This included dismantling good policy and banning use of the terms “global warming” and “climate change,” while stacking agencies, commissions, and departments with political appointees-many of whom lacked the qualifications necessary for the jobs, according to civil servants within state agencies who requested anonymity for fear of retribution-while forcing out scientists and other experts.ĭeSantis, on paper, looks better than his predecessor, but he hasn’t rolled back Scott’s bad decisions. But Scott had no vision for conservation, only an agenda beholden to aggressive business interests. When former governor Rick Scott took office in 2011, the state’s environmental regulation still supported some measure of sensible policy. If Florida’s wild places have evolved, with exceeding sophistication, to excel in a geographically fragile setting, then, in recent years, an opposite devolution has occurred politically in the human world. The stakes involved are not just the quality of life for Floridians, but actual lives-and the potential, as DeSantis exports his brand, that ecosystems nationwide will suffer from weakened regulation and be left for dead. DeSantis also signed legislation taking clean energy decisions away from local government has yet to ban certain kinds of fracking allowed exploratory oil drilling in the ecological sensitive Apalachicola River Basin and, despite 2018 campaign promises, failed to lodge an objection to recent federal permits allowing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
That same day, the Sierra Club gave DeSantis an F for his environmental record, citing, in part, his attitude toward climate change and general “mismanagement.” Florida lags behind many states with decades-old energy efficiency guidelines while a recent DeSantis line-item budget veto disqualified Florida from receiving $346 million in federal funds from a program meant to improve energy efficiency across the country. From rock pine to salt marsh, from sandhill scrub to lush semi-tropical ravines and dozens of other unique ecosystems-the point lost on DeSantis and the Republican legislature is that these are not tourist sights housed in an amusement park, but vital parts of the actual world that humans occupy and need to thrive, perhaps even to survive.Īsked about hurricanes and climate change during a FOX News interview on May 24, DeSantis said he “ rejects the politicization of the weather,” echoing his 2022 statement that “I can’t control the climate. Ruinous policy in Florida affects 11 million acres of wetlands, thousands of lakes, more than 1,300 miles of coastline, and hundreds of freshwater springs. Some come with large amounts of money attached, while the state simultaneously ignores the peril of poorly regulated industrial-scale farming, ranching, and development that intensifies the crisis. But rather than acknowledge a crisis and build out a holistic approach to climate change, Florida, led by Governor Ron DeSantis, denies the urgency and applies a hodge-podge of contradictory initiatives designed for short-term applause. The state, of necessity, should be a leader in U.S. Florida is a bellwether for the rest of the nation the surge water rise that besets Miami today will, soon enough, beset states ranging from California to New York.
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