Florida man wins election, will ensure Florida loses on environment

During his first term, Donald Trump spent a lot of time playing golf. That appears to be his only use for the outdoors. (Photo via White House)

Since we became a state in 1845, Florida-based candidates have repeatedly run for president but repeatedly lost. Reubin Askew, Bob Graham, Jeb Bush — each one struck out, despite their qualifications for the top job.

As Politico noted last year, "A half-dozen have run in the last 50 years ... but all have ended up in the same place, dead in the water long before the nominating convention."

It figures that the first Florida resident to be elected president is a convicted felon .

Oh, if only Reubin, Bob, or Jeb had robbed a bank or a kid's cancer fund before entering the race! Ron DeSantis wants to be president so bad, I bet he's busy conferring with the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement about which crime he could commit to have maximum impact on Fox News viewers.

Unfortunately, the winner of this election is also the candidate who claims climate change is a hoax . Thus, all the headlines should probably say, "Florida Man Wins — But Florida Loses ."

Some of the post-election commentary on this issue sounds like Charlton Heston finding the Statue of Liberty at the end of "Planet of the Apes." I won't put you through more of that.

However, dear readers, for your amazement, I will imitate Nostradamus (or, if you're from South Florida, Walter Mercado ) and predict how our new president will do his best to do his worst to Florida and its fragile environment.

Honestly, I don't have to be much of a psychic to do this. It just requires remembering what it was like during his first term and what he's promised for his second.

More fossil fuel-ishness Contrary to what our fine Legislature thinks, climate change is a harsh reality here in Florida — not something you can avoid by simply not mentioning it .

We're a mostly flat state surrounded on three sides by water, so the rising sea travels further inland here. Storm surges are higher and hurricanes become more intense and destructive in less time, thanks to the hot oceans they travel over.

We also face such symptoms as increased mosquito-borne diseases, more toxic algae blooms, underwater heat killing our corals , and births of more female sea turtles than males because the sand where their eggs hatch is too warm.

During his debate with President Biden , moderator Dana Bash asked Donald "The Only Thing I'm Good at is Inventing Cruel Nicknames" Trump whether he would do anything to fight climate change. Instead of answering, he "weaved" up a storm, talking about criminal justice reform, historically Black colleges, and the horde of immigrants supposedly swarming over the border.

When Bash pressed him again, he still wouldn't answer her question.

"I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it," he babbled. "We had H2O."

Well buddy, we're going to have a lot more H2O, thanks to climate change. Warmer air holds more moisture, which leads to "rain-bombs " like the one that hit Fort Lauderdale last year.

To counteract this terrifying trend, we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels before we hit the point of collapse. In the past four years, the Biden administration has done a great deal to make that happen. That's particularly true with the poorly named but effective Inflation Reduction Act , the nation's first law to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

So far, the law, which I prefer to refer to as the "No More Fossil Fuel-ishness Act," has pumped at least $370 billion into boosting clean energy and electric vehicles nationwide.

In Florida, our utilities are building lots of solar farms , which offer cheaper fuel costs than natural gas facilities. That's good news, considering Florida ratepayers face some of the most expensive power bills in the nation. While the price of gas rarely drops, the price of solar electricity has fallen by 89%.

Meanwhile, Tesla (hi, Elon Musk!), Florida Power & Light, and Duke Energy are installing new EV charging stations at the eight Florida's Turnpike service plazas. There's a political struggle going on over an additional $198 million in federal money that would add even more EV chargers in places like Buc-ees and Wawa.

This is where I have to deliver the bad news: Trump hates all this progress. He hates it the way Ebenezer Scrooge used to hate Christmas before those ghosts showed up.

He's vowed to defund the Inflation Reduction Act , kick EVs to the curb (sorry, Elon Musk!), and give the oil and coal companies carte blanche to do whatever they want.

So, here's my first prediction: Say so long to the offshore drilling safety rules passed in the wake of the BP oil spill splashing icky globs of oil on pristine Florida beaches.

Trump repealed them during his first term and Biden put them back . For Trump's second term, I bet he not only rolls the rules back once more, but somehow bans the use of Dawn detergent for cleaning oil off seabirds .

The ironic thing is that even with those safety regulations in place, the U.S.is the top crude oil producer in the world . The oil companies have been posting record profits. But they'd be happy to make even more , even while the world burns.

Don't confuse me with facts One of the many people I talked to about the next four years was Jeff Chanton, a Florida State University climate scientist who's feeling pretty dismayed right now.

That's understandable. Imagine you're spent your life on a particularly important scientific pursuit and then some notorious grifter says YOU'RE the scammer.

During Trump's first term, Chanton was part of a group of 26 scientists who sent him a letter offering to meet with him and explain what was happening and why. Trump never even responded. I guess his mind was made up and he didn't want anyone confusing him with the facts.

Here's my second prediction: Trump will shut down as much funding for climate science as he possibly can and meanwhile do everything he can to make the world's conditions worse. Then when there's another disaster, he'll claim nothing is wrong and toss some paper towels around.

Remember, this is the guy who's repeatedly claimed that the only effect of climate change is to create more waterfront property — even as people at his rallies kept keeling over from heatstroke .

If Trump follows the recommendations of Project 2025 , we may not even know the next disaster is heading our way.

