It was obvious that a day would come when U.S. states whose political cultures deny Global Warming would have to confront its inescapable effects. Please see the article below, from January, 2020 (shortly BC – Before COVID).

First, a few relevant thoughts:

In the year 2000, Florida put Denier-in-Chief, George W. Bush in the White House instead of environmentalist Al Gore, due to a recount of the state’s votes (the Supreme Court shut the process down when ‘W’ was ahead). During that sharply contested recount, the media spoke a lot about ‘hanging chad,’ the not-quite-detached punches of paper ballots that were being examined.

Well, now ‘Hanging Chad’ has led to ‘Sinking Flo.’ It is an unhappy, but remarkable irony that Florida – mostly surrounded by the sea and largely flat – was pivotal (no doubt, against the wishes of many if not most of its voters) in halting progress to address climate change for the 8 years of W’s terms. Not long after Bush’s ‘election,’ I predicted that this outcome would eventually bite Florida in the backside due to rising seas. Sure enough, now they are more at risk from that threat than almost anywhere else in the U.S.

I don’t like ‘Schadenfreude’ (the German word for the unkind act of reveling in the misfortune of others). But it’s hard for me not to be at least somewhat bemused by the predicament Florida’s vote back in 2000 has now helped land it in. I will not ‘revel’ in their misfortune, but is a bit of ‘Chad-enfreude’ – feeling some (bitter) satisfaction at having been proved right – permissible?

The article ends by saying that some of these states’ officials might walk away from federal aid rather than admit the reason they need it is that Global Warming is not just some liberal hoax or fantasy – though not Florida’s officials, who realize they now need all the help they can get. As to those officials in other at-risk states, let this sink in (so to speak): They would sacrifice their own citizens – often the most vulnerable, like the minorities in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – rather than admit they were/are wrong. How low can they go?

We may find out. Sadly, many innocent victims of their stubborn refusal to acknowledge accelerating (and frightening) evidence – and not just in the U.S. – may also find out.