TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Local weather change might be a lesser precedence in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes underneath laws signed Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that additionally bans power-generating wind generators offshore or close to the state’s prolonged shoreline.
Critics mentioned the measure made regulation by the previous Republican presidential hopeful ignores the truth of local weather change threats in Florida, together with projections of rising seas, excessive warmth and flooding, and more and more extreme storms.
It takes impact July 1 and would additionally increase growth of pure fuel, cut back laws on fuel pipelines within the state and improve protections in opposition to bans on fuel home equipment comparable to stoves, in accordance with a information launch from the governor’s workplace.
DeSantis, who suspended his presidential marketing campaign in January and later endorsed his bitter rival Donald Trump, referred to as the invoice a commonsense strategy to power coverage.
“We’re restoring sanity in our strategy to power and rejecting the agenda of the novel inexperienced zealots,” DeSantis mentioned in a put up on the X social media platform.
Florida is already about 74% reliant on pure fuel to energy electrical era, in accordance with the U.S. Vitality Data Administration. Opponents of the invoice DeSantis signed say it removes the phrase “local weather’ in 9 completely different locations and strikes the state’s power objectives away from effectivity and the discount of greenhouse gases blamed for a warming planet.
“This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature should not appearing in the perfect pursuits of Floridians, however reasonably to guard income for the fossil gas trade,” mentioned Yoca Arditi-Rocha, government director of the nonprofit Cleo Institute, which advocates for local weather change training and engagement.
The laws additionally eliminates necessities that authorities companies maintain conferences and conferences in lodges licensed by the state’s environmental company as “inexperienced lodging” and that authorities companies make gas effectivity the highest precedence in shopping for new automobiles. It additionally ends a requirement that Florida state companies have a look at a listing of “climate-friendly” merchandise earlier than making purchases.
In 2008, a invoice to handle local weather change and promote renewable power handed unanimously in each legislative chambers and was signed into regulation by then-Gov. Charlie Crist, on the time a Republican. Former Gov. Rick Scott, now a Republican U.S. senator, took steps after taking the governor’s workplace in 2011 to undo a few of that measure and this newest invoice takes it even additional.
The measure signed by DeSantis would additionally launch a research of small nuclear reactor expertise, broaden the usage of automobiles powered by hydrogen and improve electrical grid safety, in accordance with the governor’s workplace.
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