By Focusing Only on ‘Resilience,’ Florida’s Governor Ignores Climate Change’s Deadly Heat

Still, the fact that DeSantis is doing something about sea level rise means he’s got a better record on climate change than his predecessor, Rick “I’m Not A Scientist And Also I Don’t Listen to People Who Are Scientists” Scott.

The list of things Scott did to counter climate change is so short you can inscribe it on the head of a — no wait, you can’t inscribe it on anything, because he did nothing. Basically, he gets an F and DeSantis a D.

There are a lot of other climate-related impacts that DeSantis is doing nothing about, because — like Scott — he refuses to face reality. Like Scott, he can’t even bear to say the words “climate change.” It’s as if, by keeping mum, he can avoid making the nightmare real.

I contacted the governor’s press office to ask what, if anything, he’s doing about the climate other than fighting sea level rise. They failed to respond. Perhaps they were too busy trying to spin his latest expensive court loss over one of the culture war bills that have kept him so busy.

DeSantis warned us about his aversion to even discussing climate change back in 2018 when he was a first-time gubernatorial candidate. He told WLRN-FM, “I am not a global warming person. I do not want that label on me.”

This is sort of like Charlton Heston looking at all the simian faces gathered around him and announcing, “I am not an apes-run-the-planet person.”

Well, you are now, pal, whether you want to be or not. We all are.

Cranking the global thermostat

Here’s why DeSantis is wrong to spend all those millions on nothing but pumps and pipes and higher roads: Climate change is attacking all of Florida, not just the coastline.

People who live in, say, Imperial Polk County are as much at risk of being killed by climate change as someone watching floodwaters rising in the streets of Key West, Miami Beach, or Fort Lauderdale.

I put in a call in early June to David Zierden, Florida’s official state climatologist (Yes, we really have one!). We spent some time chatting about our slow-rolling apocalypse — the climate, I mean, not the apes taking over.

“The increasing heat is a problem for outdoor workers, agricultural workers, and for tourists,” Zierden told me.

Roofers working on new homes in Lakewood Ranch, for instance, and those smiling kids who stand outside the Gainesville Chic-Fil-A to take your drive-thru order, and the migrants picking tomatoes in Immokalee — they are all potential victims of a warmer world. They (and their employers) all need to find a way to cope with days that keep getting warmer as the global thermostat gets cranked higher.

DeSantis is doing nothing to help those folks.

My kids’ Boy Scout troop went on more than a few warm-weather hikes through forests and swamps. Despite frequent warnings that they should carry a canteen and stay hydrated, inevitably there would be at least one hiker who’d wind up dizzy and nauseous.

Now picture most of the state feeling dizzy and nauseous — and not just because the governor paid for someone to write a sappy song about how great he is.

“Becoming dehydrated leads to mental confusion and impairment,” Uejio said. “Rates of accidents and injuries go up. Elderly people face an increased risk of falling down.”

All those millions that DeSantis is spending on seawalls and pumps won’t keep your Grandma Rose upright when she gets overheated and dehydrated, folks. Get ready to pay for a new hip — or a headstone.

Which reminds me: Climate change is clobbering your wallet, as well. A state with an increased risk from hurricanes, wildfires, heavy rainstorms, and other ills will naturally face an increase in property insurance rates.

Fans and a sweet tea

Last year, on one of those rare occasions when DeSantis actually took reporters’ questions during one of his “applaud-me-I’m-handing-out-money” events, someone asked him what he was doing about the causes of climate change.

“What I’ve found is, people when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways,” he snapped. “We are not doing any left-wing stuff.”

Then DeSantis uttered some statements that were so lacking in accuracy that I’m surprised he didn’t get a prize for fiction from the Pulitzer jury. He invoked high gas prices, “affordable energy,” and “anti-energy policies” by Biden. The implication was that fossil fuels are as good for Florida as drinking orange juice every morning. That may come as a surprise to anyone who watched globs of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster wash up on Panhandle beaches in 2010.

DeSantis’ hostility to weaning the state from oil and gas reflects a national push by GOP lawmakers to fight against anyone trying to clean up the pollution now heating up the planet. Perhaps this is why, when Florida legislators were discussing the resiliency bills that DeSantis wanted, they shut down every effort to go after the causes of climate change.

This makes for a tough choice for The Man Who Would Be Governor Again (at least until 2024).

If DeSantis won’t even try to curtail the use of fossil fuels in the nation’s third-largest state, then he needs to start figuring out how to deal with what climate change will do to everyone who lives here.

Perhaps he can assign his Florida State Guard to run around handing out battery-powered fans and serving cool drinks with lots of crushed ice. I’d like a large sweet tea, please, no lemon.

Meanwhile, the guardsmen better take some of that money being spent on construction and plant a whole lot more shade trees, too. We’re going to need them if we hope to stay lively — and alive.

Craig Pittman is a native Floridian. In 30 years at the Tampa Bay Times, he won numerous state and national awards for his environmental reporting. He is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, which won a gold medal from the Florida Book Awards. His latest, published in 2021, is The State You’re In: Florida Men, Florida Women, and Other Wildlife. In 2020 the Florida Heritage Book Festival named him a Florida Literary Legend. Craig is co-host of the “Welcome to Florida” podcast. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and children.

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