Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on Hurricane Delta

Jill and I send our prayers to everyone facing the harrowing impact of Hurricane Delta, particularly those Louisiana and Texas communities still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Laura less than two months ago. Our hearts are with every family forced to evacuate their home or shutter their business, every person denied power or peace of mind, and each first responder risking everything to protect their neighbors.

When it made landfall last night, Hurricane Delta became the tenth named storm to strike the continental United States in 2020 — the largest number in a single year since we began keeping records. The rise in the water temperature of the Gulf of Mexico has caused destructive storms' intensity to dramatically accelerate as they get closer to our shores. As with the unprecedented sweep of fires along our Pacific Coast and the scourge of floods and droughts afflicting the Midwest, these horrors are not a matter of coincidence. The wrath of climate change is here, now, in America.

As President, I would take urgent action to tackle the undeniable, accelerating cost of climate change — putting millions of Americans to work in new, good-paying union jobs building a stronger and more climate-resilient nation; modernizing our infrastructure to guard against the impact of extreme weather; and at the same time tackling the underlying cause by setting us on a path to net-zero emissions and marshaling the world to combat the threat.

We are not fated to suffer from wave after wave of increasingly vicious climate disasters. We can choose to be guided by science. We can choose to overcome this challenge — and seize an extraordinary opportunity to lead the world through a global crisis, while positioning our economy for a massive influx of jobs in the process.

I have faith that the American people are ready to make that choice — to save our lives and livelihoods today, and to build a stronger nation for generations to come. In the meantime, Jill and I pray for those communities facing down another storm. We will not forget you. And we will be there not only to help you rebuild, but to help all of us come together to turn the tide on the greatest existential crisis of our lifetimes.