Tampa Bay Area Democratic state Rep. Michele Rayner in St. Petersburg on Oct. 15, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
Amid the property destruction that individuals and families face following the one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, activists gathered in Jacksonville, Orlando, and St. Petersburg Tuesday to blast Gov. Ron DeSantis’ stance on climate change.
Through his policies and decisions, they charged, he has made it harder to the state to combat a warming planet, which scientists contend is what made Milton a much stronger storm last week.
“It is hurricane season. You are going to have tropical weather,” DeSantis said last week at a news conference in St. Lucie County, which was hit by deadly tornados. After being asked about a conspiracy theory that the government can control hurricanes, he replied, “This is on both sides. You kind of have, some people think government can do this [control the weather], and then others think it’s all because of fossil fuels. The reality is, is what we see.”
“What the hell was that?” asked James Scott, executive committee chair for the Suncoast Sierra Club, during an event in South St. Petersburg organized by the group Florida For All. “That is a deflection and a denial of the reality. That is a dereliction of duty, the oath to protect this state. That statement is absurd and shameful.”
Although DeSantis has authorized efforts to address resiliency and rising sea levels, he has steadfastly rejected attempts to embrace the term “climate change,” including the powerful symbolism of signing legislation earlier this year that deleted more than 50 lines from state statutes dealing with that topic.
The coastline in Steinhatchee remains covered in debris on Oct. 3, 2024, following Hurricane Helene. (Photo Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
‘Short-term solutions’
Tampa Bay-area Democratic state Rep. Michele Rayner said she was there to represent a majority of Black and brown voters in her House District 62 seat. She said her constituents are the ones that need resilience and climate change legislation the most and that that the governor and the GOP-controlled state Legislature have never shown much interest in seriously addressing the problem.
“For too long, Florida has focused most of their investment on short-term solutions, like cleanup, the free gas, and the patches to the grid and the water system, but I want to be very, very clear,” she said.
“This is not about a lack of resources or the ability to make change. This is about a lack of political will that the Republican-led Legislature has and that Gov. DeSantis has. This is not about a lack of resources. We have the money — there’s $15 billion in reserves. This is about a lack of political will and a lack of political courage,” Rayner continued.
“Now it’s the time for Ron DeSantis to not only invest in the short-term recovery efforts but to invest in the long-term solutions that will protect our homes and communities,” she added.
The speakers took aim at the hundreds of millions of dollars the DeSantis administration has rejected from the federal government to address climate change. That includes $320 million in federal funds that Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue turned down last year, aimed at reducing tailpipe emissions, as well as a veto of $30 million that would have allowed for approximately $350 million for energy-efficient measures from the federal government to address the climate crisis.
(DeSantis later asked for $1.7 million to administer the program for next year, the Orlando Sentinel reported, although it’s uncertain how much of that $350 million would still be available to the state, since some of it has been distributed to other states.)
“We need our governor to stop playing games with our tax dollars,” said Nick Carey, a community organizer with the Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg. “We need him to just accept federal money that comes to us with no cost to establish climate resiliency here in Tampa Bay.”
In this aerial view, Flood waters inundate a neighborhood after Hurricane Milton came ashore on Oct. 10, 2024, in Punta Gorda. The storm made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in the Siesta Key area, causing damage and flooding throughout Central Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Vulnerabilities ‘laid bare’
Even after Hurricane Helene in particular upended significant parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast because of unprecedented high storm surge, DeSantis appears not to have even contemplated whether it makes sense to rebuild in such vulnerable areas.
“The reality is, is people work their whole lives and work hard to be able to live in environments that are really, really nice, and they have a right to make those decisions with their property as they see fit,” DeSantis said last week in responding to a question at a press conference in Bradenton Beach. “It is not the role of government to forbid them or to force them to dispose or utilize their property in a way that they do not think is best for them.”
Scott insisted the storms have “laid bare” the extreme vulnerabilities that residents in the Tampa Bay area face, saying that’s not the answer that Floridians should take from the past month.
“What we just experienced was a sucker-punch, and the day will come when we get body slammed,” he said.
“So, this needs to be a wake-up call and a moment of reckoning for us, and as we reckon with this moment, and we’re reeling from the disaster, our state continues to play with fire. Our governor and our state encourage and allow development in the riskiest places across our state. Flood zones, coastal zones, places where we never should have built, and we should not be building to this day. We’re still intensifying the infrastructure and the people, the neighborhoods, and the businesses we put in those dangerous places.”
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