‘Hogwash’ from former Florida congresswoman on climate change

Former Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s blather in your paper’s April 29 Opinion section might be better called hogwash than a credible perspective.

She left the House in 2018 after serving 29 years rather than run again in her Democratic-leaning District 27. During her many years in office, she regularly voted against proposed laws that would provide climate solutions and protections to the environment. The League of Conservation voters gave her a lifetime score of 37% favorable.

She responded to the 2014 Obama White House’s National Climate Assessment with “We’ve heard these kinds of the ‘sky is falling’ stories”. She was considered be in lockstep with the “no room for moderation or compromise” approach of the Republican Party regarding climate and the environment.

Today, she professes that “climate is not a liberal issue but a human one.” She adds that it is no longer a debate point but a “scientific fact” that our climate is changing.

I submit that climate change has been a scientific fact for at least three decades, and before Ros-Lehtinen reached Washington in January of 1990.

Apparently her ‘come to Jesus moment’ came only after she announced her April 2017 decision to leave Congress. No longer in elective office, and recognizing the incontrovertible threat to South Florida from a climate change that she ignored for most of three decades, Ros-Lehtinen will have to do much much more than write opinion pieces if she wants, at last, to make a difference.

David L Kahn, Boca Raton