In the News
ICYMI: ‘Hurricane Gives Democrats a Climate Opening in Florida’ [Politico]
“Scott has Repeatedly Left Florida Families Vulnerable to Hurricanes and the Worsening Effects of Climate Change During his 14 Years of Failed Leadership”
A new story from Politico highlights how Rick Scott is facing renewed scrutiny for his refusal to acknowledge climate change and its devastating effects on Florida communities, even in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. In addition to consistently opposing disaster relief funds and voting against $1.5 billion in federal funding to make Florida’s infrastructure more resilient to climate change and extreme weather, Scott is also taking heat for skipping Senate committee hearings on Florida’s insurance crisis.
Click here to read the story. See key excerpts below:
- But when it comes to confronting climate change and its role in exacerbating the extreme weather causing irreversible damage to his state, Scott’s critics say the Republican lawmaker is nowhere to be found.
- “Rick Scott has repeatedly left Florida families vulnerable to hurricanes and the worsening effects of climate change during his 14 years of failed leadership,” Mucarsel-Powell said in a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News, referring to Scott’s eight years as governor prior to running for the Senate. “Our state deserves a leader who will put Floridians first in the face of worsening extreme weather events — not someone who denies climate change,” she said.
- The accusations began after Scott, in an interview last Friday with CNN, first said “something is changing … who knows what the reason is,” when describing the massive storm surges accompanying Helene’s landfall.
- “Denying the reality of the effects of climate change is what has gotten us here. Rick Scott knows it, but won’t admit it. He’s a fraud,” Mucarsel-Powell wrote on X after Scott’s CNN interview.
- But Scott has also voted against several rounds of federal disaster relief as a member of Congress, when that money was included into larger pieces of must-pass legislation, along with moves to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program.
- Perhaps most damning, Scott’s detractors say, is that the senator has consistently downplayed climate change — even as major storms, eroding coastlines and rising sea levels have led to a volatile home insurance market.
- Yet Scott, as a member of the Senate Budget Committee, has not participated in a single hearing related to his state — including when Deborah Wood, a constituent, testified about how insurance issues and worsening extreme weather events prompted her decision to not to buy another home in Florida.
- Wood said she watched Scott “poke his head in the door and give a thumbs up to the person who was recording the attendance and then walk out,” missing the chance to hear her prepared testimony.
- “It was really disappointing — a Florida resident going to D.C., testifying before a Senate committee, it’s a pretty big deal,” Wood said. “Especially in light of his previous work as our governor where he really undermined efforts to combat climate change and I just really wanted to talk to him, just to say hello and to let him know that a lot of us are very concerned about what’s happening to the state and wish people would take it a little more seriously — especially people who’ve got the power to do something about it.”