‘I’m not a global warming person. I don’t want that label on me,’ Gov. Ron DeSantis said in 2018.
Republican officials across the country have for years refused to accept the fact that humans contribute to climate change, which can in turn contribute to catastrophic weather events such as the recent Hurricane Ian in Florida.
Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio both opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $369 billion to cut greenhouse gas emissions — one of the leading causes of climate change. They also voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The law provided $47 billion in funding for “climate resilience” to help states combat the increasingly extreme weather events such as fires, floods, storms and droughts.
A 2021 Center for American Progress report found that 139 members of Congress, 109 representatives and 30 senators, deny that human activity is a factor in climate change.