Biden tours flood-hit areas; calls climate change ‘existential threat’

NEW YORK, (Reuters) - President Joe Biden yesterday toured sites of deadly floods in the Northeast and said Hurricane Ida demonstrated the ravages of climate change as he pressed for investments to boost infrastructure and fight global warming.

“Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here. It’s not going to get any better,” Biden said after touring neighborhoods in New Jersey and New York City’s Queens Borough that were hurt by the storm. “We can stop it from getting worse.”

It was Biden’s second trip in recent days to areas slammed by the storm, shifting his focus to domestic priorities after weeks of public attention to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Biden made fighting climate change a key plank of his 2020 presidential campaign and a top priority of his administration, but some of his goals rely on getting the U.S. Congress to pass multitrillion-dollar legislation on infrastructure and other priorities.

Biden noted that wildfires, hurricanes and floods were hitting every part of the United States, with more than 100 million Americans affected this summer alone. The storms, he said, will only be getting worse.

“Folks, we got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red. The nation and the world are in peril. That’s not hyperbole. That is a fact,” Biden said.

On Friday he visited Louisiana, promising federal aid and urging national unity. Ida devastated parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast and unleashed even deadlier flooding in the Northeast.

Biden’s flood damage trips revived his familiar role of consoler-in-chief, a shift from time spent in recent weeks defending his decision to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan following its deadly aftermath.