Kaylea Noce never considered evacuating as Hurricane Helene headed toward her apartment near downtown Asheville. 

As a native of western North Carolina, she never imagined needing to escape a hurricane. The artsy mountain community had attracted thousands of young professionals like her precisely because of its relatively mild weather that was touted as a “climate haven.” Neighbors said the hurricane wasn’t going to hit them that bad because, “hurricanes never hit us here.” Like many others, she decided to ride out the storm at home. How bad could it be?

Helene intensified from Category 1 to Category 4 within hours as it sucked up moisture over the Gulf of Mexico’s record warm waters. Oceans capture 90% of the excess heat generated by planet warming emissions, but for every degree Celsius warmer, water vapor increases by 7%.

Helene dropped an “astronomical” 40 trillion gallons of water over 500 miles, walloping whole towns in Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. The hurricane has caused 200 deaths to date, including 30 in what remains of Asheville. 

Kaylea and me at an As You Sow event in 2023 near Oakland, CA. [Photo by Ryon Harms.]

We waited anxiously to hear from Kaylea, a beloved team member of our non-profit organization. I’d seen her a few days before in New York City for Climate Week where she expertly organized our annual Climate Finance Day. This year’s theme was about the havoc climate change is wreaking on family budgets from more expensive groceries to skyrocketing insurance rates. Kaylea even organized a tasting of climate-endangered foods going extinct due to a warming planet.

“Safe and dry!” She messaged us the day after Helene hit Asheville. “I am okay and so is my family.” We were relieved. She added, “No power today – cell signal is spotty…I’m potentially not reachable.” It would be well over 24 hours before we heard from her again. 

Climate Inflation 

A warming planet shifts wind and ocean currents, making rainfall more intense and unpredictable. One obvious sign of how unprepared Asheville and other inland communities were was that fewer than 2% of homes had flood insurance. Why would they? Hurricanes had never made it that far inland and FEMA’s flood maps used by insurance companies were based on historic climate data. Millions of underinsured people lost everything due to Helene and will need to rebuild from square one.

Without electricity or an internet connection, Kaylea had no idea how widespread the destruction was until she tried to drive to her parent’s house. Just about every street was impassable as trees that had survived a hundred years or more had toppled and blocked just about every street on the way. Entire areas like the River Arts District weren’t just damaged, they vanished. Furniture floated down the street while people slowly trudged through the mud looking for survivors. 

The historic Biltmore Village neighborhood in Asheville after Hurricane Helene. A Wendy’s fast food restaurant roof is barely visible above the water. [Photo by Jesse Zeb, a neighbor of Kaylea’s.]

In each of the last eight years, a record Category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes made landfall over the US – as many as the previous 57 years combined. So many “thousand-year” storms have made the term meaningless as scientists consider adding a new Category 6 designation to account for the new normal. 

This year is forecast to be another record breaking year for hurricanes. Scientists have estimated that global warming increased Helene’s rainfall by as much as 50%.

Beyond the tragic loss of life and shattered dreams, extreme weather fueled by a warming planet also has a high economic cost. A study by Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurer, warned that the US is sustaining losses of $97 billion per year due to extreme weather, making us the country most financially exposed to climate change. Helene alone is expected to cost another $250 billion.

Rising insurance losses inevitably get passed on to the rest of us. Homeowners from Oregon to North Carolina have seen insurance rates rise by 34% or more since 2017 — a period that included the hottest years on record. At As You Sow, we call the rising costs of everyday goods related to human-caused climate change: “climate inflation.”

We dedicated a website to tracking the phenomenon at climateinflation.org and recently released a report following Kyle Story, a fourth-generation Florida farmer whose industry and livelihood are under threat from extreme weather fueled by a warming planet. 

Fallen tree smashes home near Asheville where fewer than 2% have flood insurance. [Photo by Kaylea Noce.]

