Damage to the Biltmore Village area of Asheville after Helene. (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
As North Carolina legislators debated Wednesday afternoon how best to help western North Carolina recover and rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Rep. Caleb Rudow noticed two words that were going unsaid: climate change.
Rudow and Rep. Deb Butler, both Democrats, urged colleagues in a news conference following the General Assembly session to remedy this oversight, speaking alongside environmental advocates on how to ensure western North Carolina is rebuilt to withstand a global climate whose disasters grow more damaging each year.
Rep. Caleb Rudow (D-Buncombe-left) and Rep. Deb Butler (D-New Hanover-right) urged their colleagues to address climate change as they work to support western North Carolina, citing Hurricane Helene’s unprecedented damage to the region. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar)
“I hope this is the beginning of a larger conversation about resilience about building back better and about confronting climate change head-on,” said Rudow, a data scientist representing Buncombe County. “Because if we don’t address the root causes, we are going to keep seeing these so-called thousand-year floods over and over again.”
He recalled working to help clear roads in Asheville when floods hit in 2004, which like the aftermath of Helene, brought mudslides and overflowing rivers. But where that flood felt like disasters seen before, Helene brought unprecedented devastation, Rudow said. He cited the example of a backup pipe buried 20 feet beneath the street in the aftermath of 2004 — designed to withstand the worst floods known to the region — that was nevertheless knocked out by the storm.
“Western North Carolina was supposed to be a climate haven, a place where people could live to escape wildfires, flooding, and natural disasters,” Rudow said. “But with climate change and more extreme weather events, there is nowhere that is safe.”
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that scientists have already determined the amounts by which human-caused climate change intensified the rain and winds of Helene. Rudow cited a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study showing that parts of North Carolina experienced as much as 50% greater rainfall due to climate change — and that such levels of rainfall are now 20 times more likely in those areas.
Butler, who represents Wilmington, observed that the severe flooding and destruction brought to her region of the state weeks before Helene made landfall was “already forgotten” by most of in the state — a sign that severe storms and flooding were becoming an almost ordinary experience in North Carolina.
“We have been warned by science, we have been warned by nature, and by our own experiences,” she said. “If we turn a blind eye now, that makes us complicit for future disasters.”
Butler called for the construction of green infrastructure such as permeable pavement and rain gardens as communities in western North Carolina rebuild, as well as the restoration of wetlands and forests that help provide a buffer to floodwaters. Some areas, she said, may be “no longer buildable” when considering the impacts of climate change.
Brooks Rainey Pearson, a senior lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Center, criticized the loosening of the state’s building codes in recent years by lawmakers, singling out bills that reduced requirements for flooding and wind protections in homes across the state. She urged the General Assembly to strengthen those standards so western North Carolina can rebuild “smarter and more resilient.”
In the long-term, Pearson called on the state to uphold its pledges to reduce carbon emissions 70% by 2030 and to achieve “net zero” by 2050, to avoid further worsening the climate crisis. Chris Herndon, the director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, echoed these calls, and urged lawmakers to work to guard against the impacts of climate change with the same unity they showed in unanimously passing Wednesday’s $273 million aid bill.
The legislators did not announce any new bills at the news conference, citing division over climate change in the legislature, though Butler said “I’ll have bills ready” should Speaker Tim Moore agree to take up the issue.
“If we don’t talk about it, we won’t fix it,” Rudow said. “I feel like my obligation as somebody who survived the event and saw horrible devastation is to tell people what I saw and start talking solutions.”