Florida Legislation Would Ban Local Climate Policies

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One day after the US government officially approved of massive, unchecked environmental pollution from fossil fuel companies, the Florida legislature moved a bill forward that would prohibit Florida cities, towns, and counties from adopting or implementing “net-zero policies.”

The ban includes comprehensive plans, land development regulations, transportation plans, or any other government policy or procedure. In addition, it would ban government entities from paying dues to groups that promote net-zero policies and from implementing cap-and-trade systems to limit carbon emissions.

“We want to have uniformity from the Panhandle to the Keys and not having (sic) situations where one particular county or city has an overly burdensome situation that costs more,” said Seminole Republican Berny Jacques, a co-sponsor of the proposal.

Jacques argued that some of the climate change policies are taxes levied to reach their goals of clean energy portfolios. “When you have these type of new financial burdens it makes things more costly,” he said. “It can make services more costly. Products more costly, thereby making the consumer having a more costly situation, and that is what we’re trying to prevent.”

According to that logic, paying a fire department to put out fires is too costly. Better — and cheaper — to just let buildings burn. Such is the thinking of people whose brains have been infected by the MAGA virus.

Ashley Gantt, a Democrat from Miami, asked Jacques if it was proven that local governments with policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were excessively costing local taxpayers.

In response, he said that while he didn’t have all of the evidence, it stood to reason that if a local government was considering purchasing electric vehicles that would require charging stations, “it’s going be more costly. We’re trying to prevent that from happening.”

The bill passed on a straight party line vote, with all the Republicans on the committee supporting it and all the Democrats opposed. It has one more committee stop before reaching the full House. A Senate companion measure (SB 1628) has two more committee stops in that chamber.

Undoing What Has Already Been Done

According to Mitch Perry, a reporter for the Florida Phoenix, who has been covering politics in the state for more than two decades, the legislation known as House Bill 1217 comes nearly two years after Snarling Ron DeSantis, the Trump wanna-be governor, signed legislation declaring that the state would no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy.

At least 14 local governments in Florida have passed resolutions over the past 15 years committing to a 100% clean, renewable power energy portfolio in the future. They include Tallahassee, Gainesville, Orlando, Tampa, Cocoa, Satellite Beach, Dunedin, Largo, Safety Harbor, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, South Miami, and Pinellas County.

In addition, the Southeast Florida Climate Change Compact, which includes Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach counties, was formed in 2009 to work collaboratively to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions, implement adaptation strategies, and build climate resilience. That coalition issued a report in 2022 calling for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Brian Lee with ReThink Energy Florida said passage of the bill could have a chilling effect on policies that are cost effective and reduce pollution. “Some examples of that are purchasing preference policies that strive to reduce carbon pollution by helping people and business make their buildings more energy efficient.

“Some of these types of policies attract funding into the state in the forms of grants and incentives. If local governments had to get rid of them, the people in their jurisdictions would be harmed and the locality itself would have to turn down or give back funding,” he told the House Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee.

Misinformation & Disinformation

The City of Sarasota has been hit hard by hurricanes in recent years. It lies on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, which climate scientists expect will rise by a foot or more in the next 25 years. That will put the city at risk of grave harm that could cost millions of dollars to repair.

To address those concerns, Sarasota is moving forward with plans to power its city operations completely with renewable energy by 2030 and the entire city by 2045. City commissioner Liz Alpert told WUCF that Florida Senate Bill 1628 would put a stop to that. “I think it really hampers any of the efforts that we have been doing in the city of Sarasota,” she said.

Sarasota was inundated with back-to-back flooding events caused by powerful hurricanes in 2024. “That emphasized even more the importance of climate change and how it can change our weather and devastate a coastal community like we are,” Alpert said. “It’s something that we’ve been conscious of and working at for at least the 10 years or more that I’ve been on the city commission.”

Sarasota has implemented several projects to lower polluting emissions, including through “micro-mobility” and making scooters, e-bikes, and a trolley available as transportation alternatives. Alpert said she plans to reach out to lawmakers about why renewable energy works for her city. “Part of our job is to make sure we advocate for our community and let the legislators know so that we can educate them on why it’s important,” she said.

Legislating Ignorance

The Senate bill is sponsored by Bryan Avila, a Republican from Miami — another city that is under severe threat from climate change. He says the measure is designed to prohibit local governments from lowering their own climate-warming emissions [emphasis added].

“This is really meant to make sure that we put in place a lot of predictability and a lot of visibility,” Avila said to the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee. He told fellow lawmakers that policies preventing the release of heat-trapping gases drive up costs. “Local municipalities … to meet some goal that would require them to triple, to quadruple their tax base in order to even get anywhere near it … would be detrimental to the residents in that community,” Avila said, while conveniently omitting any supporting documentation for his outrageously exaggerated claims.

Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, voted against the Avila bill, saying during the environment committee meeting that it would wipe out all the locally adopted climate resiliency plans, like the ones Sarasota has in place.

“We have local leaders in Miami Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe, Orlando, Tampa … all across the state, they’ve adopted climate resilient plans because they are already dealing with flooding,” Guillermo Smith said. “They’re dealing with extreme heat, salt water intrusion, storm damage.”

He countered Avila’s comment about businesses needing protecting from costs imposed by local governments pointing to a new law in place allowing businesses to sue cities and counties if an ordinance is found burdensome. “I think a lot of clean energy companies will probably think that this bill is burdensome. Maybe they’re going to start suing cities and counties,” Guillermo Smith said, adding that this bill benefits fossil fuel companies while hurting the public.

“Big oil. Big gas. They love this bill. Why wouldn’t they love this bill? This helps their business. Who does it hurt? It hurts all of us. It hurts future generations. It hurts the planet,” he said. Because of rising temperatures, Guillermo Smith said heat-related deaths are projected to increase, agriculture productivity is expected to drop, while tourism and property values are at risk.

None of that cuts any ice with MAGAlomaniacs, who are happy to outsource their thinking to others.