The Aftermath

“Lots of homes lost and flooding,” reported Kaylea after the storm. “No one can get in or out of Asheville and there’s no cell signal, power, or water anywhere. The hospital doesn’t even have water. It’s truly wild and unexpected.” 

In the aftermath of a storm like Helene, things get pre-modern fast. Kaylea’s dad walked six miles to check on her because there was no signal (“Father of the year award!”). Most of the news she got came from neighbors at community cookouts and bonfires.

Military personnel in Asheville search for survivors after the deadly storm. [Photo by Kaylea Noce.[

Sadly, picturesque Asheville may never fully recover, along with other towns, some historic, that were obliterated by Helene. Kaylea ultimately left when a road out of town finally opened, but she returned a few days later because that’s where her roots are. 

The true charm of Asheville is its colorful artistic community and its historically mild weather. As Kaylea reported, “Though I’m glad my friends are safe, many of them (some who survived Katrina) are moving away permanently without the chance to say goodbye, so it’s been bittersweet.”

As a New York Times analysis explained, “people fleeing climate disasters are going to transform the American South.” In one Florida town ravaged by storms, homeowners all want to sell. 

Ballooning home insurance costs and the constant threat of superstorms have hit Tampa Bay’s housing market hard as the great Florida migration is coming undone. But where will they go? Asheville showed there are no “climate havens,” or, as one recent op-ed put it, “we all live in Florida now.”

What Comes Next

Will Hurricane Helene, and now Hurricane Milton, finally change the conversation about climate change? Perhaps the massive personal and economic toll of historic flooding may be a turning point. Whatever comes next, there’s little room for oil company trade association deals that have thwarted real progress. At some point, politicians and the business community will need to realize that there’s no bargaining with physics.

Stopping progress are fossil fuel companies that continue to gaslight Americans in a decades-long campaign to convince us that despite the climbing costs of climate change, we can’t live without their polluting products. One study found that burning fossil fuels made the ocean heat that fueled Helene 500X more likely. 

Even as we suffer from the immediate impacts of a warming planet, politicians beholden to the fossil fuel industry continue their campaign to slow climate action. In Florida, the governor passed a law erasing all mentions of climate change from state laws after receiving a million dollars in donations from fossil fuel donors. 

“The heat that human activities are adding to the atmosphere and oceans is like steroids for hurricanes,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, the chief meteorologist at Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science.

Around the country, as extreme weather events like record heat waves and wildfires multiply, smart investors, businesses and homeowners are taking climate risk seriously. For instance, Zillow is now exposing climate risk data from First Street in its popular real estate app for prospective homebuyers. 

Exposing climate risks is a good first step toward helping people make more informed decisions, but the end result is that affordable housing is increasingly scarce as homeowners get squeezed by skyrocketing rates for mandatory insurance around the country, if they can get insurance at all.

“People need to listen to scientists because what you thought was normal, is no longer normal, Kaylea told me after the storm. She also felt a new compassion for people in the Global South that have been experiencing the worst of climate change. 

Finance professionals have a lot to learn from the experience of people like Kaylea on the front lines of climate change. The costs of a warming planet are popping up in just about every sector, including apparel, technology, real estate, home insurance, and hundreds of billions lost as taxpayers foot the bill for rebuilding. 

It is easy to think of Helene as a natural disaster, but it is also a man-made disaster. We cannot continue to ignore the climbing costs of human-made climate change.

Seeds we sow today with every corporate engagement, every proxy vote, and every dollar donated to political leaders, will make a lasting impact for generations. Investing in climate action taken now will cost far less than paying to repair damage in the future. For now, we must come to terms with the fact that we live on a more violent planet than many of us grew up on. We may even look back on these days as peaceful in comparison to what’s to come.

Responsible shareholders have done what they can over these past decades, but the time has come for all shareholders to act responsibly. As I’ve called for many times, we must unite to do more. Kaylea is doing her part as a valued member of As You Sow, volunteering at a local food center, and with a renewed commitment to her inspiring community in Asheville.