Youth climate activists gathered on the steps of the Old Capitol building in Tallahassee Wednesday morning with a direct message for state lawmakers: Start taking “immediate and bold action on climate change.”
But there’s a quantum distance between what the activists desire and what the GOP-controlled Legislature is actually doing in the 2024 session regarding the issue.
“We have seen the fossil fuel industry successfully escape accountability through its many allies in the Legislature,” acknowledged Cameron Driggers, the founder and executive director with the Youth Action Fund, at the press conference. Driggers is a graduate of Flagler Palm Coast High School.
“We have seen local initiatives to reduce carbon emissions banned from taking effect … now more than ever, it is time for Florida’s young people to channel our passionate resolve for immediate climate action directly to the decision makers in this state. We are tired of being seen but not heard. Florida is on the frontlines of this crisis and refuse to wait around and wait for our leaders to act like it.”
“It is adamantly clear that the state of Florida is not doing enough to address the climate crisis,” added Sarahi Perez, lead organizer with the genCLEO Action Fund and the first youth board member of the Climate Resilience Committee for the city of Miami. “The urgency of the people need to be reflected in the legislation. It is a necessity to ensure that climate change is a priority, and it starts here today.”
Perhaps there is no greater issue that illustrates the divide between what climate activists are hoping to get from state lawmakers on climate change and what they are likely to get this year when it comes to dealing with the extreme heat in Florida — specifically in terms of providing heat protections for outdoor workers.
“Florida saw extreme heat temperatures like we have never seen before,” said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the executive director with the CLEO Institute. “2023 was the hottest year on record for humans ever saw.” (Last July was the hottest July in the state’s history, according to the Florida Climate Center.)
Arditi-Rocha said her organization was intently focused on two bills introduced at the beginning of this legislative session designed to address extreme heat when it comes to outdoor workers in Florida: HB 945 in the House, introduced by South Florida Democratic Rep. Mike Gottlieb, and SB 762, by Tampa Bay area Democratic Sen. Darryl Rouson.
The measures call for an employer who has employees who work in an outdoor environment to implement an outdoor heat exposure safety program to be approved by the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health that trains and informs supervisors and employees about heat illness, as well as provide water and 10-minute breaks every two hours for employees when an employer, manager, supervisor or contractor determines that the outdoor heat index equals or exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
The proposals come after at least two farmworkers in South Florida died because of working in excessive heat earlier last year.
But the reality in Tallahassee this month is that while neither Gottlieb nor Rouson’s bills have yet to be heard in any committee, another bill sponsored by Lee County Republican Tiffany Esposito (HB 433) would take away the power of local governments from implementing their own ordinances with heat exposure safety requirements in workplaces. It has already been approved by one committee in the House.
This proposal comes after organizers in Miami-Dade County spent months last year working on creating what would have been the only local government in the nation to provide heat-related protections for outdoor workers in the construction and agriculture industries. However, that proposal has been substantially watered down due to lobbying by business interests and won’t come back up for a potential vote until March.
“We call on Florida legislators to give employers and their workers the safety measures to be better protected in a warming world,” Arditi-Rocha said. “It’s only human to do so. And we call them to protect all Floridians, not the few powered interests seeking to drain literally all the sweat out of their workers.”
Kim Ross is the executive director with ReThink Energy Florida. She said the state owed it to young people to begin taking climate change seriously.
“The impact of our warming planet keeps getting more dire,” she said. “The heat from last summer was incredibly painful and deadly. The rain bombs we saw, the storms. What we saw in the last year was just a hint of what’s to come. And while we can plan for sunny day flooding and while the Legislature has put good money into adapting to sea level rise, we cannot adapt our way out of this.”
Groups who participated included activists from the CLEO Institute, ReThink Energy Florida, genCLEO Action Fund, Sierra Club Florida, Sunrise Movement, Youth Action Fund and OurClimate.
–Michael Moline, Florida Phoenix
Protonbeam says
Lawmakers are wise to ignore these kids- the empiricism (look to Governor Inslee in WA State) and the hundreds of millions wasted, the jobs lost and the hardship on families for fuel and heating when no meaningful national or international system exists to gain any consistency- we here in the US are ahead of most of the world and have done so voluntarily since the 1970s – if you want climate change the most effective action you can take is immediately stop buying anything made in China or India until they take action on their literal toxic waste industrial complexes polluting more than most the industrialized waste – But people don’t want change that impacts them- people generally prefer to hold banners and try to force others to spend time and money –
Ed P says
Sometimes the most effective way to address a problem is reduce to the ridiculous, ie baby steps. Start with each individual with climate anxiety by adhering to the steps they can each take to solve the problem. Practice what is being suggested.
Did they walk or ride bikes to the rally? Have they all become vegan yet? Will they each pass on spring break? Did they keep the thermostats off during our cold spell the last couple of weeks? In short, are they each reducing their own carbon foot print?
In my opinion, using unwitting youth to promote any cause will be viewed ultimately unsuccessful. Over playing any position and telling a group of 55-58 million seniors that WE ruined the planet for THEM seems a bit simplistic given the complexity of the issues and scope of the worlds developing populations. Im not convinced it helps the cause.
Endangered species says
The richest 1 percent of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 than the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. Didn’t even mention other forms of pollution.
Walk to the rally all you want it will only make you late.eat vegan, ride public, consume less.
While these could have an impact if we did them collectively, individually they dont make an impact at all. Without the regulators (even the ones paid to ignore, deny and deflect) there is no chance of even an attempt at a livable world in another century. Short term profits and convenience prevailed for a while.. the sixth mass event has already started.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
yeah man who needs drinkable water and an ecosystem that supports human life when you can just be a dumbass and punt things down to the next generation
Ed P says
FYI. China produced 31 percent of global emissions in 2022, China is one of a hand full who increased carbon emissions. Statista.
But I wonder how accurate an of these estimations really are, but…
Endangered species
Oxfam would not be a reliable go to source to quote.