Ron DeSantis Signs Bill Erasing 'Climate Change' From Florida Law, 'Cliché' From Florida Dictionaries
Fifty-gallon drum of crude appointed head of Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
In the latest Republican effort to protect cherished rightwing ideology from being bullied by reality, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis yesterday signed a bill deleting the term “climate change” from state laws and removing any consideration of potential climate effects of greenhouse gas emissions from state energy policies. It’s a completely expected follow-up to the days when his predecessor as governor, Rick Scott, forbade government employees from using the words “climate change” in 2015.
Along with sending climate change to the Memory Hole, the bill also weakens regulation of fossil gas pipelines and bans the development of offshore wind projects. That latter is an entirely symbolic fuck-you to a form of renewable energy that’s especially hated by Donald Trump, although as the Washington Post notes (gift link), “Florida isn’t windy enough to have piqued the wind industry’s interest.” Solar, which is doing fairly booming business in the Sunshine State, is unaffected by the law. So far.
Among other provisions, the Post explains that the law, House Bill 1645,
also removes language giving state officials the authority to set goals for increasing renewable energy in Florida. It ends requirements that government agencies consult a “climate-friendly” products list before making purchases, hold meetings in hotels that meet the state’s “green lodging” requirements or that agencies prioritize fuel efficiency when buying new vehicles.
We suppose Floridians can at least be glad that the bill doesn’t outright mandate that all state-owned vehicles be the least fuel efficient models in their market segment. We can certainly see DeSantis reading the demands of that hostage-taker guy in Robocop: “Something with reclining leather seats, that goes really fast, and gets really shitty gas mileage!” Vendors are no doubt preparing bids to revive the fictional 6000 SUX as we speak. DeSantis would buy that for a dollar!
DeSantis explained that he was just keeping Florida safe from hairy-legged lesbian radicals and their eco-terror bomb owls, or maybe even worse:
“The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state. We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”
DeSantis also posted to Twitter this graphically jarring screed that looks more like a John Birch Society flyer stuffed under the windshield wiper of a Buick Roadmaster than an official government announcement.
The Post notes that this is simply the latest iteration of DeSantis’s cherished strategy of governing by outrage, focusing on culture war shit rather than actually addressing boring stuff like roads and schools (schools matter only insofar as he can wreck them in the name of fighting “wokeness”).
Earlier this month, he signed a bill banning lab-grown meat from the state, though the product isn’t commercially available. In a post on X accompanying the announcement, the governor said the law would protect Florida from “global elites” at the World Economic Forum, falsely claiming that the annual gathering of political leaders in Davos harbors plans to force the world “to eat fake meat and bugs.”
Oh lordy the bug-eating thing (yes, of course it’s anti-Semitic too). NOBODY WANTS TO FORCE ANYONE TO EAT BUGS, RON. The makers of Snowpiercer have a lot to answer for. Also, did you see how we cleverly swapped in our own link to the lab meat story there, instead of the Post’s? We are tricksy like that.
It’s difficult to say why DeSantis thinks this is a great law, apart from the obvious appeal to the crazy fringe of the MAGAtariat, who may be the only constituency he gives a white-booted shit about anyway. Ordinary non-bath-salts-consuming Floridians are entirely aware of the reality of climate change, as the Post points out:
The latest survey by Florida Atlantic University found that 90 percent of Floridians accept that climate change is happening and 69 percent support state action to address it. Many of the survey’s respondents also reported negative experiences with flooding and high winds from tornadoes and hurricanes, which may explain why Floridians report being more concerned than Americans nationally.
Then again, they’re probably just sheeple, what do they know?
Oh, right, they know that the state had record-shattering heat last year, including ocean temperatures as high as 97 degrees F. DeSantis was off campaigning and insisting that “weather” shouldn’t be “politicized,” which is one sure way to politicize cl****e ch***e.
The truly weird thing about all this is that DeSantis and Florida Republicans know damn well that climate change is happening, what with the insurance companies fleeing the state and their own legislation to make the state more resilient against flooding and sea level rise.
But it’s more fun, and perhaps politically profitable, to say none of it is happening.
God damn, we miss reality.
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[Florida Phoenix / Florida Voice / AP / WaPo (gift link) / Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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For the longest time after seeing Robocop, I tried to figure out what car had been used to make the 6000 SUX, since it had a fairly distinctive roofline and B-pillar. This was before the masses were on the internet, after all. Saw an old Cutlass Supreme in a parking lot and said "aha!"
I hear if you put a towel over your head, certain monsters can't see you.