{"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