation, starting in 1973. A 1999 article in the Washington Post called him the “funding father of the Right.” 

Today, two foundations Scaife once controlled — the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation — continue to give heavily to conservative causes, including to numerous organizations involved in climate change denial. DeSmog’s review found that Scaife family foundations gave $4.1 million to the Heritage Foundation since 2022, while also contributing to 22 other Project 2025 advisory groups. 

Since 2020, Scaife Family Foundations gave $1.75 million to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a Project 2025 advisor that promotes conservative thought on college campuses. Paypal founder Peter Thiel, who pumped at least $15 million into JD Vance’s campaign for Senate, is an ISI alum who maintains close ties to the organization. Vance himself gave an ISI-sponsored lecture on “our civilizational crisis” in 2021, where he promoted his controversial idea that Americans with children should receive more votes. 

Scaife foundations also donated an additional $1.2 million to the State Policy Network, an ALEC-linked group that supports conservative nonprofits that oppose government regulation, including 25 members of Project 2025’s coalition. 

Barre Seid
At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors. He is reportedly a major benefactor supporting the Heartland Institute, a Project 2025 advisor organization that The Economist called “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change” — a description Heartland approvingly quotes on its website.

In late 2020, Barre donated 100 percent of Tripp Lite’s shares to Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard A. Leo. In early 2021, Leo sold the shares, netting $1.65 billion. The amount is said to be “among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit,” according to The New York Times. 

Since May 2020, Marble Freedom Trust has donated $100 million to Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network, a Leo-linked nonprofit. In that time, Concord has donated $22.4 million to eight Project 2025 groups, giving most heavily ($11.9 million) to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. 

Seid also gave $2 million to Independent Women’s Voice, the sister organization of Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 advisor. During her time as director for the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation, Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency official, authored Project 2025’s chapter on restructuring the EPA — with recommendations that include “cutting its size and scope” dramatically.

The Bradley Family 
At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015. 

But it was Michael W. Grebe, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally. 

The Bradley Foundation and a second philanthropic vehicle it supports, the Bradley Impact Fund, donated over $50 million to 29 different Project 2025 advisors since 2020. That’s not including an additional $56 million to DonorsTrust, which a 2013 Mother Jones investigation dubbed, along with its affiliate group Donors Capital Fund, the “dark money ATM” of the U.S. conservative movement. 
The Bradley Foundation’s Project 2025-linked donations include more than $7.7 million to Turning Point USA, a “powerful ally” of the Trump presidential campaign, which promotes conservative causes on university campuses and is funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. Its single largest donation was $27.1 million in 2022 to Project 2025 advisor Turning Point Legal, founded by former Trump advisor, and past president of a coal lobby group, Stephen Miller.

Original article by Joe Fassler republished from DeSmog

Continue Reading6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025

Protests erupt against rising extrajudicial killings in Pakistan

Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Protesters during a rally against extrajudicial killings on September 25, Sindh. Source: Atif Tauqeer/X

Progressive and left movements in Pakistan are voicing alarm over the increasing collaboration between the state and extremist forces, which they say is undermining citizens’ rights to life and religious freedom

Hundreds of people gathered in Umerkot on Wednesday, September 25, to protest the rising instances of extrajudicial killings in Pakistan’s Sindh province. Protesters voiced concern over the growing collaboration between the state and religious extremist forces and demanded justice for the victims.

The protest was organized by a Joint Action Committee made up of civil society groups and left organizations in Sindh, following the extrajudicial killing of Dr. Shahnawaz Kunbhar, a medical doctor, by the provincial police in what was allegedly a staged encounter last week.

Dr. Kunbhar’s daughter also attended the protest, where demonstrators accused the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led provincial government of protecting extremist forces and the policemen involved. Protesters questioned the PPP leadership’s secular credentials, according to Dawn.

On September 18, the physician had been arrested under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law which prohibits insulting Islam or Islamic figures and can result in the death penalty. His home was raided by Sindh police and just a few hours later he was killed, with the police reporting it as in the context of a shoot out. When the police attempted to return his body to the family for cremation, a mob reportedly snatched the body and later burned it, motivated by the blasphemy accusations.

In response, protesters have demanded an immediate ban on extremist religious preachers and the arrest of individuals who incited the violence through social media posts. They also called for immediate action against the police officers responsible for Dr. Kunbhar’s killing.

Commending the protesters in Umerkot, Haqooq-e-Khalq party leader Ammar Ali Jan said in a post on X that while the state surrenders to extremists, people are showing “unparalleled bravery to defend humanity.”

Lynchings on the rise

Pakistan has seen a rise in mob lynchings related to blasphemy accusations. On September 12, a policeman shot dead a person accused of blasphemy while in custody in Quetta, Balochistan province. Afterwards, state officials reportedly pressured the family of the victim to “pardon” the accused policeman.

