Dear Florida, Your Guy Isn’t Dealing With Climate Reality

DeSantis ignores the real world

Photo by rachman reilli on Unsplash

Miami is flooding like it’s normal. The water table is saturated. Buildings are on the verge of falling down. Half the state is still recovering from Hurricane Ian. You can’t get home insurance. And if you have it, it won’t pay you to fix your home after a disaster.

Sounds like a dystopian movie, except, it’s reality.

1000 people are moving to the Sunshine State every month. Apparently they don’t watch or read the news. And, apparently, neither does Governor DeSantis, a book banner who thinks he can run the whole country while letting his own state become the poster state for climate disasters.

Nothing I just wrote is made up. Paradise is a major crap shoot. Spend your life savings for a house with a palm tree and a pool and then wait.

One of the realities about the state, and it could be a charm, is that most of it is a swamp, actually a massive shallow river. But we’ve been draining it, redirecting it, and pretending it’s a chunk of the good life, not mosquito hell about to be underwater for good.

All while the Gulf of Mexico gets warmer and warmer and storms get bigger and bigger.

DeSantis does not care. You voted for him in droves, God knows why. I guess it is because he will keep your kids from being gay, or maybe questioning their gender. Or actually learning the reality of things like the history of slavery in your state.

Meanwhile, you have a real problem. The planet is warming and you are on ground zero. You’re basically screwed and your Governor is somewhere in Iowa talking about censorship like it’s a good thing.

I really could care less about Ron DeSantis. He has no chance of becoming President. But he has a real job he was elected to do and he is not doing it. Florida has a really serious problem and, like many Floridians, he is pretending it doesn’t exist.

It’s called global warming. And it’s not some woke liberal fantasy. It’s a year since Ian and there are no beaches where there used to be acres of sand. Streets flood regularly in the southern part of the state and freshwater is starting to become a commodity.