Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumProblem Solved!! Floriduh Legislators Prepare To Remove Words "Climate Change" From Multiple State Laws
In Florida, the effects of climate change are hard to ignore, no matter your politics. Its the hottest state Miami spent a record 46 days above a heat index of 100 degrees last summer and many homes and businesses are clustered along beachfront areas threatened by rising seas and hurricanes. The Republican-led legislature has responded with more than $640 million for resilience projects to adapt to coastal threats.
But the same politicians dont seem ready to acknowledge the root cause of these problems. A bill awaiting signature from Governor Ron DeSantis, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January, would ban offshore wind energy, relax regulations on natural gas pipelines, and delete the majority of mentions of climate change from existing state laws. Florida is on the front lines of the warming climate crisis, and the fact that were going to erase that sends the wrong message, said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the executive director of the CLEO Institute, a climate education and advocacy nonprofit in Florida. It sends the message, at least to me and to a good majority of Floridians, that this is not a priority for the state.
As climate change has been swept into the countrys culture wars, its created a particularly sticky situation in Florida. Republicans associate climate change with Democrats and see it as a pretext for pushing a progressive agenda so they generally try to distance themselves from the issue. When a reporter asked DeSantis what he was doing to address the climate crisis in 2021, DeSantis dodged the question, replying, Were not doing any left-wing stuff. In practice, this approach has consisted of trying to manage the effects of climate change while ignoring whats behind them.
EDIT
The bill, sponsored by state Representative Bobby Payne, a Republican from Palatka in north-central Florida, would strike eight references to climate change in current state laws, leaving just seven references untouched, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Some of the bills proposed language tweaks are minor, but others repeal whole sections of laws. For example, it would eliminate a green government grant program that helps cities and school districts cut their carbon emissions. A 2008 policy stating that Florida is at the front lines of climate change and can reduce those impacts by cutting emissions would be replaced with a new goal: providing an adequate, reliable, and cost-effective supply of energy for the state in a manner that promotes the health and welfare of the public and economic growth.
EDIT
https://grist.org/politics/florida-erasing-climate-change-laws-desantis/
mitch96
(14,623 posts)without saying climate change??
Eschew obfuscation...
m
SARose
(817 posts)Senior Project Development Representative, Seminole Electric Cooperative, 1981-present
Bobby Paynes Bio
Emphasis mine.
In 2000, the median income for a household in the city was $18,129, and the median income for a family was $26,076. Males had a median income of $27,716 versus $19,187 for females. The per capita income for the city was $11,351. About 27.9% of families and 33.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.0% of those under age 18 and 19.6% of those age 65 or over.
From Wikipedia
Old Crank
(4,590 posts)But the ocean will still rise. This will bankrupt cities and counties where houses and roads are imperiled and owners demand relief through government action for their own purchasers of approved housing.