Florida Crock: Say 'Resiliency.' Don't Say 'Climate Change.'
Florida Crock: Say Resiliency. Dont Say Climate Change.
by Pierre Tristam | January 30, 2023 - 6:46am
from Flagler Live
Florida is crazy about resiliency. The word is everywhere, because hurricanes, rising seas, erosion, disappearing beaches and downtowns flooding on sunny days are everywhere. The elected need to look like theyre doing something about it. So here comes resiliency. Its got toughness, machismo, lilt. The syllables surf off the tongue with just enough self-importance for a word coined in mid-17th century England that our right honorable Gov. DeSantis thinks itll power Florida through the catastrophes of the 21st. Hes plastering the word everywhere like wonder whitewash.
Except that resiliency in Florida is a crock. The state is throwing millions, soon to be billions, at the consequences of global warming. Its not doing a damn thing about its part in causing global warming. Until then, the state is as good as complicit in its coastal communities destructionmaliciously so, because this isnt mere negligence.
Its active, vindictive denialism. The language of climate changelike so much else in this administrationis censored from all DeSantis playbooks.
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Ironically, the word has often been used to describe the resiliency of ecosystems, of the Amazon forest, of oceans, or the ozone layer in the face of human destruction. Give nature a chance, help it along just a bit (as we somehow managed to do with the ozone layer), go easier on greenhouse emissions, and itll reward you tenfold. Thats natural resiliency.
Florida hijacked the word, branding it on precisely the human factors that exploit and damage nature and exacerbate warming: concrete, overdevelopment, rebuilding fatter and meaner along the shore and in flood plains, and of course contempt for anything that might help nature along. In Florida, you not only dont say gay. You dont say climate change.
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What are we doing in Florida? Were policing the speech of teachers and professors. Were banning books. Were sanitizing history. Were obsessing about drag queens. We have a governor more intent on turning the clock back to 1950 Florida than he is concerned about how close the ocean will be to our homes by 2050.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/pierre-tristam/104888/florida-crock-say-resiliency-don-t-say-climate-change