In an interview last week with the editorial board of the Manchester (NH) Leader, GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush said of global warming, "ultimately it will be a person in a garage who will solve these problems". Yes, in candidate Bush's world view, the greatest threat to civilization is waiting for a kid with a chemistry set. (Click here to listen to the interview and climate change at minute 13:36.)
Shortly after Bush confidently told the Manchester Leader that the world isn't coming to an end with climate change, South Florida mayors held a press conference on a Miami beach to clamor for aid to restore sand on beaches that underpin a coastal tourism and real estate economy worth billions of dollars.
Next time, the Manchester Leader should interview Jeb Bush or his fellow samurai, Marco Rubio, on one of Florida's eroding beaches.
The "things are getting better" scenario Jeb Bush pushed to New Hampshire Republican primary voters will not sit very well with the mayors nor voters who may recall how Bush set environmental policy according to predetermined outcomes.
Jeb ended the line of environmental questioning with the Leader: "I'm not going to be lectured to by people that may be unfortunately garnering the wrong set of facts to reach their conclusions." Really?
Jeb says that a lot: that he's not going to be lectured to or, as he said as governor, that he wouldn't (sic) wait for permission from environmentalists to save the Everglades. Jeb's record on the Everglades is smoke-and-mirrors and his interview on climate change issues with the Manchester Leader showed the same skill set is being deployed for the 2016 presidential election.
A few days after the Bush interview in New Hampshire, mayors from Miami area municipalities including Surfside Mayor Daniel Deitch, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, Sunny Isles Beach Mayor George "Bud" Scholl and Key Biscayne Mayor Mayra Pena Lindsay held a press conference on the beach to highlight the lack of financial support from the county budget by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez to restore beaches that are disappearing back into the sea.
Beach "renourishment" has been ongoing for decades in Florida. During Jeb Bush's two terms as governor, tens if not hundreds of millions of state and federal taxpayer dollars were plowed into the futile effort to mask this visible result of rising seas.
To the Manchester Leader, Jeb dismissed his critics as being negative and using "the wrong set of facts". In fact, South Florida beach erosion is so severe that there is no more beach sand locally to put back on Florida's beaches: it's been used up as thoroughly as false facts by Republicans on climate change.
The Miami area mayors want county taxpayers to pay more money for sand from Mexico or the Bahamas on their beaches. This nonsense of beach renourishment can go on for a while, but not indefinitely. What should stop right away is press events on beaches.
The next press conference should be in front of climate change denier Marco Rubio's house and then Jeb Bush's. (Read our blog archive on Senator Rubio's refusal to meet with climate change scientists.) If the mayors care about protecting South Florida's economic base from climate change, they will have to do a whole lot better than focusing on sand. And voters will have to do a whole lot better, too.
Shortly after Bush confidently told the Manchester Leader that the world isn't coming to an end with climate change, South Florida mayors held a press conference on a Miami beach to clamor for aid to restore sand on beaches that underpin a coastal tourism and real estate economy worth billions of dollars.
Next time, the Manchester Leader should interview Jeb Bush or his fellow samurai, Marco Rubio, on one of Florida's eroding beaches.
The "things are getting better" scenario Jeb Bush pushed to New Hampshire Republican primary voters will not sit very well with the mayors nor voters who may recall how Bush set environmental policy according to predetermined outcomes.
Jeb ended the line of environmental questioning with the Leader: "I'm not going to be lectured to by people that may be unfortunately garnering the wrong set of facts to reach their conclusions." Really?
Jeb says that a lot: that he's not going to be lectured to or, as he said as governor, that he wouldn't (sic) wait for permission from environmentalists to save the Everglades. Jeb's record on the Everglades is smoke-and-mirrors and his interview on climate change issues with the Manchester Leader showed the same skill set is being deployed for the 2016 presidential election.
A few days after the Bush interview in New Hampshire, mayors from Miami area municipalities including Surfside Mayor Daniel Deitch, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, Sunny Isles Beach Mayor George "Bud" Scholl and Key Biscayne Mayor Mayra Pena Lindsay held a press conference on the beach to highlight the lack of financial support from the county budget by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez to restore beaches that are disappearing back into the sea.
Beach "renourishment" has been ongoing for decades in Florida. During Jeb Bush's two terms as governor, tens if not hundreds of millions of state and federal taxpayer dollars were plowed into the futile effort to mask this visible result of rising seas.
To the Manchester Leader, Jeb dismissed his critics as being negative and using "the wrong set of facts". In fact, South Florida beach erosion is so severe that there is no more beach sand locally to put back on Florida's beaches: it's been used up as thoroughly as false facts by Republicans on climate change.
The Miami area mayors want county taxpayers to pay more money for sand from Mexico or the Bahamas on their beaches. This nonsense of beach renourishment can go on for a while, but not indefinitely. What should stop right away is press events on beaches.
The next press conference should be in front of climate change denier Marco Rubio's house and then Jeb Bush's. (Read our blog archive on Senator Rubio's refusal to meet with climate change scientists.) If the mayors care about protecting South Florida's economic base from climate change, they will have to do a whole lot better than focusing on sand. And voters will have to do a whole lot better, too.
6 comments:
Tourism in general is not environmentally friendly. The cruise ship industry alone contributes to global warming. Lets discuss the R-Value of a glass wall condominium in Miami Beach. Can anybody in Miami Beach give me the R-Value for a glass walled condominium? Crickets.
R/Thickness hr(and a bunch of stupid symbols) BTU
Single glass 3/16" air space 1.69. Triple insulating glass (1/4" inch air space) 3.23.
you are off topic. get back on....
On the up side my 1960 muscle cars are now worth ten times what I paid for them......in the 60's it was the concern over unburned particulates in cars' exhaust creating a nuclear winter.. the result was CAFE standards which overnight spelled the end of the muscle car (making them instantly collectable) and ultimately the reduction of smog, clearing the sky which created the other extreme, the green house effect we're battling today.
But hey, we do the best we can with the science we got.
I will give that some tree huggers are now coming around and instead of focusing on the "who's fault is this?" they are tipping toward the "what are we going to do about it now that it's here?" and literally asking out loud, at what point do we quit shoveling sand against the tide.
The irony is we're to spend billion on saving an environmentally endangered swamp that's 3 feet above sea level at the expense of our equally vulnerable and economically important beaches?
That swamp is your water supply. Oh, maybe you dont care about the price of drinking water.
Everybody knows these mayors are using climate change to get funding for beach sand, seawalls and pumps. The federal government will give reductions in flood insurance rates the more these cities spend. The contractors get rich, the residents get reduced flood insurance rates. Climate change is one of the best growth indusitries the United States has. None of these mayors will talk about emmissions from China. None.
nor do any deniers ever point out that China is heavily investing in solar energy and have rapidly eclipsed the US and Europe in the production and installation of solar energy.
They're going to own the future with a technology we invented because of dumbass deniers running this country.
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