Gov. DeSantis: ‘You can’t say that every weather event is somehow proof of a particular theory that’s out there’
By Herbert Rothschild
It was on Dec. 12, 2000, 35 days after election day, that Florida’s 25 electoral votes were officially awarded to George W. Bush, not Al Gore. That was the day Florida’s fate was sealed.
If you relied on the state’s political leadership, you wouldn’t know that its fate is sealed. Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio only reluctantly and recently have changed their stance from climate change denial to grudging concession that Florida faces environmental threats. Still, they simply can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that they’ve been wrong. A standard answer they’ve been giving to questions about climate change is, “I’m not a scientist.” I’m not an astronomer, but if you asked me whether the earth revolves around the sun, I’d answer your question.
Scott preceded DeSantis as governor. Before taking office in 2011, he expressed his skepticism about climate change and, according to multiple former state employees, during his eight years in office his administration unofficially banned state employees from using the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in official communications and reports.
In a 2019 op-ed for USA Today, Rubio wrote: “Headlines and climate-alarmist rhetoric warn of mass destruction. They claim entire nations could be swallowed up by rising seas within the century … These irresponsible claims are not only unsupported by scientific evidence but also impede our ability to address key environmental challenges.” And in a 2022 Senate speech, Rubio criticized what he called “climate hysteria.”
Both Scott and Rubio have opposed legislation to address climate change. They supported Trump’s executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. When Biden reversed that decision on his first day as president, Scott released this public statement: “We all want to take care of our environment and protect it for generations to come, but we have to stop joining deals that are bad for America. President Biden is throwing the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement just to appease his liberal friends. This deal does nothing to hold real polluters, like Communist China and India, accountable and it unfairly puts American taxpayers on the hook. It was bad for America when Obama signed it and it’s still bad now.”
What about the person to whom the U.S. Supreme Court, via Bush v. Gore, awarded Florida’s electoral votes? Shortly after taking office, President Bush announced that the U.S. would not implement the Kyoto Protocol. He said it would cause “serious harm to the U.S. economy.” Well, maybe not to the economy, but ultimately to his family’s oil business. While Bush never reversed his position on Kyoto, his administration did gradually acknowledge the reality of climate change. In his 2007 State of the Union address, he referred to climate change as a “serious challenge.”
Bush’s corrupted judgment compares favorably with the delirium of our next Republican president. In a 2012 tweet, Trump asserted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” That’s close to, but not quite as wacky as, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim on Oct. 4 that people are causing the hurricanes intentionally. She didn’t identify these remarkably gifted villains, but she posted an image of Helene overlaid on an electoral map and suggested that “they” had chosen the hurricane’s path to target Republican-leaning counties.
As president, Trump dismissed the findings of the Fourth National Climate Assessment released by his own administration in 2018, saying, “I don’t believe it.” He has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax.” Since the only reality for Trump is personal, we must hope that the next hurricane heads for Mar-a-Lago.
To those people who don’t live in a delirium, increasingly frequent and dire climate events are confirmation of global warming. But don’t ask Gov. DeSantis to admit a causal link between it and the hurricanes ravaging his state. At a press conference after Hurricane Idalia struck Florida in August 2023, DeSantis snapped at reporters who suggested such a link. “We’ve had hurricanes throughout our entire history. You can’t say that every weather event is somehow proof of a particular theory that’s out there.”
Florida has indeed had hurricanes. From 1976 through 1999, it experienced 26. The strongest and most costly ones — Andrew in 1992 and Opal in 1995 — occurred late in that 24-year period. In the next 24 years, at least 34 hurricanes have impacted Florida. The increase in their number isn’t as dramatic as the increase in their intensity, because the temperatures of the waters from which the storms draw their strength keep rising. Consequently, their cumulative cost has grown to the point where, over the last decade, homeowners insurance premiums in Florida have doubled, and in some areas of the state companies won’t issue coverage.
As we learned after the Almeda Fire, mobile homes and trailers are the least insurable. So, when they are destroyed, their owners usually incur a total financial loss. In Florida, such dwellings account for almost 10% of the housing stock. There are numerous retirement communities made up entirely of mobile homes.
In some of the news reports I watched after Hurricane Milton, residents who had lost their mobile homes were asked whether they intend to start over in the same place. Characteristically, people in such situations say that they do. These, however, expressed doubts. The double whammy of Helene and Milton they experienced within 12 days may not have convinced them that the scientific community was right all along, but it convinced them that they have seen the future of Florida.
What’s regrettable is that, in one way or another, the rest of the world will share that future.
Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].
