{"id":1572102,"date":"2024-03-25T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=633491"},"modified":"2024-03-25T08:45:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T08:45:00","slug":"florida-is-about-to-erase-climate-change-from-most-of-its-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/25\/florida-is-about-to-erase-climate-change-from-most-of-its-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida is about to erase climate change from most of its laws"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Florida, the effects of climate change are hard to ignore, no matter your politics. It\u2019s the hottest state<\/a> \u2014 Miami spent a record 46 days above a heat index of 100 degrees<\/a> last summer \u2014 and many homes and businesses are clustered along beachfront areas<\/a> threatened by rising seas and hurricanes. The Republican-led legislature has responded with more than $640 million<\/a> for resilience projects to adapt to coastal threats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the same politicians don\u2019t 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<\/a> from existing state laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFlorida is on the front lines of the warming climate crisis, and the fact that we’re going to erase that sends the wrong message,\u201d said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the executive director of the CLEO Institute, a climate education and advocacy nonprofit in Florida. \u201cIt sends the message, at least to me and to a good majority of Floridians, that this is not a priority for the state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As climate change has been swept into the country\u2019s culture wars, it\u2019s created a particularly sticky situation in Florida. Republicans associate \u201cclimate change\u201d with Democrats<\/a> \u2014 and see it as a pretext for pushing a progressive agenda \u2014 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, \u201cWe\u2019re not doing any left-wing stuff<\/a>.\u201d In practice, this approach has consisted of trying to manage the effects of climate change while ignoring what\u2019s behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>. Some of the bill\u2019s proposed language tweaks are minor, but others repeal whole sections of laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, it would eliminate a \u201cgreen government grant\u201d 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 through cutting emissions cuts would be replaced with a new goal: providing \u201can 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo
Water floods part of a street that runs near the Strait of Florida during the seasonal king tides in October 2019 in Key West, Florida. Researchers say the Florida Keys will see increased flooding as sea levels continue to rise. Joe Raedle \/ Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Florida politicians have a history of attempting to silence conversations about the fossil fuel emissions driving sea level rise, heavier floods, and worsening toxic algae blooms. When Rick Scott was the Republican governor of the state between 2011 and 2019, state officials were ordered to avoid using the phrases \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201cglobal warming\u201d in communications, emails, and reports, according to the Miami Herald<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It foreshadowed what would happen at the federal level after President Donald Trump took office in 2017. The phrase \u201cclimate change\u201d started disappearing from the websites of federal environmental agencies, with the term\u2019s use going down 38 percent<\/a> between 2016 and 2020. \u201cSorry, but this web page is not available for viewing right now,\u201d the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s climate change site said during Trump\u2019s term<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red states have demonstrated that politicians don\u2019t necessarily need to acknowledge climate change<\/a> to adapt to it, but Florida appears poised to take the strategy to the extreme, expunging climate goals from state laws while focusing more and more money on addressing its effects. In 2019, DeSantis appointed Florida\u2019s first \u201cchief resilience officer,\u201d<\/a> Julia Nesheiwat, tasked with preparing Florida for rising sea levels. Last year, he awarded the Florida Department of Environmental Protection more than $28 million<\/a> to conduct and update flooding vulnerability studies for every county in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy would you address the symptoms and not the cause?\u201d Arditi-Rocha said. \u201cFundamentally, I think it’s political maneuvering that enables them [Republicans] to continue to set themselves apart from the opposite party.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s concerned that the bill will increase the state\u2019s dependence on natural gas. The fossil fuel provides three-quarters of Florida\u2019s electricity<\/a>, leaving residents subject to volatile prices and energy insecurity, according to a recent Environmental Defense Fund report<\/a>. As Florida isn\u2019t a particularly windy state, she sees the proposed ban on offshore wind energy as mostly symbolic. \u201cI think it’s more of a political kind of tactic to distinguish themselves.\u201d Solar power is already a thriving industry that\u2019s taking off in Florida<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s called the Sunshine State for a reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greg Knecht, the executive director of The Nature Conservancy in Florida, thinks that the removal of climate-related language from state laws could discourage green industries from coming to the state. (And he\u2019s not ready to give up on wind power.) \u201cI just think it puts us at a disadvantage to other states,\u201d Knecht said. Prospective cleantech investors might see it as a signal that they\u2019re not welcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill is also out of step with what most Floridians want, Knecht said. According to a recent survey from Florida Atlantic University<\/a>, 90 percent of the state\u2019s residents accept that climate change is happening. \u201cWhen you talk to the citizens of Florida, the majority of them recognize that the climate is changing and want something to be done above and beyond just trying to build our way out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline Florida is about to erase climate change from most of its laws<\/a> on Mar 25, 2024.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Grist<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state is spending big on adapting to sea level rise, but Republicans don’t want to name the cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[982,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1572102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576977,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572102\/revisions\/1576977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1572102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1572102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1572102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}