“Republicans have figured out that if you get caught crossways on the environment, you could very well lose an election. That’s how important the issue is to Floridians of all stripes.” That was, alas, the spot-on analysis of Susan MacManus, the former USF political science professor, as quoted by the AP. Would that the motivation for something this existentially menacing and exigent–in a ground-zero state for sea-level rise–were more than political expedience.
The implications for climate change are across-the-board alarming, but if it takes political self-interest to truly motivate to finally do the right thing, however belatedly, we’ll take it. And while Tallahassee is hardly synonymous with progressive mindsets, the absence of Rick Scott is a reminder of how you add by subtracting.