Why isn’t Hurricane Beryl inspiring bi-partisan action to reduce disaster risks?

Put simply, the U.S. lacks a sustainable policy platform to build the climate resilient communities that the nation needs. More concerningly, climate change has become a polarizing issue when it should be a unifying one. Democrats and Republicans need to take this threat seriously and reignite a bi-partisan platform for climate action grounded in disaster risk reduction.

Developing over ultra hot Atlantic waters that supercharged the storm, Beryl reached Category 5 status  faster than any previous hurricane. By the time it made landfall in Texas on Monday, July 8, Beryl had been downgraded to a Category 1, but it still caused tremendous destruction. First striking Corpus Christi and then Houston, the hurricane caused 13 deaths, and left over 2.2 million residents without electricity. As of Monday, July 15, a full week after making landfall, roughly 300,000 Houstonians are still without power.

Yet, it’s the heatwave engulfing most of the U.S. that’s likely to cause more deaths in Houston. Houston residents have faced temperatures above 90 degrees in the week since Beryl, with heat index values, which also capture the effects of humidity on the body, reaching 106 degrees. Unlike the rest of the U.S., Houstonians are facing this punishing heat without air conditioning.

Overlapping, extreme events such as these are becoming increasingly common within the U.S., pushing climate change from an amorphous threat happening “somewhere else,” to an infrastructural and economic problem happening in all our backyards. As another example, on June 22, New Mexico experienced fires, floods, and a dust storm all in the same week. Each event intensified the effects of the last, straining emergency management agencies and first responders. Impacts such as these are part of the reason that disaster costs are increasing. Since at least 1980, the average cost of disasters has grown. In 2023, disaster costs totaled $92.9 billion across a record 28 separate disasters that cost over $1 billion.

Disasters are disruptive. They destroy assets, produce financial risks that can cripple businesses, and raise insurance premiums, all of which infringe upon property rights and individual economic independence. These kinds of disruptive impacts should motivate voters and politicians across the political spectrum to act. For Republican-leaning voters historically resistant to advancing climate policy, the threat to individual property rights alone should provoke outrage.

Asset loss and ballooning public costs are not, however, providing a common ground for policy reform. Instead, this election year has seen bold threats to reverse climate policy gains. Indeed, Trump’s recently announced running mate, J.D. Vance, has been an outspoken critic of renewable energy, and dismissive of the threat posed by climate change. Beryl, like Sandy, Harvey, and hurricanes still to come in 2024, appear unlikely to shift the political division.

This perplexing situation is reflected in paradoxical public opinion. Only 54% of Americans view climate change as a major threat. Yet, an estimated 7 in 10 Americans report experiencing an extreme event in the last three years. In some of the most disaster-prone states—Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana—all of which are red states, support for climate policies is closer to 23%. Perhaps even more surprisingly, many voter’s top policy priorities—strengthening the economy and reducing the budget deficit—are undermined by disasters.

These statistics illustrate that climate action, including disaster policy, has become a political signifier rather than a shared policy goal. There has been a hollowing out of the climate conversation, with few politicians holding a moderate center. Similar to terms like “woke,” the concept of climate change itself has begun to indicate an ideological position. It can’t help that spending on engaging conservative voters on climate action was estimated to be as little as 2% of total philanthropic investments from 2011 to 2015. The implication of this polarization is already untenable, and rapidly placing an increasing number of Americans, irrespective of their personal politics on climate change, in vulnerable positions.   

Disaster management reform can, and should, be the bi-partisan bedrock of climate action that begins the arduous process of reversing this trend. There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit with bi-partisan appeal. Two immediate changes could include: simplifying the cumbersome process of disaster declaration which means that smaller disasters, like heat waves, don’t trigger financial support; and returning FEMA to the cabinet level status that it received post-Katrina, independent from the Department of Homeland Security where it sits currently. The latter reform would help position the agency to focus solely on responding to the growing threats of disasters and pursue long-term reforms to disaster management.

However, what’s needed most is expanding the requirements for disaster risk mitigation. Disasters are costly, and most expenses are borne by the federal government using taxpayer dollars. This creates a moral hazard where states and local governments are incentivized to implement lax disaster policy, allowing development in highly exposed areas and placing residents at a greater risk. By adopting a state deductible for federal assistance, where states could lower their deductible by adopting hazard mitigation, investments in risk reduction would be rewarded.

Policy changes such as these could save lives and livelihoods. They’re deserving of bi-partisan endorsement and could begin the hard work of establishing a unified core for climate action. Beryl, an unusually early warning this hurricane season, is a reminder that the threat of inaction is ratcheting up each year.