TALLAHASSEE ? Florida lawmakers dug into issues involving climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, phrases largely kept under wraps by state Republican leaders before last year’s elections.
Sen. Tom Lee, a Thonotosassa Republican and former Senate president, said the shift in the GOP is in part a reflection of a younger generation of conservatives, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and incoming House Speaker Chris Sprowls, who “aren’t so much in denial about some of these issues.”
Lee’s Infrastructure and Security committee on Monday heard from several academic experts and the governor’s chief resilience officer on the environmental challenges ahead for the state.
Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Miami Democrat who continues to wear black rainboots he donned the last two legislative sessions to raise awareness about climate change, said it’s good that lawmakers are talking about the issue. But he said there needs to be discussion about its causes.
“The unfortunate thing is that the bar is so low, we lost a decade under [former] Gov. [Rick] Scott and the prior leadership,” Rodriguez said after the meeting. “It’s great that we’re talking about [it] … but the way resilience is defined, it excludes dealing with the causes of climate. The obvious next step is also to try to see what we can do on energy policy.”
Julia Nesheiwat, DeSantis’ chief resilience officer, said her job is building a statewide strategy over the next couple of years that prepares Florida for the economic, physical and environmental impacts of climate change.
“These aren’t issues that are just 10, 20 years, it’s happening now, we’re seeing it now as we speak,” she said.
The meeting reflected a continued change in tone from the Republican-dominated state Legislature. Throughout Scott’s two terms as governor many critics saw an indifferent or hostile approach to concerns about the impact of climate change in Florida
The Scott administration halted work on a statewide climate action plan started under former Gov. Charlie Crist, now a congressman. The administration also had an unwritten policy banning the terms climate change and global warming,
DeSantis wasted little time changing the narrative, with one of his first actions after taking office issuing an executive order focused on water quality. The order directed the Department of Environmental Protection to make decisions based on the best available science and to create an Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection to help communities prepare for the effects of sea-level rise.
Lee said it’s still too early to predict a full “paradigm shift” among lawmakers or what legislation could come from the 2020 session. But he said discussions are needed on issues from septic tanks and drainage to coastal construction to road planning.
“I do think we’re headed in that direction,” Lee said. “I think reality is going to set in. And if it doesn’t, it’s going to hit us right in the face.”