According to reports in Pakistani media, at least four people have been killed in mob violence related to blasphemy since May, including members of minority communities. In all cases, the role of police and local authorities has come under scrutiny.

Dr. Kunbhar’s extrajudicial killing has drawn strong condemnation from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). In a statement on X, the HRCP called this pattern of violence “an alarming trend,” especially given the alleged involvement of law enforcement.

The HRCP called upon the state to react to the rise in religious extremism, claiming that it has “historically sponsored” such hate. The commission urged Pakistani authorities to act swiftly to “counter the rising radicalization that triggers such incidents.”

Several civil society movements and human rights groups echoed these concerns, demanding immediate action to curb religious extremism in Pakistan and protect citizens’ rights to life and religious freedom. Amnesty International stated: “The horrific spate of extrajudicial killings of people accused of blasphemy highlights the government’s ongoing failure to uphold their obligation to respect and protect human rights, including the right to life, freedom of religion or belief, and prohibition of discrimination.”

Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingProtests erupt against rising extrajudicial killings in Pakistan

Netanyahu: ‘Nothing Can Stop Us,’ Not Even the Majority of Israelis

Original article by Ralph Nader republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

People gather with banners and flags to protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for not signing the cease-fire agreement in Tel Aviv, Israel on September 28, 2024.  (Photo: Nir Keidar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Furtively booby-trapping a consumer product like a pager or two-way radio opens a new phase of warfare.

Israel’s Biden-backed war machine is once again bearing down on defenseless Lebanese people. Hostilities on the Israel-Lebanon border have been occurring since the establishment of Israel and the dispossession of Palestinians and their land in 1948. But last week’s war-crime-laden escalation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stunned the world.

It started with bombings followed by the simultaneous booby-trapped “red button” explosion of thousands of pagers and two-way radios inside Lebanon on September 17, 2024, and September 18, 2024, held by or near Lebanese militants, and civilian men, women, children, health workers, storekeepers, etc. Thirty-seven people were killed and 3,700 others were injured—losing hands, eyes, and fingers. Many also suffered internal organ damage.

Such an attack at this scale is unprecedented in human history. While the ambulances and overwhelmed hospitals were taking in the casualties, Israeli F-16s (provided by the U.S.) struck throughout Lebanon, killing over 700 people and injuring thousands, many of them women and children—a staggering total of 1,600 targets in two days.

Computers, motor vehicles, smartphones, and many other electronic products could become weapons of war.

International law experts condemned the mega-raid. They pointed to the war crime of booby-trapping a product, and the vast disproportionate harm to innocent civilians compared to Israel’s military objective to destroy Hezbollah’s militia that has been exchanging unequal missiles with Israel since October 8, 2023.

As has been the case for decades, Lebanese casualties were vastly greater than Israeli casualties. Israel has a modern air defense system that shuts down most of the incoming missiles. Hezbollah’s military might has been long exaggerated by its Israeli adversary to justify regularly bombing Syria, attacking Iran, and getting more weapons from the U.S.

In reality, Hezbollah—a political party and social service organization—has a militia greatly outnumbered and overpowered by the Israeli military in soldiers, destructive weaponry, and money from the U.S.

Furtively booby-trapping a consumer product like a pager or two-way radio opens a new phase of warfare. This savagery prompted Leon Panetta, former director of the CIA and former secretary of defense, in an interview on the CBS “Sunday Morning” news show to charge Israel with “terrorism.” No prominent national security figure has ever assailed Israel this way. Herewith his words:

“The ability to be able to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days. And turn it into a war of terror. Really, a war of terror. This is something new,” said Panetta.

“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism…This is going right into the supply chain, right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, what the hell is next?” added Panetta.

Panetta would never have uttered these words without the concurrence of the CIA and the Department of Defense. Still no consequences for Netanyahu by the U.S. government.

These officials now fear a new booby-trap era of warfare. Computers, motor vehicles, smartphones, and many other electronic products could become weapons of war. People all over the world now have this Israeli-triggered anxiety, dread, and fear. Netanyahu has made the push button a trigger for mayhem and murder—acts of large-scale terrorism. He and his predecessors have always characterized offensive acts violating the laws of war as “acceptable” defensive tactics. The supine Congress and White House regularly rubber-stamp their violations of several U.S. laws on behalf of the Israeli government. (See the letter sent to John Kirby on September 12, 2024).

Consider the aftermath. No denunciation by U.S. President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. No condemnation or calls for public hearings by leading Republicans, or leading Democrats in Congress. The Hill reported that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said, “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict… Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any U.S. assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology,” she added. Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) were also critical of the attack.

