During a Wednesday speech in the Florida Everglades urging the nation to act on climate change, President Obama took a subtle jab at Florida’s alleged ban on the term “climate change.”
“Simply refusing to say the words ‘climate change’ doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening,” Obama said during the speech, according to the New York Times.
Obama urged leaders to acknowledge the impacts of climate change.
“Climate change can no longer be denied,” he said. “It can’t be edited out. It can’t be omitted from the conversation. And action can no longer be delayed.”
Earlier on Wednesday, White House spokesman Eric Schultz was asked about the reports that Florida has banned terms like “climate change” and “global warming.”
“If it’s not true, we look forward to them contributing to the discussion about one of the most important issues that we face,” Schultz said. “If the Scott administration is now joining the rest of us in confirming the impacts of climate change on both the environment and the energy sectors, we welcome that change in position on the governor’s part.”
The Florida government has denied that there is any official policy prohibiting employees from discussing climate change. A Florida official recently said “climate change” multiple times in a state senate hearing in an attempt to prove that the ban does not exist. But a Florida state official repeatedly dodged the term “climate change” during a hearing in March.
Using tea party logic, if a tea partier bans everyone in their house from saying “mortgage payment”, does their mortgage go away?
It’s more like the home owner who knows that there’s increasing structural damage to his house due to whatever, and doesn’t want to spend the money or take the time to fix it. He doesn’t talk about it or disclose it in the hopes that he’ll sell it and be out from under it, making it the next owner’s problem.
I wonder how they’ll explain what’s happening when the bulk of south Florida is routinely underwater. I gather it’s already pretty noticeable in parts of Miami, where flooding is much more frequent than at any time in memory. “Floridians are getting too fat, so the land is sinking from the extra weight.”
Wow—I just googled that and I had no idea they were already seeing such dramatic effects there. You can’t say it often enough: The Republican Party has gone nuts. It simply can’t accommodate itself to the plain and obvious reality of things.