Florida has unraveled climate goals for years. DeSantis struck the latest blow.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday toured flood-ravaged areas of South Florida — and defended his recent move to scrap the state’s climate change goals.

DeSantis toured flooded areas of Hollywood, where he declared a state of emergency Wednesday after parts of the region received more than 20 inches of rain this week. There, he brushed off recent criticism from Democrats for signing a bill last month that struck language directing the state to promote renewable energy and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our energy bill that we did, it wasn’t about saying or not saying ‘climate change,’” DeSantis said Friday. “It was a substantive piece of legislation to say that in the state of Florida our energy policy is going to be driven by affordability for Floridians and reliability.”

After a storm, “We need to get the lights back on,” he continued. “We don’t want our policy driven by climate ideology.”

Some environmentalists say the law was further evidence of Florida’s continued backtracking on climate policy, after being a leader more than 15 years ago under then-Gov. Charlie Crist.

Since taking office in 2019, DeSantis has signed legislation blocking cities from restricting the use of natural gas and has promoted tax breaks on gas stoves in response to initiatives elsewhere curbing their use. He has also criticized the Biden administration for restricting oil drilling and for pushing climate change initiatives.

DeSantis on Friday rejected any connection between the state’s energy policies and the flooding that occurred in South Florida, calling some of the criticism “very political.”

“We don’t want our energy policy driven by climate ideology,” he continued. “When that happens people pay more and the energy is less reliable. You don’t believe me? Look at California, look at the places that have tried this.”

DeSantis on May 15 signed the energy bill, HB 1645, which House Speaker Paul Renner pushed. Renner said the bill was needed to support utilities against pressure from “unrealistic” climate goals.

The bill struck language in state law that said the goal of Florida’s energy policy is to “recognize and address the potential of global climate change wherever possible.” It was replaced with language directing the state to “promote the cost-effective development and ... use of a diverse supply of domestic energy resources.”

Some environmentalists charge the legislation is just Florida’s latest move away from renewable energy, as state leaders do the bidding of utilities and the natural gas industry. The bill also bans nearshore windmills and relaxes permitting requirements for natural gas pipelines and gas storage tanks. They paint it as the culmination of a shift they say started long before DeSantis took office — arguing that the one-time presidential candidate was just the latest in a long list of state leaders deprioritizing responding to climate change.

“During Rick Scott’s governorship they ripped out programs and provisions and language,” veteran environmental lobbyist Susan Glickman told POLITICO in May. “Now they are coming in to go even further while they further integrate fossil gas infrastructure that’s going to do nothing but grow this [climate] problem.”

DeSantis also took heat this week from some Democrats in the Legislature after the governor vetoed more than half of the $410 million in local water projects in the 2024-25 state budget. He vetoed at least 22 stormwater drainage projects.

“I was down in Fort Lauderdale yesterday and it was a wakeup call,” Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the House Democratic leader, posted on X Thursday. “Governor, as you erase climate change from our laws and veto infrastructure plans, Floridians pay the price.”

The climate language stricken from state law by DeSantis was part of a sweeping energy bill enacted by the state in 2008 under Republican leaders including then-Gov. Charlie Crist and then-House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Crist, after taking office in 2007, had signed executive orders directing the state to take aggressive action on climate change. But pushback began immediately; the 2008 legislation actually walked back much of those actions, or required legislative ratification of rule changes.

“The way we passed that bill, it denied Charlie Crist that radical global warming, climate change agenda,” then-Rep. Adam Hasner, the House Republican majority leader under Rubio, told POLITICO in 2015.

And Crist himself abandoned his own initiatives in 2009 as he positioned himself to the conservative right for a failed run for U.S. Senate.

After taking office in 2011, Scott vowed he would be making “the development of a strategic energy policy a priority of my administration.”

But he said very little about energy after that, other than opposing offshore oil drilling. Some media reports characterized his administration as banning the use of the phrase “climate change,” a charge that his aides denied at the time.

Among other things, the 2008 legislation, HB 713, required the Public Service Commission to create a renewable energy requirement for utilities, as directed by Crist. But the legislation required legislative ratification of those requirements, which never happened after the PSC submitted a draft rule in 2009.

The bill also created the “Climate Protection Act” that authorized the state Department of Environmental Protection to adopt rules creating a cap-and-trade carbon emissions system. But the bill again required the Legislature to ratify the rules, which DEP ultimately never proposed. The Climate Protection Act was repealed by the Legislature in 2012.

The 2008 legislation also established a 75 percent recycling goal for the state to achieve by 2020. But Florida’s recycling rate peaked at 49 percent in 2018. Environmentalists now reject the recycling goal because the Legislature amended state law to allow trash incineration for energy to count as recycling.

DeSantis on Friday said changing the energy policy language in state law was a substantive position about what is in the best interest of the state.

“Regardless of what you choose in that, it isn’t going to prevent us from having tropical weather during tropical season,” DeSantis said. “That’s just baked in the cake. But we have definitely said affordability for Floridians is important. We want low energy costs. And that means you’ve got to utilize things like natural gas.”