Ron DeAthsentence: Shitty For Florida On COVID, Shitty For Florida On Dealing With Warming

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Since his election in November 2018, DeSantis is making good on some of his environmental promises, including what he likes to call “resilience,” a new buzzword for climate adaptation. But as the governor prepares for a re-election bid in 2022, and is seen as a potential Republican frontrunner for the presidency in 2024, DeSantis faces criticism for failing to do all he could on Florida’s biggest environmental threat, climate change. Some of his critics acknowledge that the $1 billion Resilient Florida plan he announced in January could be a first step toward helping some communities pay for adaptation. But they also point out that DeSantis has done almost nothing to put Florida on a path to scaling back the state’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels. “I would give him probably a C-minus,” said former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who served from 2007 to 2011, and now represents St. Petersburg in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat. Crist still gets plaudits from environmentalists for his administration’s climate initiatives, which were then basically abandoned by Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican now serving in the U.S. Senate.

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But DeSantis in 2018 let voters know that he had clear limits when it came to climate change. “I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists,” DeSantis told reporters at one 2018 campaign stop. “I am not a global warming person. I don’t want that label on me.” Once in office, DeSantis won early plaudits for directives aimed at cleaning up water and helping Florida adapt to climate change. He appointed the first state resilience officer and the first chief scientist, and ordered Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to make sure its decisions were based on the best available science.

“Everyone was optimistic,” said Susan Glickman, the Florida director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a regional nonprofit focused on a clean energy transition. “I kept hearing an opening on climate.” Two years later, though, Glickman and other advocates are assessing DeSantis’ climate record much like this: He’s done more than Scott, but that’s not saying much. DeSantis quietly replaced his chief science officer, Thomas K. Frazer, the dean of College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida, in March, but never has replaced his chief resilience officer, who left early last year for the Trump administration after only a few months in the position.

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But even with the governor’s focus on adaptation, some experts are concerned the state is not on the right track under DeSantis’ leadership. There’s too much emphasis on sea walls, which can cause beach erosion and destroy tidal zones vital to marine life, including crabs and turtles, said marine and climate scientist Jeff Chanton, a professor at Florida State University. “An ideal governor would try to lessen the impacts of growth in this state, especially along our coastlines,” he said.

Before her departure, Julia Nesheiwat, DeSantis’ chief resilience officer, characterized the state’s infrastructure as “outdated” in a report and called its resilience strategy “disjointed.” She suggested resilience districts based on regional collaborations that already have evolved, like the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact and East Central Florida Resilience Collaborative. Nesheiwat’s suggestion could be valuable, said Thomas Ruppert, an attorney and coastal planning specialist with the Florida Sea Grant, a research organization. But DeSantis’ emphasis on hardening infrastructure continues to ignore that, for some communities, the investments will be futile in staving off the inevitable, he said.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15042021/florida-ron-desantis-climate-change-reduced-emissions-sea-level-rise/

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1. Death Sentence lives up to his name in numerous ways.

He's just another murdering, constitution & worker/poor class destroying repug ass.