Free Florida

Now that the hurricane double whammy of Helene/Milton has knocked Florida on its ass, I feel like I’m starting to get a sense of what living with climate change actually looks like.

I can’t say with any certainty that any single weather event was “caused” by climate change, of course, but it’s equally impossible to deny the larger trend. As predicted, hurricanes are becoming more intense. My layman’s understanding is that this happens because warmer waters tend to get sucked up more readily, increasing the hurricane’s power and volatility. I could fact check this before publishing, but we both know the odds of that happening are slim to none.

(Note: I did end up fact checking this and my initial understanding seems, more or less, correct. Sorry, haters.)

Big storms would occasionally dick around up in Connecticut where I spent the last twentysomething years, but the hurricane season up there was a little bit like barbecue – yeah, we had it, but if you wanted it taken seriously, you needed to come down South.

Living with them in a more intimate way, as I have for the last three years, has given me something of a front row seat to the long-term effects of national climate denialism. When you drive into Florida, there are road signs that read “Welcome to the free state of Florida,” which is as good a motto for the DeSantis administration’s two-faced approach to their own state sovereignty when it comes to issues in which they can attack their fellow Floridians for expressing their own freedom while simultaneously holding out an empty palm for federal largesse when they need a lil’ cash to tidy up after natural disasters.

Of course, one could easily make the argument that these disasters are not “natural” at all but acknowledging the truth of anthropocentric climate change means accepting that all of us – even Floridians – have a responsibility to look out for each other, something the DeSantis administration is loathe to admit. Because once we start admitting that our actions affect those of our neighbors, the whole concept of “Free Florida” needs to be re-evaluated. How could they be expected to do that after they paid for all those road signs?

Climate change is going to keep coming, and it’s going to keep getting worse. We know that. Now that we’re living in the outer bands of what that looks like, it’s becoming obvious that we’re going to “Free Florida” ourselves to death. Despite decades of warnings, the American populace seems about as willing to make changes to our lives in service of the climate as we were when Al Gore first trotted out his apocalyptic slide show. The truth is only inconvenient when you accept it as the truth.

We’re not going to do anything about this problem, or at least nothing more than is currently being done. Activists will continue to scream, denialists will continue to deny, and Floridians will continue getting wasted at Margaritaville. Communities will be destroyed, lives lost, and the good times will continue to roll. Even when the winds are blowing a hundred and fifty miles an hour, it’s still happy hour somewhere.

In the state of Florida, freedom is whatever the governor says it is. The freedom to ban books, the freedom to make life as difficult for the gay and trans communities as possible, the freedom to ignore science. It’s the freedom to throw fists at the feds until they need something from the rest of us. The freedom to take without the concomitant responsibility to give back. And the rest of us can only shrug our shoulders at the recklessness of a Republican Party unwilling to lift a finger to help themselves.

When people like me rail against the MAGA movement, this is the bullshit we’re talking about. It’s fine with me if you want to replace “E. Pluribus Unum” with “Fuck Your Feelings,” but then you’ve got to accept the consequences. “From many, one” means exactly that: we pull together to create a nation from the disparate cultures and peoples that populate our land with the recognition that we are stronger together. The “fuck your feelings” crowd prefers to go it alone. Fine by me, kid, but get off the roads I pay for and don’t ask me for shit when your boat ends up in a tree because you were too selfish to acknowledge reality right up until the moment that reality acknowledges you.

Everything is of a piece. When we institute selfishness as national policy, the effects cascade downhill, just like floodwaters. The rest of us are left shoveling your shit because you couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger to help yourself. And that sucks.

Florida will, undoubtedly, rebuild. And next year, they will use our money to rebuild again. And again. In the meantime, the state of Florida will remain free to hurt those already most likely to be hurt, while simultaneously protecting the monied interests of the Mar-A-Lago elite. Is it even still a country when some states refuse to participate in furthering the national interest? Because it is in our national interest to mitigate the effects of climate change as much as possible. It’s also in our global interests. But that’s kind of heavy to think about and the frozen margys aren’t going to pour themselves. Drink up ‘cause surf’s up. And we can keep riding the waves until they wash right over us.