While the rest of the world takes climate change seriously, a Florida bill would prohibit municipalities from reducing their use of fossil fuels. Yet a city like Sarasota is on the verge of achieving a remarkable feat: powering several city operations within four years using 100% renewable energy, and eventually powering the entire city within 20 years using the same clean energy sources.
Sarasota has embarked on an in-depth analysis to determine how to create a more affordable and equitable future in terms of clean energy. City leaders want to integrate renewable energy technologies and eliminate dependence on fossil fuels.
Rising sea levels are already causing saltwater intrusion, which is damaging the foundations of homes. Rising temperatures, meanwhile, will lead to an increase in heat-related deaths. These two consequences alone threaten to devastate coastal communities and the tourism industry.
“We have local leaders in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe, Orlando, Tampa, and others across the state who have adopted climate resilience plans because they are already facing flooding,” said Orlando Democratic Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith.
More than 180 cities, ten counties, and eight states across the country have set a goal of powering their communities with 100% clean, renewable energy.
Bill 1628 will put an end to all that, if it passes
This law would prohibit municipalities from reducing their impact on global warming, even if it threatens their communities, by forcing them to use fossil fuels.
This disregard for common sense and the bad faith of the argument put forward by Miami Republican Senator Bryan Avila, who is sponsoring the measure, is particularly unsettling for a large part of the population. Avila said that it is for the sake of predictability and also to counter rising costs that he supports the bill that will ban the use of clean, renewable energy to replace polluting fossil fuels in all Florida municipalities.
Nothing can be as costly to residents as the devastation caused by hurricanes, whose violence is fueled by rising water temperatures as a result of climate change. Hurricane Ian in 2022 caused between $109 billion and $115 billion in damage to the population. This is just one example among many that demonstrates how costly it is to ignore climate change.
The renowned newspaper The Guardian published an article highlighting that the current president’s campaign “received at least $75 billion from oil and gas interests.” The war being waged by Republican elected officials at all levels of government against clean and renewable energy is detrimental to the very existence of coastal populations.
