By Joe Murphy
Right now, in these strange and challenging times we find ourselves, in Tallahassee and in Washington, D.C., it is considered woke foolishness to connect climate change with intensifying weather and climate-related disasters.
We are being asked to discount and pretend not to see what is happening around us, in front of us and to us. As if ignoring it, discounting it or wishing it away will somehow protect us. Floridians know better.
On July 1, a recently passed and signed bill in Florida became law. Senate Bill 56, the Florida Weather Modification Act, otherwise known as the “Geoengineering and Weather Modification Activities Act,” contains criminal penalties for engaging in weather modification activities in Florida.
The bill, in part, is considered a response to unfounded claims that condensation trails left by airplanes are actually “chemtrails” consisting of chemical agents used for weather modification. The bill includes other potential weather manipulation practices and puts criminal penalties into a ban on intentionally affecting temperature, weather or sunlight intensity in the atmosphere of the Sunshine State.
I believe that the sponsors and supporters of this bill genuinely believe this is needed as a response to a perceived threat to the people of Florida, our natural systems, our economy and our way of life. And while I do not agree, I admire their willingness to take a stand. But perhaps there are more immediate and pressing threats to our weather and climate, to all things Florida, that our state and federal governments have a larger role in.
In truth, many elected officials’ policies or lack of policies at the state and federal level are directly changing climate and weather by ignoring climate change.
Floridians recognize the deep and abiding irony that the state of Florida is so clearly saying it is wrong to influence weather and climate on the one hand, when in fact Florida’s denial of climate change and ignoring its connection to worsening and more dangerous weather weakens our current leaders’ response to the threats we face.
Somewhere along the journey, issues of weather and climate have evolved into fodder for the culture wars and have, unfortunately, transcended the scientific process of treating them as they should be treated, simply as scientific and of fact. The victims of this callous misappropriation of what was once considered simple and pure science are all of us.
When elected leaders in Tallahassee and Washington put special interests ahead of the public interest, cut research and emergency programs to protect communities from intensifying climate-related disasters, and try to pretend our way of out this, they are risking Florida’s future. Gutting policy, ignoring science and denying the obvious, by action or lack of action, results by default in changing the climate and weather. And Florida is paying the price.
Many of our elected officials want to cast discussions of climate change in terms of left versus right or common sense versus “the sky is falling” hysteria. The problem is all the spin in the world can’t hide what Floridians are seeing every day. Those “100-year floods” that begin to happen on a regular basis are getting hard to ignore.
Climate change is making our weather more intense and creating growing risk to all things Florida. Delaying our collective response with false debate is only endangering lives. Fiddling while Rome burned did not work. Striking the words “climate change” from state and federal policy does not a safer Florida make.
Florida’s leaders have a generational choice. They can embrace science, embrace sound public policy and accept the connection between climate change and increased weather risks. Or they can discount the truth at our collective peril. I suspect that Floridians expect our leaders’ better angels to carry the day.
Joe Murphy is a native and lifelong Floridian who lives in the southern Nature Coast of Florida. His family’s home of 20 years flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
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Let’s also be honest about leadership in Florida. The state is controlled by strict Republicans following a fascist king. Their actions make them completely unfit to lead. They are followers, not leaders. Their legacy is tragedy, and we will all be victims of it. Stand up and resist.