Why isn’t Hurricane Beryl leading to bipartisan action to reduce disaster risk?

In short, the United States lacks a sustainable political platform to build the climate-resilient communities the country needs. Even more worrying, climate change has become a polarizing issue when it should be a unifying one. Democrats and Republicans must take this threat seriously and revitalize a bipartisan platform for climate action rooted in disaster risk reduction.

Beryl developed over extremely hot Atlantic waters, which further strengthened the storm, and reached Category 5 strength faster than any hurricane before it. By the time it made landfall in Texas on Monday, July 8, Beryl had already been downgraded to Category 1, but it still caused tremendous destruction. The hurricane struck Corpus Christi and then Houston, killing 13 people and leaving over 2.2 million residents without power. As of Monday, July 15, a full week after its landfall, around 300,000 Houston residents were still without power.

But it is the heat wave sweeping much of the U.S. that is likely to cause more deaths in Houston. In the week since Beryl, Houstonians have faced temperatures in excess of 90 degrees, with heat index readings, which also measure the effects of humidity on the body, reaching 106 degrees. Unlike the rest of the U.S., Houstonians must endure this unbearable heat without air conditioning.

Such overlapping extreme events are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., turning climate change from an amorphous threat happening “somewhere else” to an infrastructural and economic problem happening near everyone. Another example: On June 22, New Mexico experienced fires, floods, and a dust storm in the same week. Each event magnified the impact of the last, straining emergency management agencies and first responders. Impacts like these are one reason the costs of disasters are rising. Since at least 1980, the average cost of disasters has been rising. In 2023, the cost of disasters totaled $92.9 billion, marking a record 28 individual disasters costing over $1 billion.

Disasters have destructive effects. They destroy assets, create financial risks that can weaken businesses, and increase insurance premiums. All of this impacts property rights and individual economic independence. These kinds of destructive effects should motivate voters and politicians across the political spectrum to act. Republican-leaning voters who have historically resisted advancing climate policy should be outraged by the mere threat to individual property rights.

But wealth loss and spiraling public costs do not provide common ground for policy reform. Instead, this election year has seen bold threats to undo climate policy gains. Indeed, Trump’s recently announced running mate JD Vance is an outspoken critic of renewable energy and downplays the threat of climate change. Beryl, like Sandy, Harvey and the hurricanes yet to come in 2024, are unlikely to shift the political divide.

This confusing situation is reflected in paradoxical public opinion. Only 54 percent of Americans view climate change as a major threat. Yet an estimated 7 in 10 Americans report experiencing an extreme weather event in the past three years. In some of the most disaster-prone states—Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana—all of which are Republican states, support for climate policies is just under 23 percent. Perhaps even more surprising, many voters’ top policy priorities—strengthening the economy and reducing the budget deficit—are undermined by disasters.

These statistics show that climate action, including disaster preparedness policy, has become a political signifier rather than a shared political goal. The climate debate has been hollowed out, and few politicians represent a moderate middle. Much like terms like “woke,” the concept of climate change itself has begun to denote an ideological position. It cannot change the fact that spending on engaging conservative voters in climate action was estimated at just 2% of total philanthropic investment from 2011 to 2015. The implications of this polarization are already untenable, putting a growing number of Americans, regardless of their personal views on climate change, in a vulnerable position.

Disaster management reform can and should be the bipartisan foundation for climate action that begins the arduous process of reversing this trend. There are many easily achievable goals that have bipartisan appeal. Two immediate changes could be: simplifying the cumbersome disaster declaration process, meaning that smaller disasters like heat waves don’t trigger financial assistance; and restoring FEMA to the Cabinet-level status it received after Katrina, independent of the Department of Homeland Security, where it is currently located. The latter reform would help ensure the agency can focus exclusively on responding to the growing disaster threats and pursue long-term disaster management reforms.

Most pressing, however, is an expansion of disaster preparedness requirements. Disasters are costly, and most of the costs are borne by the federal government through taxpayer dollars. This creates a moral hazard because it encourages states and local governments to adopt lax disaster policies that allow development in high-risk areas and put residents at greater risk. Imposing a state copayment on federal assistance, which states could reduce by adopting hazard preparedness measures, would reward investments in risk reduction.

Such policy changes could save lives and livelihoods. They deserve bipartisan support and could mark the beginning of the hard work of building a unified core of climate action. Beryl, an unusually early warning this hurricane season, is a reminder that the danger of inaction grows greater every year.