Ron DeSantis, Whose State Is Literally Sinking, Makes Ignoring Climate Science Official Florida Law

In 2023, water off the coast of Florida reached over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The same year, Hurricane Idalia caused approximately $3.6 billion in damages and 12 fatalities across the US. The year before that, Hurricane Ian caused an estimated $115 billion in damages and killed nearly 150 people. Meanwhile, the state is literally sinking.

Numerous scientific studies have shown that all of this is happening because of climate change, which itself is happening due to an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which largely occurs from the burning of gas, coal, and oil. Unfortunately for the people of Florida, Republicans decided some time ago that science is for communists and that the party would be better off adopting a platform of burying the planet in a shallow grave.

Which is why this just happened (per The New York Times):

Florida’s state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. The new law, which passed the Florida Legislature in March and takes effect on July 1, will also prohibit the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and will repeal state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy. The legislation also deletes requirements that state agencies use climate-friendly products and purchase fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prevents any municipality from restricting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance, such as a gas stove.

The legislation, along with two other bills Mr. DeSantis signed on Wednesday, “will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” the governor wrote on the social media platform X. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

While the laws signed by DeSantis would be a bad idea for any state, as the Times notes, they are a particularly bad idea for Florida, which should be doing everything it can to address climate change:

Faced with growing losses from floods and increasingly extreme weather, major insurers are pulling out of the state. Florida homeowners are scrambling to find coverage and, when they do, are paying some of the highest insurance premiums in the country. Thousands have enrolled in the state’s high-risk insurance pool of last resort, a fund that Mr. DeSantis has said is “insolvent.” Instability in the insurance market threatens Florida real estate and, by extension, the state’s economy, experts say.

But Mr. DeSantis, who suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in January, has attacked climate policies as part of a push in the broader partisan culture wars. In a presidential debate last fall, Mr. DeSantis promised that “on Day 1, I’m taking all the Biden regulations, the Green New Deal, ripping it up and throwing it in the trash can where it belongs.”

The Green New Deal has not been passed by Congress, something DeSantis probably actually knows, despite claiming otherwise.

Wednesday was, of course, not the first time the Florida governor decided to flout climate science and put politics ahead of his own constituents. Last year, the Times reports, he “rejected $346 million that was available in federal funds to help Florida residents make their homes more energy-efficient, despite a request from the State Legislature that Florida accept the money.” Commenting on the bill signed this week, Brooke Alexander-Goss, of the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, told the Times that the governor “failed” the people of Florida. “Allowing this bill to become law jeopardizes the health and safety of all Floridians, further proving that his top priority is to appease large corporations and fossil fuel companies,” she said. “We will pay more at the pump and for our insurance premiums, and we will certainly see increases in climate-related disasters and deaths.”

In related news, Trump reportedly told oil executives at an event last month that he’ll immediately scrap Biden‘s climate-friendly policies if elected and prevent others from being passed.

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