WASHINGTON (AP) — The devastation they caused Hurricane Helene has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after months of keeping the issue on the sidelines.

Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia on Wednesday to tour hard-hit areas, two days after her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, was in the state and criticized the federal response to the storm, which claimed lives at least 178 people. Thousands of people in the Carolinas still lack running water, cell service and electricity.

President Joe Biden toured some of the hardest-hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday. Biden, who has often been called upon to survey damage and comfort victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters, traveled to the Carolinas to get one Take a closer look at the hurricane's devastation. He is expected to visit Georgia and Florida later this week.

“Storms are getting stronger,” Biden said after surveying damage near Asheville, North Carolina. At least 70 people died in the state.

“No one can deny the impacts of the climate crisis anymore,” Biden said at a briefing in Raleigh, the state capital. “If they do that, they must be brain dead.”

Meanwhile, Harris hugged and snuggled with a family in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia.

“This hurricane and its aftermath have caused real pain and trauma,” Harris said in front of a storm-damaged home with fallen trees in the yard.

“We’re here for the long haul,” she added.

The focus on the storm — and its connection to climate change — was notable after climate change began just days ago was barely mentioned in two presidential debates this year. Instead, candidates focused on abortion rights, the economy, immigration and other issues.

The hurricane played a major role in Tuesday's vice presidential debate, when Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were asked about the storm and the larger issue of climate change.

Both men called the hurricane a tragedy and agreed that a strong federal response was needed. But it was Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who placed the storm in the context of a warming climate.

“There's no doubt that this thing shot onto the scene faster and more powerfully than anything we've seen before,” he said.

Bob Henson, a meteorologist and author at Yale Climate Connections, said it's no surprise that Helene is including both federal disaster relief and human-caused climate change in the campaign discussion.

“Weather disasters are often overlooked during major elections,” he said. “Helene is a widespread disaster affecting millions of Americans. And it is consistent with several well-known links between hurricanes and climate change, including rapid intensification and increased rainfall.”

More than 40 trillion gallons of rain has flooded the Southeast over the last week, an amount that, if concentrated in North Carolina, would cover the state with 3 1/2 feet of water. “That's an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

During Tuesday's debate, Walz praised Vance for previous comments acknowledging that climate change is a problem. But he pointed out that Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and joked that rising sea levels would “create more beachfront property to invest in.”

Trump said in a speech Tuesday that “the planet has actually gotten a little cooler lately,” adding, “Climate change affects everything.”

According to the European climate service Copernicus, the summer of 2024 was actually the hottest summer on record, making it likely that this year will be the warmest ever recorded by humanity. Global records were destroyed just last year as caused by humans Climate changewith a temporary boost of an El NiñoAccording to scientists, temperatures and the weather continue to rise.

Vance, a senator from Ohio, said he and Trump support clean air and clean water and “want the environment to be cleaner and safer.” However, during Trump's four years in office, he took a series of actions to backpedal more than 100 environmental regulations.

Vance dodged a question about whether he agreed with Trump's statement that climate change is a hoax. “The president has said that if Democrats – particularly Kamala Harris and her leadership – really believed that climate change was serious, they would produce more manufacturing and more energy in the United States of America. And that’s not what they do,” he said.

“This idea that carbon dioxide emissions are driving all of climate change. For the sake of argument, let's just say that this is true. So we're not arguing about weird science. “If you believe that, what would you want to do?” Vance asked.

The answer, he said, is “to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America because we are the cleanest economy in the world.”

Vance claimed that Biden-Harris policies are actually helping China because many solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and other materials used in renewable energy and electric vehicles are made in China and imported into the United States.

Walz refuted this claim and pointed it out the Inflation Reduction ActThe climate law passed by Democrats in 2022 includes the largest investment to date in domestic clean energy production. The law, for which Harris was the tie-breaking vote, created 200,000 jobs nationwide, including in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz said. Vance was not in the Senate when the bill passed.

“We are producing more natural gas and more oil (in the United States) than ever before,” Walz said. “We are also producing more clean energy.”

The comment echoed a remark Harris made in last month's presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has oversaw “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.” “based on an approach that recognizes that we cannot rely too heavily on foreign oil,” Harris said at the time.

While Biden rarely mentions it, domestic fossil fuel production is at an all-time high under his administration. According to the US Energy Information Administration, crude oil production averaged 12.9 million barrels per day last year, surpassing a previous record set in 2019 under Trump.

Democrats want to continue investing in renewable energy like wind and solar power — and not just because they are proponents the Green New Deal I want this, said Walz.

“My farmers know that climate change is real. They have experienced 500-year droughts and 500-year floods in a row. But they are adapting,” he said.

“The solution for us is to move forward and accept that climate change is real” and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, Walz said, adding that the government is doing just that.

“We see ourselves becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the present,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Christopher Megerian in Augusta, Georgia, contributed to this report.