Florida Gov. DeSantis ignores reality at his constituents’ peril

History is littered with despots whose selfish ambitions left a wide swath of death and destruction. Ron DeSantis is unlikely to make any list of history’s greatest agents of carnage, especially given his distant second in current GOP presidential primary polls, but after a recent speech in which he declared his fealty to fossil fuels, he deserves at least a historical footnote.

Florida, the state over which he presides as governor, has suffered through two decades of severe natural disasters that were exacerbated by climate change. The state cannot assume future weather will be any less violent. Despite that grim outlook, DeSantis has become a climate change denier.

He declared earlier this week that any concerns about climate change are due to “a concerted effort to ramp up the fear.” Speaking in the heart of Texas oil country, he promised to withdraw from the Paris accords — a multinational agreement to reduce greenhouse gases — to roll back environmental regulations, to slow down the transition to electric vehicles, to increase production of fossil fuels and to return to gasoline prices of $2 per gallon. (The man doesn’t seem to understand capitalism. The president has little control over the price of gasoline, which is produced and sold by private companies.)

Florida residents haven’t needed any “concerted effort” to ramp up their fear of natural disasters. In that state, according to financial analyst Rob Bhatt, natural disasters causing at least a billion dollars’ worth of damage were up by 92% over the last 20 years — and that’s adjusted for inflation. “That’s the interesting and concerning thing here,” he told First Coast News. “It’s just the frequency of these events. When we look back at the ’80s and ’90s, it was rare to have a disaster of this magnitude.”

The worst for Floridians are hurricanes, which bring not only devasting winds but also storm surge and flooding. DeSantis gave his speech barely a month after Hurricane Idalia smacked the state’s Big Bend Coast, southeast of Tallahassee. Floridians were lucky that that storm made landfall in a less densely populated area, but they weren’t so lucky with Hurricane Ian, which hit western Florida last year.

DeSantis is well educated, and he used to acknowledge the dangers of human-caused climate change. In a 2018 interview with the editorial board of The Florida Times-Union, he acknowledged sea-level rise and said, “I think humans contribute to what goes on around us.”

But just as he threw aside the medical science about COVID vaccines to appeal to right-wing know-nothings, DeSantis has now joined up with the GOP’s global warming deniers. That not only helps him stir up the GOP base but also helps him attract campaign funds from fossil fuel executives.

According to DeSantis, “Human beings are safer than ever from climate disasters.” That’s largely true for those lucky enough to be born in the industrialized West, where weather forecasters alert us to threats and ubiquitous electric power keeps us comfortable in our homes no matter how high the temperature. In contrast, thousands are feared dead in the aftermath of severe floods in Libya, also exacerbated by a warming climate.

Even in Florida, people die in extreme weather events. Idalia killed four, while Ian killed 150. Survivors, meanwhile, have had their lives turned upside down, often finding that their insurance companies are unwilling or unable to cover the costs of rebuilding. According to The Washington Post, nine property insurers in Florida have become insolvent since 2021, leaving homeowners bereft. Other property insurance companies are completely abandoning the state.

That’s because insurance company executives acknowledge the reality of humancaused climate change even if DeSantis does not. They have entire departments dedicated to assessing the risks associated with global warming. That’s why property insurance rates are soaring, and some companies are pulling out of states where the risks are too high. They are leaving not only hurricane-prone Florida but also wildfire-prone California.

DeSantis doesn’t care about the havoc that climate change is wreaking on the lives of people across the globe — even in his own state. He has jettisoned compassion, empathy, morality, common sense. He is animated only by overweening ambition, so he will take any position that he believes will propel him toward victory.