Milton is a monster. Elected leaders are to blame.
A former Florida climate commissioner reflects on the decades of denial and delay that led to this moment.
Kathy Baughman McLeod is a former Florida state commissioner of energy and climate, and worked in Florida for more than 25 years. She’s currently the CEO of Climate Resilience for All.
My 83-year-old mother lives in the path of Hurricane Milton. For reasons I won’t get into, she’s chosen not to evacuate.
When I called her earlier, we talked about the speed with which a storm surge could infiltrate her house, which is only about eight feet above sea level. We talked about how water could push from the Gulf of Mexico into the Caloosahatchee River, then into the canals that come into her neighborhood. We talked about how she might have time to get into the attic and take the cat if the water gets too high—but this would assume the roof does not blow off.
We talked about this not just because I’m her daughter, but because I’m a climate change resilience specialist. I know from my professional experience how things could go for her and her neighbors, both during and after a massive hurricane.
But I also know from my professional experience that things didn’t have to be this way. If politicians had listened to scientists decades ago, and worked to gradually rein in fossil fuel pollution, the ocean wouldn’t be so boiling hot—and Hurricane Milton wouldn’t have had the fuel to balloon into such a monster storm.
Let me tell you what I mean. The U.S. Government has clearly understood the science of climate change since NASA Scientist Jim Hansen’s congressional testimony in 1988, saying that the human fingerprint on global warming had been detected. That was 36 years ago.
The fossil fuel industry knew it even sooner. As early as the late 1970’s, oil companies predicted exactly what would happen if greenhouse gas pollution continued unchecked. But not only did they bury the science, they spent billions to spread denial in advertisements, and to influence elected officials to do the same.
That denial and widespread inaction continues today in Florida, threatening not just my mother, but the entire state’s future. Just this past May, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill removing consideration of climate change from all state laws. The law also nullified the state’s clean energy goals, and banned the construction of offshore wind. “I’m not a global warming person,” DeSantis said, as if accepting reality were a personal choice.
DeSantis isn’t the first Florida governor to do this; he’s simply the first to codify denial into law. Back in March 2015, under then-governor Rick Scott’s administration, employees at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection indicated that they had been banned from discussing ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming.’
Scott, now a U.S. Senator, is trying to change his tone. After witnessing Hurricane Helene’s devastation just weeks ago, he told CNN, “The climate is clearly changing. We’ve got to figure out, how do we react to that?” But this is just a more thinly veiled version of denial. We know how to react to climate change. The science is clear: we have to phase out fossil fuels.
In Virginia, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is doing a similar kind of tricky denial, refusing to talk about the problem at all. When asked Sunday about the role of climate change in the damage to Virginia communities from Helene, he said, “I just have no time for folks who are trying to politicize this moment.” But the moment has already been politicized—not by scientists, but by denialists like him.
This widespread climate denial we’re seeing among elected officials is a dereliction of their duties. It’s a breach of the oath they took to protect and serve the public.
It’s also a dangerous disservice to my mother; the millions more like her who are in the storm’s path; and to Florida taxpayers who will end up picking up the bill for growing damage as home insurance becomes increasingly unaffordable and hard to access as climate-disaster losses soar.
As Milton inches closer and closer, my mother must now quickly decide if she wants to face gridlocked Interstate 75, or band together with her neighbors to brave a potentially record breaking, traumatic storm, as she has done so many times before.
And as the storm dissipates and recovery begins, Americans in every state will have to decide whether they want to keep putting their futures and their trust in elected leaders who are hell-bent on denying one of the greatest crises of our time.
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I'm holding all good thoughts for your mother and neighbors, and for you in what must be an incredibly stressful time. Shame on all those who deny and stand in the way of a just transition off fossil fuels!
The headline reads like a condemnation of all elected leaders. We must support and hold up good, honest, hardworking elected leaders who have worked very hard for a very long time to warn us about climate change, stop the spread of misinformation and pass laws and rules to slow it and mitigate the effects. There are good people in government. I don't mean to be critical but it is important not to send the wrong message.