Rolling Stone has a brutal piece out today on Governor Rick Scott’s (R. FL) response to Hurricane Irma and his record on the environment:
Whoever designed the universe must have a twisted sense of humor. It would be hard to cast a more unlikely hero than Scott for this catastrophic event. In fact, Scott's triumph is its own kind of catastrophe, one that says a lot about why the politics of climate change and disaster relief are so screwed up in America.
Politically, Scott is Trump without the bluster and the golf clubs. On climate change, Scott refuses to acknowledge its existence. During his 2014 campaign, whenever the subject came up, he would shrug and say, "I am not a scientist" – as if that absolved him of any responsibility for thinking about the risk posed to millions of people in the state he proposed to run.
As governor, Scott has done everything he can to do nothing. He made sure the state of Florida contributed zero dollars to Miami Beach's $400 million plan to improve storm drainage. He took more than $1 million from Big Utilities, who tried to stop rooftop solar power in Florida, which could help reduce carbon pollution. He effectively dismantled the Florida Energy and Climate Commission, which had been assembled by Scott's predecessor, Charlie Crist, to help Florida officials think strategically about climate adaptation. As Kathy Baughman McLeod, a conservation expert who served on the commission, told the Washington Post, "There is no state leadership on climate change in Florida, period."
In 2014, after months of lobbying, a group of scientists scored a meeting with Scott, hoping to convince him that climate change was real and Florida was in the crosshairs. "He just sat there and stared at us with lizard eyes," one of the scientists at the meeting told me. "I don't think he heard a word we said."
On the other hand, maybe he did. The following year, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that Scott's administration had commanded state employees not to use the terms "global warming" or "climate change" in any state business. Scott later denied it, but there was plenty of evidence it was true: An epidemiologist was forced to take the words "climate change" out of a study done with the Department of Health; a university researcher was made to pull the phrase from a report summary. Scott supported Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. He also signed legislation, pushed by real-estate developers, to weaken Florida's building codes, even though the legislation was opposed by Florida's emergency management director, as well as Craig Fugate, the former head of FEMA under President Obama, who argued that by loosening the building codes in a hurricane-prone state like Florida, lawmakers "are putting your state and your citizens at risk."
And despite everything that happens, Scott remains unconvinced that climate change is real and man-made:
“Clearly our environment changes all the time, and whether that’s cycles we’re going through or whether that’s man-made, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one it is,” Scott said after twice touring the storm-ravaged Florida Keys this week. “But I can tell you this: We ought to go solve problems. I know we have beach renourishment issues. I know we have flood-mitigation issues.”
In not taking a position on climate change, Scott’s views and responses to questions about climate change have remained markedly steady for years. The only major difference, for instance, between his comments Wednesday evening to reporters and his statements before his 2014 reelection is that he no longer says, “I’m not a scientist.”
Before that, in his first election in 2010, Scott clearly denied the idea of anthropogenic global warming.
“I've not been convinced that there's any man-made climate change,” Scott said then. “Nothing's convinced me that there is.”
As Scott gears up for a run against incumbent U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D. FL) in next year’s U.S. Senate race, climate change is already looking like the key issue in this campaign:
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who has studied climate as a campaign issue, said that it was most relevant to voters as a “reference point” to judge a candidate’s worldview, and that voters tended to see those who reject climate science as extremists. Mr. Garin said catastrophic weather could make certain hard-line views less acceptable.
“The salience of climate change denialism grows at moments when the consequences of that are more abundantly clear,” Mr. Garin said, “such as when the country is hit by two exceptionally powerful storms, one right after the other.”
Is unclear whether climate will play a major part in the 2018 elections, when Democrats are defending a number of Senate seats in states that produce carbon fuel. Climate may feature more prominently in the 2020 elections, when a wider range of states will be contested and the environmental policies Mr. Trump has pursued through executive action — like withdrawing from the Paris agreement — will be more directly at issue.
But some Democratic candidates and political donors hope to punish conservative politicians before then. In Florida, Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat seeking re-election next year, quickly went on the offensive this week, accusing one potential Republican opponent, Gov. Rick Scott, of having ignored the mounting threat of climate change.
