When Miami-based TV weatherman John Morales (profiled here) issued a dire warning last week about incoming Hurricane Milton, some viewers called him a “climate militant” and accused him of “overhyping emerging weather threats” (read story here).
Many Floridians are paying huge insurance premiums, if they can get insurance at all, and already have experienced major storms; so how can they ignore these threats?
I think partly because Florida is run by GOP politicians who abhor any mention of climate change. Earlier this year the legislature purged the phrase from state laws (see story here), and education officials are removing references to “climate change” from Florida textbooks (see story here) and approving climate-denial videos for classroom use (story here).
No state is more vulnerable to global warming than Florida. The state is a bullseye for ever-intensifying Atlantic hurricanes, and its low-lying landmass is exceptionally vulnerable to storm surges and flooding; no place in Florida is higher than 345 feet above mean sea level MSL).
Human-caused global warming is happening, its impacts are real, and climate deniers suffer from them no matter what they believe. Ostriches get run over.
But Morales, by trying to steer climate deniers to reality, is on a futile mission. No one can get through to them. As Upton Sinclair said in 1934 while running for California governor, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Phasing out fossil fuels imperils a lot of livelihoods.
Trump attracts the less-educated voters, and his MAGA movement is fueled by their antipathy to educated elites. Project 2025 is spearheading conservative efforts to replace “liberal” elites in government, education, and society with a new ruling class adhering to conservative dogmas. Facts and logic would have little role to play in public policy, as we’re seeing now in Florida’s state government. This wouldn’t turn out well for anyone, including its proponents, because inevitably reality will bite them in the ass.
Republicans, broadly speaking, reject science, facts, and logic when it clashes with dogma. One of Project 2025’s objectives is to dismantle NOAA and replace its scientists with political appointees loyal to the fossil fuel industry’s economic interests. You may see Trump overwriting meteorologists’ storm tracks with a crayon again (photo below, story here). Some found that amusing (see link here), but falsifying storm forecasts is no laughing matter.
How should the rest of us react to stubborn, blockheaded, climate denial? Walk away from deniers? National policy hasn’t been to turn our backs on people who ignore warnings, and I doubt many of us have the stomach to go there. Over a decade ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry gutted his state’s firefighting budget, then sought and got federal emergency aid when his drought-stricken state exploded in wildfires. It’s easy to get flustered and say “let Texas burn,” but hard to do.
All of us are bearing higher insurance costs for damage from climate change in places like Florida and Texas. Insurance is a national business, and premiums are skyrocketing all over the country. We’re also paying taxes for FEMA assistance and relief in storm-ravaged areas. This support goes not to climate denying politicians, but to ordinary citizens, may of whom have been misled by politically-motivated lies. These folks are our neighbors.
Climate denial isn’t as widespread as supposed. A recent study published in Nature estimates only 14.8% of Americans disbelieve climate change (see article here). Another study (here) suggests some people cling to climate denial as part of their political identity. One assumes that also works conversely; i.e., other people accept climate science as part of their political identity.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and with Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida, when the 2024 election is just weeks away, Trump and other righwing liars are falsely claiming the Biden administration “is intentionally withholding aid to Republican disaster victims” (see story here).
The irony is Trump did just that after California’s deadly 2018 wildfires until convinced many people in the devastated areas voted for him, according to a former top-level staffer (see story here). The answer to the question in this post’s title is that thinking and behaving like Trump would turn us into Trumpers.
But the discussion doesn’t end there. We also must consider where we go from here. Continued climate denial by parts of our population, and some of our political leaders, will lead us into a cascade of disasters.
These include more frequent and severe storms, storm-related deaths and displacement, flooding and wildfire events, communities isolated by collapsed bridges and washed out roads, widespread power outages, billions of dollars in property damage, drought and crop failures, rising sea levels, uninhabitable zones, heat-related deaths and illnesses, and climate refugees.
We’ll all bear the burden of these climate change effects and their associated costs and losses, either directly or indirectly, and it’s frustrating that some people are fighting against prevention and mitigation strategies. Sheriffs in vulnerable areas know that feeling well; they warn people to evacuate, some refuse, then they have to rescue them and pick up dead bodies.
You can’t repeal human nature or legislate it out of existence; you can only try to get good information to people, and manage problems as they arise. We should hope it never gets to the point of throwing anyone overboard to save the lifeboat.
Photo below: Trump showing off altered hurricane tracking map
