DAVID BLACKMON
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a series of energy-related bills into law on Wednesday that have climate alarm activists and the legacy media in an uproar.
Taken together, the new laws de-emphasize climate change considerations in favor of energy affordability and reliability, goals that were for decades the main focus of power providers and grid operators, but which The Washington Post now unironically describes as “conservative talking points” in a story on the matter.
“The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” the governor said, per Florida’s Voice News . “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots. Furthermore, we’re going to ensure foreign adversaries like China have no foothold in our state.”
In addition to deleting mention of “climate” or “climate change” from Florida law in at least nine different places, the new laws move to prohibit the building of massive offshore wind farms in Florida’s state waters, encourage the expansion of both natural gas and nuclear power generation capacity, protect against bans on gas stoves and other gas appliances, and prevent state agencies from contracting with foreign companies for products made using forced labor, the latter provision targeting some products specific to both solar and wind energy made in China.
Besides characterizing previously non-controversial goals like energy affordability and reliability as mere talking points, writers for The Washington Post also accuse DeSantis of using “climate change as a culture war issue such as abortion and transgender rights to bring national attention to himself and hit the right notes with right-wing voters.” Nowhere in its story does the Post point out the fact that these bills were not written by DeSantis. They were written by Republicans in the Florida state legislature who have been awarded big majorities in both houses of that body by the voters via the democratic processes of which the Post pretends to be a steward with its “Democracy Dies in Darkness” motto.
Nor does the Post story mention that DeSantis himself was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term in office in 2022, based on the voters’ approval of his first-term agenda. In writing and signing these bills, Republican legislators and DeSantis are undoubtedly following the will of the people, which Americans in the past used to agree is the very objective of a representative democracy. But the unerring slant on this story and so many others can only make one wonder exactly what sort of “democracy” the Post believes it is keeping out of the darkness. Whatever that is, it appears to have no real relation to the republican form of democracy in which Americans live.
In its own story about the new Florida laws, NPR, recently been accused by former senior editor Uri Berliner of having a strong liberal basis and being a place in which an “open-minded spirit no longer exists,” included the following paragraph:
“Critics said the measure made law by the former Republican presidential hopeful ignores the reality of climate change threats in Florida, including projections of rising seas, extreme heat and flooding and increasingly severe storms.” Perhaps Mr. Berliner has a point.
It’s no wonder that the people of Florida–like voters in other states all over the country–are supportive of this kind of legislation. Under the Biden presidency, power bills have skyrocketed as the costs of a withering avalanche of new federal regulatory actions are inevitably passed onto consumers. Those rising bills combined with an increasing state of instability across the country’s regional power grids caused by requirements to load them up with intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar generation, have average people increasingly concerned about having their lives interrupted by blackouts and possibly worse.
Such concerns are also reflected in President Joe Biden’s crumbling approval ratings and numerous polls showing voters prefer former President Donald Trump over Biden where energy policy is concerned.
No matter how often or strongly The Washington Post, NPR and other legacy media platforms recoil in horror at the prospect, most Americans firmly support their public officials putting a priority on energy affordability and reliability. Candidates for elected office ignore this reality at their own peril.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
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