And advisers to Tom Steyer, a billionaire investor who has spent millions supporting Democrats, said his political committee might seek to link Republicans in Florida, Nevada and California to environmental catastrophes in those states, like the summer hurricanes and wildfires out west.
Mr. Steyer said in an interview that acknowledging the impact of devastating storms should not get Republicans off the hook for opposing efforts to address global warming over all. He predicted the “human tragedy” of climate change would be a permanent feature of politics. “This is not an isolated incident,” he said of Irma and Harvey. “It’s going to happen again, only worse.”
Mr. Regalado, the Miami mayor, said many of his Republican colleagues were wary of being “called crazy or liberals” if they talked about climate. But he said voters on the ground had grown sharply aware of the risks they face.
“I don’t think my statements are going to change the way the administration thinks or the governor thinks, but let me tell you, people are afraid,” Mr. Regalado said. “People are understanding there is a new normal now.”
Nelson hasn’t been shy in singling out Scott on climate change:
"Just last month in the state of Florida, the Florida Legislature passed and the governor signed into law a bill that allows any resident of the state, regardless of whether or not they have a student in school, can challenge what is being taught in the public schools," Nelson said. "So, if a single resident objects to a certain subject that students are being taught having to do with science -- a subject such as what's happening in the climate and the changes and the fact that the sun's rays come in and reflect off the earth and go back, reflect out and radiate the heat back into space. But when you start putting in what are known as the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane up there, they suddenly act as a ceiling, a greenhouse gas ceiling having a greenhouse effect -- trapping the heat, causing the earth to heat up."
He went on: "Instead of accepting the fact that the seas are rising and what is going to be a very real threat, and already is to a coastline like Florida, they want to literally rip the subject right out of our children's textbooks while at the same time silencing the teachers and the scientists. I don't think we can sit back and allow our public schools to become political battlegrounds. And we shouldn't allow politicians to silence our teachers and scientists just because they don't happen to like that part of the science. While this bill was just enacted in Florida, it may be one much the most egregious examples of hiding the truth, but unfortunately, I’m sad to report, it is not the only one.
"In fact, in 2015, Florida’s governor went so far as to reportedly ban state officials from even using the term climate change in their reports. Doesn't that sound like muzzling?"
And politically, Nelson knows this issue is the right narrative for his campaign:
For Nelson, the size and intensity of the storm have afforded him an opportunity to spotlight the threat of climate change, a topic he’s increasingly emphasized as parts of the state face frequent flooding.
Nelson is likely to keep raising the issue over the next year. He’ll have the powerful example of Irma to drive home his point against an opponent who’s played down the impact of global warming and the scientific argument that human activity is the biggest culprit.
“The whole state has experienced this hurricane and it’s going to be a reminder (about) the effects of the Earth heating up,” Nelson said during a phone interview from Gainesville Thursday where he stood among snapped pine trees and watched military convoys ferrying aid to distressed communities. “It’s so obvious.”
Pundits say it’s too early to determine just how Irma will play out next November. And both Nelson and Scott have resisted invitations from reporters to connect Irma to next year's campaign.
Praise for Scott’s handling of a disaster that struck every major metro area of the state could be tarnished if power isn’t restored quickly enough or if there are more tragedies like the deaths discovered at a Hollywood nursing home that lacked air conditioning.
For Nelson, the risk is that concern over climate change and its resulting consequences could be overshadowed by other crises yet to be contemplated or that he could be tied to radical solutions — such as moratorium on coastal construction — that some on the left espouse.
“In the long run, I think Nelson has the better of this argument,” said Keith Fitzgerald, a political science professor at the New College of Florida in Sarasota.
“Whether or not you can say this particular storm was caused by climate change, clearly it’s brought home to people (that) we have to start thinking about these things,” said Fitzgerald, a former Democratic state legislator. “People will forget about the governor appearing calm on television. But over the course of the campaign, being on the wrong side of climate change is probably not good for Scott.”
Public sentiment about climate change has been mixed in Florida according to surveys prior to Irma and Hurricane Harvey that inundated the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana last month.
