As we continue to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, we speak with Manuel Ivan Guerrero, a freshman at the University of Central Florida and an organizer with the Sunrise Movement, who says young people are extremely worried about the impact of the climate crisis on their communities. “This just has me more scared for what the future’s going to look like in Florida,” he says. “We’re having these thousand-year storms every three, four years now.” We also speak with David Wallace-Wells, a writer for The New York Times opinion section and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, where he frequently writes about climate. He says the popularity of conspiracy theories during extreme weather events shows that many people are retreating “into little cocoons of disinformation and paranoia, and that scares me in some ways even more than the weather itself.”

AMY GOODMAN: Hurricane Milton comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene battered Florida and other southeastern states, killing at least 230 people. A new analysis by the group World Weather Attribution finds the burning of fossil fuels has made highly destructive storms like Helene more than twice as likely. Florida climate activists have declared Republican Governor Ron DeSantis unfit to lead the state since his policies promote fossil fuels, reject sustainable energy options and ignore or deny the climate crisis.

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DAVID WALLACE-WELLS: Yeah, I think the story is much bigger than Ron DeSantis. I mean, we’re talking about, you know, Donald Trump campaigning in part on Project ’25’s promises to defund FEMA and cut emergency services and disaster response. We are seeing all of this disinformation surrounding Hurricane Helene with people posting on social media about FEMA helicopters shooting down disaster relief, people circulating conspiracy theories about land being seized by the federal government, not to mention, as you highlighted earlier, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s suggestion that the weather itself is man-made and controlled by the government. There’s a kind of grim irony in those who deny that human activity can be driving the climate crisis but who believe that government actors can control the weather to this scale.

  • zabadoh@ani.social
    4·
    1 month ago

    This reminds me of the shift in Florida’s demographics towards Republicans because of all the MAGAts who moved down there to bask in DeSantis’ anti-wokeness and Rs taking over the state legislative bodies.

    Enjoy your state, guys.