Alarmingly, there were no editorials in the following week criticizing Netanyahu in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Imagine if Hezbollah did this to Israeli society. The devaluation of Palestinian and Lebanese lives can only be called racist.

Biden’s forked-tongue address to the United Nations this week touted peace and democracy while his autocracy funds war.

Biden’s forked-tongue address to the United Nations this week touted peace and democracy while his autocracy funds war. Not a word against what his friend Leon Panetta called Israeli terrorism. Just another feeble fig leaf call for a 21-day truce mocked by the extreme genocidal Israeli regime, funded by coerced American taxpayers.

Hezbollah emerged after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which lasted 18 years with the Israeli army occupying south Lebanon (and its coveted Litani River) where millions of historically downtrodden Lebanese Shia Muslims lived. They were abused by the Israeli army. Hezbollah was formed in 1982 to defend these impoverished, subjugated people.

In an ocean of lies, starting with his mysterious, still officially uninvestigated collapse of the multi-tiered border security system on October 7, 2023, which opened the door to the Hamas attack, Netanyahu has uttered one truth: “Nothing will stop us.” The nuclear-equipped Israeli regional empire dominates the Middle East. But it always needs an enemy for its internal domestic politics and for expanding its very advantageous alliance with the United States empire. Netanyahu is despised by 3 out of 4 Israelis but the next election is not until October 2026. Some in the pages of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz have argued that Netanyahu may be scuttling talk of a cease-fire to avoid his pending criminal trial for corruption.

Iran, a poor nation with about 91 million people and a GDP considerably smaller than the GDP of Massachusetts, has been a target of the U.S. since the CIA overthrew the popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. His crime: he wanted to take control of Iranian oil from the foreign Anglo-Iranian oil company.

It was the U.S. government that supported then-Iraq ally Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1980, which cost Iran hundreds of thousands of lives. It was former President George W. Bush who called Iran one of the countries making up the Axis of Evil and proceeded to encircle it with the U.S. military from Iraq to the Afghanistan borders. Do you wonder why Iran’s rulers are freaked out over its national security and build allies in the face of both punishing U.S. sanctions harming civilian lives and recurrent Israeli sabotage and killings inside Iran?

Violently messing around in other weak countries’ backyards, and backing dictators and coups are the touchstones of empire. Eventually, all empires devour themselves.

In the meantime, are you surprised that the CIA and Department of Defense have teams studying what they call “blowback”—a term they coined before 9/11? You know how that attack convulsed our country, deprived our domestic needs, and intensified Bush/Dick Cheney’s fury into even more countries (e.g., invading Iraq) pushing ever bigger, draining military budgets?

U.S. blowback analysts are apprehensive about the spread of Israeli-style “red button” explosives and the ingenious, and ever-cheaper armed drones. They see such technologies as potential threats within the U.S.

Such is the peril of nations whose leaders wage constant profitable, preventable wars and decline to wage muscular peace with comparable determination.

Original article by Ralph Nader republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingNetanyahu: ‘Nothing Can Stop Us,’ Not Even the Majority of Israelis

Climate Movement Says ‘Hurricane Helene Must Be a Wake-Up Call’

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A van flows in floodwaters near the Biltmore Village in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on September 28, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina. (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

“To those insisting that, ‘This is not the time!’ to have those other conversations, I say: This is *exactly* when we need to be having them,” said one climate scientist.

As emergency crews have worked through the weekend to rescue people and restore essential services across several southeastern U.S. states, green groups in recent days have pointed to the death and damage from Hurricane Helene as just the latest evidence of the need for sweeping action on the climate emergency.

Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds in Florida’s Big Bend region late Thursday, then left a path of destruction across hundreds of miles of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee. As of early Sunday, at least 64 people are confirmed dead—including at least two people in Virginia—though that figure is expected to rise.

“Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage,” The Associated Press reported Sunday on what is now a post-tropical cyclone. “AccuWeather‘s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the U.S. is between $95 billion and $110 billion.”

The youth-led Sunrise Movement said Sunday that “any reporting about Hurricane Helene needs to be clear—this is not normal. This is not just a tragedy. This is a crime. Fossil fuel companies have known this would happen for the last 50 years. They lied to the public and bought out our government just to make a profit. Make them pay.”

Greenpeace USA similarly declared on social media Saturday that “#HURRICANE HELENE MUST BE A WAKE-UP CALL FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE!”

“We are heartbroken,” the group said, noting the dozens of people killed. “Communities have been devastated. The corporations heating the climate must be held accountable.”