A Sunshine State Survey of some 1,200 Floridians conducted by the University of South Florida in September 2016 found that only 13% of Floridians cited environmental issues as the most important problem facing the state. And only 18% listed climate change as their top environmental issue (behind water-related problems, 34%, and loss of natural lands for wildlife, 20%).
But in November, an NBC News Exit Poll found two-thirds of Florida voters consider climate change or global warming to be a severe problem. Not surprisingly, 90% of Clinton voters said global warming is a pressing problem but even four in 10 Trump supporters called it serious.
And Nelson is also highlighting another aspect of Scott’s response that could really bite him in the ass:
Sen. Bill Nelson on Monday obliquely criticized Gov. Rick Scott over the deaths of eight residents of a South Florida nursing home.
In a speech from the Senate floor, Nelson spoke of a “great, great tragedy” and referenced the phone calls nursing home officials made directly to Scott as the crisis mounted. (Scott has said all calls were sent to the proper place.)
“Why there is not a requirement that every nursing home or assisted living facility, an ALF, have a generator, not only for power, for things like lights, but have a generator capacity that will run air conditioning units, why there is not a requirement for that in Florida I think is going to be the subject of great debate and I hoping changing that requirement in the state of Florida because eight people died. Eight people died in a nursing home right across the street from a major hospital in Hollywood, Florida. Eight frail elderly from ages 70 to 99, eight needless deaths as a result -- we will know -- a criminal investigation is under way.
“All the phone calls that had been made that were not answered, both to the government as well as to the power company, as reported by the press -- specifically a Miami television station. We don't know all the facts. It'll come out in the criminal investigation. But it is inexcusable that eight frail elderly people would die over heat exhaustion by being left to their condition to deteriorate over the course of three or four days. What is wrong with the regulatory scheme that does not have a backup generator that would kick in? I mean, in fact, the hospital right across the street had it. So what was the disconnect there?
“Why did it take days and days until 911 was called? This we will find out in this great tragedy, but I can tell you that The Miami Herald had done a series over the last couple of years, three investigative pieces, that in fact point out that these ALF's in these nursing homes and have not properly managed or regulated by the state of Florida. To be determined.”
And don’t be surprised to see Hurricane Irma come up in next year’s election:
But Rick Scott isn’t alone in canvassing the hurricane-ravaged parts of south Florida. Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sen. Bill Nelson was asked about the federal response to Irma.
“It’s been very good, and there is the cooperation between the federal level; the state and the locals,” Nelson said. “That has been seamless, unlike 25 years ago and Hurricane Andrew.”
Now underway is what Nelson calls the “hard, hard slog” of FEMA – working with local governments and volunteers – in the aftermath of the storm. Nelson and Sen. Marco Rubio flew back to Washington last week, to vote for an emergency appropriation for Irma recovery.
“Fifteen billion dollars – half of it to FEMA, half of it to local governments,” said Nelson. “But that’s going to run out in a few weeks. So, [Congress is] going to be back doing a special emergency appropriation in the middle of October.”
Nova Southeastern’s Charles Zelden says Nelson may also gain some political points with his reaction to Irma and her aftermath.
“Nelson is going to be stressing the climate change/global warming sources of a major storm like Irma,” Zelden said. “That we weren’t prepared for this enough, because the Governor wasn’t willing to deal with and accept the idea that there is man-made global climate change, that is likely to result in bigger, more powerful hurricanes.”
Another potential problem for Scott could be the deaths of eight residents at a nursing home in Hollywood. Officials called a special cellphone number Scott had given them asking for help, and reportedly got no response. Scott's office says all calls to the hotline were returned in a timely fashion.
“It really comes down to what the evidence is showing,” said Zelden. “But if it could be shown that [Scott] personally was contacted, and his office did not respond, and people died, that could be grounds for him losing an effort to – win a seat in the Senate, for example.”
What we do know is we are in for a nasty and expensive race and we cannot afford to have another disastrous climate denier like Rick Scott enabling Trump’s agenda in the U.S. Senate. Let’s make sure Nelson is ready to take him on. Click here to donate and get involved with Nelson’s re-election campaign.