Hurricane Helene tears through the southeastern United States as scientists say climate change rapidly intensifies hurricanes. The storm devastated large swaths of the southeastern United States after making landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm. Officials say the death toll is likely to rise, as many are still missing. Helene is expected to be one of the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history and was fueled by abnormally warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, but most of the media coverage has failed to connect the devastation to the climate crisis. “The planet’s overheating. It’s irreversible. It’s caused by the fossil fuel industry,” says climate activist and climate scientist Peter Kalmus in Raleigh, North Carolina. “This will get worse as the planet continues to get hotter.”