Dozens of communities across the United States have already launched climate liability lawsuits against Big Oil, which knew for decades that fossil fuels would heat the planet but promoted disinformation and raked in huge profits. Recently there have been calls for legal action by the U.S. Department of Justice and potential homicide cases brought by state and local prosecutors.

“Our hearts and solidarity go out to everyone facing the devastation. Please support mutual aid relief efforts and demand oil companies #StartDrillingStartPaying!” Greenpeace said Saturday.

Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Aja on Sunday offered a “friendly reminder that fossil fuel companies get 20 BILLION dollars in [government] subsidies every year,” while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “runs out of money to respond to disasters like Helene.”

Both Shiney-Aja and Greenpeace shared footage from Asheville, North Carolina, which endured what Ryan Cole, the assistant director of Buncombe County Emergency Services, described as “biblical flooding.”

Just two years ago, The New Lede reported that “from wildfires racing through the drought-stricken West, to heavy flooding in the central and eastern regions of the United States, extreme weather events are spurring many Americans to seek refuge in more environmentally stable cities, so-called ‘climate havens,'” including Asheville.

This weekend, Asheville—which is over 2,000 feet above sea level and more than 250 miles from the coast—and surrounding communities are contending with disrupted water, power, and communications services due to what officials are reportedly calling “Buncombe County’s own Hurricane Katrina.”

Noting Asheville’s elevation and distance from the coast, Lucky Tran, director of science communications and media relations at Columbia University in New York City, said Sunday that “no place is safe from climate change. We all suffer the consequences. We must all take action. We are all in this together.”

As The New York Times reported Sunday:

People across western North Carolina chainsawed their way to loved ones and drove for hours Saturday on dwindling gas tanks in search of food and power, in what one resident described as a “mini-apocalypse” after Hurricane Helene.

Authorities said the region was facing a historic disaster a day after the powerful storm swept through the Southeast, downing power lines and washing out highways. Landslides, spotty cellphone service, and a gas shortage complicated rescue and recovery efforts. Some stranded people were being airlifted to safety.

Antonia Juhasz, a leading climate and energy journalist and author, said Saturday that “Asheville, North Carolina is being wiped off the map by the worst storm to hit the region in a generation. This is what the climate crisis looks like: the production and use of fossil fuels changes the climate, intensifying extreme weather events and making them more frequent.”

As hurricane scientist Jeff Masters detailed Friday, fossil fuel-driven climate change “makes the strongest hurricanes stronger,” boosts rainfall from such storms, leads to more rapid intensification, and causes sea-level rise that increases storm surge damage.

In an effort to emphasize the climate change connection to extreme weather, from heatwaves to hurricanes, some climate campaigners have suggested naming such events after oil and gas companies.

“What did a Helene ever do to deserve getting this horrific hurricane named after her? We should be naming hurricanes after fossil fuel CEOs instead. How about Hurricane Darren?” said Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn, taking aim at ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist focused on extreme weather, said on social media Saturday, “The images and stories just beginning to emerge from eastern TN and western NC in the aftermath of widespread catastrophic flooding wrought by Helene are genuinely horrifying, and the full scale of the disaster is likely as yet untold.”

“This was, by far, the most extreme rain event in observed record across much/most of the region, where reliable records date back over 100 [years]. Unsurprisingly, the flooding which resulted has also been widespread, historic, and generally catastrophic across a broad region,” he explained. “These floods, which were concentrated in valleys containing rivers and typically modest creeks and streams, involved extremely large volumes of water moving downhill at high velocity. This was not a gradual or ‘gentle’ inundation by any means.”

Swain stressed that “sometimes ‘worst-case’ scenarios really do come to pass, and I think we often lack the collective imagination to fully envision what that looks like. That’s a problem, because being honest about risks that exist is [the] first step toward mitigating them and preventing harm!”

“Ultimately, there many folks in FL, GA, NC, and TN who are in need of urgent assistance—and that is/should be foremost priority,” he added. “But to those insisting that, ‘This is not the time!’ to have those other conversations, I say: This is *exactly* when we need to be having them.”

The AP reported that “in Atlanta, 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain fell over 48 hours, the most the city has seen over two days since record-keeping began in 1878,” while “in Florida’s Big Bend, some lost nearly everything they own, emerging from the storm without even a pair of shoes.”

Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, “Helene shoved a wall of water estimated at least 10 feet high into the lowest-lying areas of Steinhatchee,” according to USA Today.

South of there, in Pinellas County, officials have identified over 18,000 homes damaged by Helene—and at least 11,000 are “uninhabitable,” as the Tampa Bay Times put it.

Highlighting the connection between climate change and more intense hurricanes, Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said Thursday that “the climate crisis is here. We must act to save lives.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingClimate Movement Says ‘Hurricane Helene Must Be a Wake-Up Call’