South FL Is Sinking - Where Is Marco Rubio? Damning Newsweek Article

[hatrack]

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South Florida business leaders and even many local Republican politicians are no longer in climate change denial. Now, deep in the fine print of resolutions and memoranda being passed around among the various task forces in the area, one sees the mantra “Elevate. Isolate. Relocate.” Abandonment of some parts of the community to water is now accepted as unavoidable. Even the most conservative estimates assume that a percentage of the next generation of Floridians will become internally displaced Americans, climate change refugees.

While panicking Miami policymakers are contemplating dire climate-related matters like the possibility of relocating people and infrastructure, Florida’s two presidential candidates are silent. Senator Marco Rubio and former Governor Jeb Bush have ignored the problem. Bush has no constituents to answer to anymore, but Rubio does. On the campaign trail, he brushes off questions about climate change by saying, “I’m not a scientist.” His silence is a stark contrast to the deeds of Florida’s senior senator, Bill Nelson, a Democrat and former astronaut. Last year, Nelson held a rare Senate field hearing in Miami Beach on sea level rise, and he frequently speaks about the issue on the Senate floor.

Miami-area Democrats are predictably harsh in their criticism of Rubio’s indifference, using words like “useless,” and “a waste of time.” But even local Republicans are tired of pretending they don’t need waders to get across town. Republican Antonio Argiz, chairman and CEO of a prominent accounting company and past chair of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, lives in a house near the Coral Gables waterfront. He now leaves his sedan parked on high ground during rainstorms and texts his wife to pick him up at the end of their street in the family SUV, rather than risk stalling out in rapidly rising waters.

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Rubio did not always avoid the subject. Nine years ago, as a Florida legislator, he said climate change gave the state an opportunity to become a green energy leader. "This nation, and ultimately the world, is headed for an emissions tax and energy diversification,” he said in 2007. “Those changes will require technological advances that make those measures cost-effective. The demand for such advances will create an industry to meet it. Florida should become the Silicon Valley of that industry.” Rubio occasionally still talks about green energy on the campaign trail, but rarely. When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio was a favorite of the Tea Party, with its “Drill, baby, drill” libertarianism and science denial. He stopped talking about green energy and climate and began openly questioning climate science. Miami geologist Harold Wanless, who has modeled sea level rise for local leaders, met Rubio at a fundraiser that year and handed him a letter, signed by scientists, requesting a meeting to brief him on the data. Rubio took the letter but never responded.

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http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/05/marco-rubio-climate-change-denier-south-florida-flood-crisis-420326.html

[geomon666]

1. Miami is doomed.

Along with all of South Florida. Which is why I had really wished we could've found a way to split the state in two. If that happened 10/15 years ago, maybe we could've actually saved this area but, you know, we had to re-elect people like Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and the rest of this disgusting corrupt rightwing cabal that has now literally destroyed this fucking state.

[KelleyKramer]

2. It's sinking? Really? That's the problem?

I hope that's not the actual headline or Newsweek is dumber then I would have guessed.

Btw, it wasn't long ago that the governor of FL issued an order that no one was allowed to ever use the words climate change or global warming.

Hmmm, how is that working out for them?