Ron Desantis and the GQP just banned the climate impacts from the State (s/). This is psychopathic Republican governance on full display and a big FU to the world, where breaking climate news reported that April was the moistest on record. More moisture in the atmosphere means more frequent day and night steamy wet bulb temperatures in the Sunshine State, not to mention wetter storms, which are the most fierce weapons of tropical cyclonic activity.
Just days after Trump, in a quid pro quo, offered the fossil fuel industry the elimination of protections for the environment in exchange for a one billion dollar bribe, and a Florida Atlantic University poll that found 90% of Floridians believed climate change is real and where 68% want the State to do more to fight it: Ron Desantis signed a bill removing climate change, rules and policies from all Florida Law.
In reality, Florida is being punished by extreme heat that will then envelope Texas and onward to the Southwest in the coming days. This heat will scorch the state and test the electrical grid, strengthened by solar and wind technology.
As Florida copes with rising seas and record temperatures, lawmakers are going to exceptional lengths to delete many mentions of climate change from state laws in a new bill that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law on Wednesday, according to his official X account.
The wide-ranging law makes several changes to the state’s energy policy – in some cases deleting entire sections of state law that talk about the importance of cutting planet-warming pollution. The bill would also give preferential treatment to natural gas and ban offshore wind energy, even though there are no wind farms planned off Florida’s coast.
The bill deletes the phrase ‘climate’ eight times – often in reference to reducing the impacts of global climate change through its energy policy or directing state agencies to buy ‘climate friendly’ products when they are cost-effective and available. The bill also gets rid of a requirement that state-purchased vehicles should be fuel efficient.
Climate Central shares news on the early hot, soupy temperatures in Florida.
Daytime temperatures are expected to exceed 90°F across Florida this week. This forecast extreme heat will be combined with high humidity, leading to dangerous heat index values between 100°F and 105°F.
Overnight low temperatures will run 5°-10°F above average. Record nighttime warmth is possible in metropolitan areas in South Florida. Low temperatures near or above 80°F are expected in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Naples.
Heat advisories could be issued for the first time in 2024 in South Florida.
Many cities will experience extended periods of extreme heat. See table below for the 11 cities most impacted.
How has climate change influenced this heat?
Daily average temperatures are expected to reach Climate Shift Index (CSI) levels of 5 in Central and Southern Florida. A CSI level 5 indicates that human-caused climate change made this excessive heat at least five times more likely, signifying an exceptional climate change event.
Over the entire period, 17 million people in Florida will experience at least one day with CSI level 5.
Climate change is an ocean and food crisis; expect the unexpected. A prolonged Mexican heatwave, which killed this year's coffee crop, will expand into the United States in a few days. “Starting this weekend, an intense zone high pressure over Mexico or heat dome is forecast to bulge into the southcentral United States.” Again, it’s only mid-May. All hell will break loose in the Caribbean, North, and Central America this summer. There is no do-over. We fucked around, and boy-oh-boy, are we ever going to find out by a punishing glimpse into what our near and long-term future will look like. Our only hope is to prevent the worst of the coming impacts.
We must replace Rick Scott and Ted Cruz to keep the Senate Majority. But the Democrats need some money. Where is the DSCC? Tic tic tic...
"My family lived under a dictatorship. "I know when corrupt politicians like Rick Scott attack one freedom, they never stop there, so I'm running for Senate to stop him." Debbie Mucarsel-PowellDeSantis's targeting and punching down at Black people, LGBT, women, children, outdoor workers, and migrants is legend. The viciousness of his policies was so despicable even to some Republicans that it likely was a factor in his humiliation on the national stage in his failed campaign to be the 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
DeSantis and the Florida GQP proclivities toward Fascism as justice reporting by Truth Out.
While some pundits have connected DeSantis’s politics to an emerging authoritarianism, they still fail both to name the ongoing development of fascism in the U.S. and to recognize that it takes different forms in different societies and historical formations. They dismiss any talk of fascism by suggesting that its unique historical attributes, such as the genocidal use of concentration camps, have to be repeated precisely in order to assign the term fascism to present events. Fascism is never entirely interred in the past; it is a dangerous ideology that may go into remission but never disappears.
Fascism is a recurrent and infinitely translatable phenomenon and often takes on the cultural and political attributes of the societies in which it appears. The refusal to acknowledge that fascism can appear in many forms, often lying dormant in a society until the emergence of certain forces unleash it, reinforces the willingness of many to retreat into silence or ignore the seriousness of the emerging fascist threat. Expressing ourselves in words, learning from history and making connections among disparate events all matter in the age of fascism. Kelly Hayes, speaking in a “Movement Memos” podcast published by Truthout, is right to say: