There’s nothing like the trend of rising sea levels that threaten the existence of inhabited low-lying islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans to remind you that climate change is more than empty jargon within environmentalist circles to encourage people to recycle at home.
And to bring it closer, the state of Florida is the most vulnerable whenever it comes to climate change in the country. Sea-level rise threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years according to scientists. But you wouldn’t think so by looking at Florida’s most recent policies concerning the environment.
This past month, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting have published a series of stories, which revealed that employees and contractors at various governmental agencies have been told not to use the terms climate change, global warming and sustainability in official documents and e-mails. It included the departments of Environmental Protection, Transportation and Health. The source came from various former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and by public records.
Rick Scott and the governor’s office have denied the allegations along with the Florida DEP. But this trend clearly aligns with what the governor has said publicly and his unwillingness to grapple with legislation concerning climate change. In 2010, during Scott’s campaign for the governorship, he told reporters that he wasn’t convinced of its existence and then said in 2014 that he wasn’t a scientist whenever asked about his position on the issue.
However before Scott, Charlie Crist had been very adamant concerning this issue as governor, creating a task force and ordered a national summit in 2007 in Miami so this hasn’t been a prolonged trend within Florida state politics. It could be a question of semantics but climate science is conclusive. The U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report summarizing the findings of more than 30,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers, written by 800 scientists from 80 countries.
It stated, “Human influence on the climate system is clear; the more we disrupt our climate, the more we risk severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts; and we have the means to limit climate change and build a more prosperous, sustainable future.”
What motivates the Scott Administration on the environment? Indifference? Apathy? Or possibly they’re preoccupied with the interests of industry that have made quite a living from oil, coal, natural gas and deforestation that effects the climate.
No matter what it is, what’s occurring is the censorship of an established science and the loss of a chance to develop sensible public policy around the environment to build a better world for future generations and ourselves.