President Obama speaking on Earth Day in the threatened Florida Everglades forcefully rejected Florida Governor Rick Scott's prohibition against state officials mentioning Global Warming or Climate Change in their official roles.
Obama in Everglades: ‘Climate change cannot be edited out of the conversation’
BY JENNY STALETOVICH AND PATRICIA MAZZEI
President Barack Obama on Wednesday paid his first visit to the Everglades, delivering an Earth Day speech that tied the threat of rising seas pose for the imperiled River of Grass to wider climate change risks across the nation.
But his choice of South Florida as a venue also was clearly calculated to make political points. Voters will elect Obama’s successor in 18 months, and the Republican field so far is teeming with would-be candidates, including two from Florida, who question whether climate change is man-made, despite significant scientific scholarship concluding that it is largely a result of carbon emissions.
In a speech delivered at Everglades National Park, the president also got a subtle dig in at Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who has come under fire for ordering state staffers to avoid the term “climate change.”
"Climate change can no longer be denied...cannot be edited out of the conversation," Obama said. The governor, who declined an invitation to join Obama on his Glades tour, has denied such a mandate exists.
This week, scores of scientists meeting in Broward County revealed new research that showed even more dramatic changes in store under climate change projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that predicts increases in temperature, sea level and ocean salinity.
Protective mangrove coasts could disappear, studies found, and soils collapse under increasingly salty conditions, allowing Florida Bay to grow and the Everglades to shrink. The wetlands, which provides much of South Florida’s freshwater, are already half their original size.
“We’re at this key moment where there’s crucial public recognition,” said Florida International University ecologist Evelyn Gaiser, who has been invited to meet with Obama after his speech.
South Florida's Everglades is one of the areas of the nation most threatened by Global Warming and the resulting rise in Sea Levels. Rick Scott and all of the Republicans running for President in 2016 including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are trying their hardest to pretend that Global Warming isn't a potentially catastrophic problem for South Florida and other parts of the country most at risk.
King Canute