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Ron DeSantis Could Have Been Florida’s Teddy Roosevelt
In 2018, when Ron DeSantis was elected to the Florida governor’s office, EcoRight Floridians were ecstatic at the prospect of finally having a governor who would put climate change at the forefront of his agenda — particularly after the “don’t say climate change” terms of Rick Scott — and work across the aisle to find solutions.
A year into his governorship, DeSantis issued a five-page executive order outlining his ambitious climate agenda. In his executive order, DeSantis allocated $2.5 billion to protect waterways and restore the Everglades, as well as the appointing both a chief science officer and a chief resilience officer (the first in the nation) to help prioritize environmental research efforts and climate mitigation concerns facing Florida.
On his way to positioning himself as Florida’s first climate-focused Republican governor, he even called for funding to address “the challenges of sea level rise, intensified storm events, and localized flooding” in his first budget proposal.
These first term acts earned DeSantis a reputation in the EcoRight for being environmentally friendly and climate conscious in a practical, market-based way. Some of us were looking forward to seeing what he’d do with a second term, especially as hurricane after hurricane impacts our communities, red tide plagued our…