This blueprint for his second term calls for tying the hands of the National Weather Service and eliminating its role as a forecaster. The agency would only collect data. Then private companies could use that taxpayer-funded info to create their own forecasts, which you'd have to pay for.

The plan also calls for shutting down the National Weather Service's mother agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, because it's "become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."

Insurance companies would tell you that climate change is a bigger threat to U.S. prosperity than "alarmism," but what do THEY know?

Seeing Trump reelected has Chanton concerned about the fact that his voters seemed to reject experts of every stripe — economists , lawyers , military and national security officials, you name it.

"That's the most frightening thing of all," he said.

He figures there may be some consequences for experts like him, such as missing out on funding for further climate research. But then, he said, that may be OK.

"I don't know if we need more research," he said, "if we're not going to do anything about it."

The opposite of Hello, Kitty Lest you think I've totally misread Mr. Trump and he's actually the second coming of Teddy Roosevelt, let me lay this inconvenient truth on you:

The guy Trump's picked to be his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator is former New York U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin , who voted against the Inflation Reduction Act. The New York Times says he also "voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times, and clean air legislation at least half a dozen times."

Not exactly a guy who cares about the environment he now has to "protect."

"Trump's allies are calling his EPA chief pick 'the great deregulator' — and we should believe them," Eve Samples , executive director of the Friends of the Everglades, told me. "Buckle up for new attempts to dismantle protections of Florida's wetlands and waterways."

On X (formerly Twitter ) the new EPA boss wrote, "We will restore US energy dominance ... . We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water."

Note he didn't say he'd protect clean air or water. He just said he'd protect someone's access to it. Judging by his voting record, that someone would be polluters.

This shouldn't be a surprise. In Trump's first term, his EPA administrator was Andrew Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the coal industry . One of Wheeler's final acts before he left office was to hand over to Florida the power to issue federal wetlands permits .

Environmental groups sued to challenge the move. Eventually, a federal judge ruled they were right. In its haste to issue the federal permits developers needed to pave over every swamp, marsh, and bog, the Florida Department of Environmental Flibbertigibbets — er excuse me, "Protection" — was doing an end-run around the Endangered Species Act .

The ruling happened just in time to stop the permits for a couple of developments in Southwest Florida that were expected to doom our state animal, the Florida panther, to extinction .

The DEP's excuse for its cavalier treatment of the law was — in plain English — "complying with the Endangered Species Act is reeeeeally haaaaard." (Imagine a teenager whining about doing the dishes and you'll catch the exact tone.)

"'It's hard' is not a reason to not comply with federal law," attorney Tania Galloni of Earthjustice , which led the legal battle, told me earlier this year.

Now, though, the federal permits will be handed out by Trump apparatchiks who won't care about the future (if any) of the Florida panther. I wondered what that means for the lawsuit.

"Nothing changes with the lawsuit. It is a victory to have the permits with federal agencies because federal law applies, and federal law can be enforced in federal court," Galloni told me this week. "This case has always been about enforcing our bedrock environmental laws."

Nevertheless, my third prediction: Those two development permits will be issued by the end of 2025 and we'll see the last living panther killed by a car by 2028. Instead of "Hello, Kitty," it's goodbye kitty.

Then whoever Trump names to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — my guess is he'll pick whoever thought the best way to remove a whale carcass from an Oregon beach was to blow it up — will tell us it's OK. They were taking panthers off the endangered list anyway.

After all, in his first term, Trump's minions tried to knock Key deer off the endangered list with bogus science . They did drop the manatee from "endangered" to "threatened" — just before the largest die-off in Florida manatee history .

Not a partisan issue Except for golf courses , Trump is no fan of the outdoors. You'll never find him in a canoe, kayak, or jon boat . He never fishes, hikes, or rides horses. He once mispronounced "Yosemite" as if it were the name of a Jewish rapper.

But he knows the environment is popular with some people, so he tries to position himself as an environmental advocate.

My fourth prediction is that he'll make a big deal out of funding Everglades restoration while not doing anything more.

"Trump will point to federal dollars flowing for restoration projects as evidence that he's protecting the Everglades — but make no mistake, money alone won't be enough," Samples told me. "If he wants to prove he's serious about Everglades restoration, President Trump will do what no state or federal politician ever has ever been able to accomplish: End the crony capitalism that has enriched the billionaires behind U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals at the expense of the Everglades."

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that.

But I don't want to leave you in despair. One of the most hopeful and determined people I talked to this week was Cris Costello , who's been an organizer for the Sierra Club since 2007.

"What gives me hope," she told me, "is that when the environment is threatened in Florida, it becomes a nonpartisan fight."

She named as one example Gov. DeSantis' bungled effort to build golf courses, hotels, and sports facilities in nine state parks . When word got out, it drew condemnation from both parties before he pulled the plug.

Then she noted the widespread opposition to his M-CORES toll roads through state forests and quiet rural areas. As a result, M-CORES is no more.

"That wasn't a bunch of greenies who did that," she pointed out. "That was the work of people from across the political spectrum."

And while everyone was focused on the contentious presidential race in this election, voters in four counties —Clay, Lake, Osceola, and Martin — overwhelmingly approved local land conservation programs . Two years ago, six other counties — Alachua, Brevard, Indian River, Nassau, Pasco, and Polk — did the same thing.

"I remember when the environment wasn't a partisan issue," Costello said. "It shouldn't be a partisan issue. It shouldn't depend on who wins an election whether we save the planet or not."