Shortened highlight from episode.
“I don’t think we could live here if we had to buy flood insurance”.
Exactly.
Continue reading “Heads Up. Red State Republicans Will be Wanting All You Damn Socialists to Cover Their #Climate Losses.”Christine Barrett was inside her family’s North Port home during Hurricane Ian when one of her children started yelling that water was coming up from the shower.
Then it started coming in from outside the house. Eventually the family was forced to climb on top of their kitchen cabinets — they put water wings on their 1-year-old — and were rescued the next day by boat.
After the floodwaters had finally gone down Barrett and her family were cleaning out the damp and muddy house. On the front lawn lay chairs, a dresser, couch cushions, flooring planks and a pile of damp drywall. Similar scenes played out across the block as residents tried to clear out the soggy mess before mold set in.
North Port is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) inland and the Barretts – like many of its residents – live in areas where flood insurance isn’t required and therefore, don’t have it. Now many wonder how they’ll afford much-needed repairs.
“Nobody in this neighborhood has flood insurance because we are a nonflooding area,” she said. “But we got 14 inches of water in our house.”
Many people associate hurricanes with wind damage — downed power lines, shingles or roofing materials ripped off, trees blown over into homes or windows smashed by flying objects, and Hurricane Ian’s 150-mph (241-kph) winds certainly caused widespread damage.
But hurricanes can also pack a massive storm surge as Ian did in places like Naples or Fort Myers Beach.
Heavy rains from hurricanes can also cause widespread flooding far from the beach. Ian dumped rain for hours as it lumbered across the state, sending waterways spilling over their banks and into homes and businesses far inland from where Ian made landfall. People were using kayaks to evacuate their flooded homes, and floodwaters in some areas have still not gone down a week after landfall.
“This is such a big storm, brought so much water, that you’re having basically what’s been a 500-year flood event,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But flooding is not covered by a homeowner’s insurance policy.
It must be purchased separately — usually from the federal government. Although most people have the option of purchasing flood insurance, it is required only on government-backed mortgages that sit in areas that the Federal Emergency Management Agency deems highest risk. Many banks require it in high-risk zones, too. But some homeowners who pay off their mortgage drop their flood insurance once it’s not required. Or if they purchase a house or mobile home with cash they may not opt for it at all. And flooding can and does happen outside those high risk areas where flood insurance is required
All of those who have studied and understood the climate challenge will affirm that they’ve had at least one “oh shit” moment, perhaps a cold sweat wake-up in the early morning hours, where they viscerally feel the implications of the developing storm.
Was Ian that moment for Florida? There’s always hope, but the history is not promising. Florida’s political leaders remain in a coma from which there is no woke-ing.
“I THINK WHAT this has finally ended is the discussion about whether or not there’s climate change,” President Biden said in Florida Wednesday, standing amid the wreckage of Hurricane Ian in a striped shirt and his trademark aviator glasses.
Nice thought, but Biden knows it’s not true. Millions of Americans think climate crisis is an invention of the deep state, or a conspiracy designed to take away their God-given right to burn as much coal, oil, and gas as they want.
But Biden’s comment wasn’t directed at them. It was for a guy standing right behind Biden as he spoke, scowling in a blue blazer: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
For DeSantis, the climate crisis is just another battlefield in the culture wars, no different from the evils of transgender bathrooms or a “Woke Disney.” “What I’ve found is, people, when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways,” DeSantis said at an event last year. “We’re not doing any left-wing stuff.”
Let’s pause for a moment and consider the idea of the climate crisis as a left-wing plot. What exactly does that mean — that it’s a conspiracy to give more Americans cheap, clean electricity? A trick to indoctrinate school children in the corrupting ways of science?
I have no idea what DeSantis really thinks, but I do know that he is a Florida hustler, not a Florida fool. He knows damn well that climate change is real, that it is fueling the destruction of Florida now, and that it will only get worse in the near future. He also knows it’s a good issue to provoke outrage among voters and rake in big bucks from fossil fuel companies, old world power utilities, and anyone else who profits by maintaining the status quo. It’s all a big game for DeSantis and his disciples: indulge the conspiracy, trash the science, pretend it is all fake news that is being sold to you by what he calls “the national regime media.”
So what if it gets people killed? So what if it just accelerates the investment in high risk areas and leaves the state of Florida woefully unprepared for what is coming? DeSantis has his sights set on the Oval Office. And you don’t run for president in the Republican Party by talking about the climate crisis or cutting the consumption of fossil fuels, much less ask voters to do hard things like pay more for flood insurance in high risk areas or, god forbid, design policies that prevent people from building back in high-risk areas. The idea of returning any part of the coast to nature is the equivalent of seceding territory to the enemy. The whole history of Florida is about subduing nature and paving over the swamps. Why change now?
Continue reading “Florida’s “Oh Shit” Moment? Or Not.”Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott voted against last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, which devotes some $50 billion to help states better prepare for events like Ian, because they said it was wasteful. And in August, they joined every fellow Republican in the Senate to oppose a new climate law that invests $369 billion in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the largest such effort in the country’s history.
At the same time, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has blocked the state’s pension fund from taking climate change into account when making investment decisions, saying that politics should be absent from financial calculations.
A bit taken aback here when Bill Nye mentions “people breathing” as one of the causes of climate change (along with burning stuff, of course) – but shit, Bill, up your game.
On the other hand, he did call out Fox News for cherry picking misleading hurricane data.
If you’re concerned that fuel efficient or electric vehicle might cause people to doubt your masculinity, you need the Pontiac Schvantz.
For more on the context, see here.
Astronaut Bob Hines tweeted this picture of the rain water from Hurricane Ian flowing back into the Gulf of Mexico, days after the storm’s landfall.
Below, President Biden expertly trolls Florida Governor DeSantis’ Climate awareness.
While the Governor himself toured the disaster site in immaculately un-muddied white go-go boots, much to the delight of social media photo-shoppers.
“Drill Baby Drill” an “Lock her Up” are driven by the same insecure male energy, which explains the obsession that folks like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro (archetypical paragons of masculinity) have with “manliness”. That Fox News delivers the “masculinity” message from experts like Marge Taylor Green points to their confusion.
Carlson’s new special has a number of recommendations, including testicle tanning.
Right Wing influencer Ben Shapiro drew mockery recently for asserting that the US military is now too “woke” to be masculine.
