Tag Archive: electric vehicles

Record-setting rain and heat in Florida, but it’s illegal to say “climate change”

Flooded Sarasota, FL roads after Hurricane Ian, 2022

South Florida is still undergoing a days-long, torrential rain storm that has dumped up to 20 inches of water in some areas. In the city of Sarasota on Tuesday evening, eight inches of rain fell in just three hours, something that NBC News stated only happens “every 500 to 1,000 years.”

This record-setting south Florida rain in the first half of June follows what NBC News also said was the warmest May on record in the area. Moreover, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts “above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin this year,” in part due to “near-record warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.” Something is going on, and we know what it’s called: climate change. Incredibly, however, instead of taking steps to fight climate change (such as promoting solar and wind power and electric vehicles), Florida’s Republican state government officials, headed by Governor Ron DeSantis, are hiding their heads in the increasingly wet and eroding sand. Indeed, just last month, during the aforementioned record heat, DeSantis signed a Republican bill “that erases most references to ‘climate change’ from state law.” Meanwhile, insurance companies, which do not have the luxury of denying climate change, are getting out of the home insurance business in Florida, and the ones who stay are charging the highest rates in the nation.

Joe Biden wants bipartisanship — on his terms

President Biden speaking at the Port of Baltimore, November 2021

In his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Joe Biden talked about national unity, and called for bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans. Biden has been making such appeals for some time. Indeed, Biden and other leading Democrats routinely call the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law last November, the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” as Biden did again in his SOTU address, giving credit to Republicans as well as Democrats for its passage.

Given that Republicans generally are so uncooperative that some of them boycotted President Biden’s State of the Union address, and others even heckled Biden, why is Biden calling for bipartisanship? Several reasons come to mind: