Affirmer or Denier? Activist Issues Climate-Change "Litmus Test"
Posted March 07, 2016 08:25 am | Public News Service
With 1.25 meters (4.1 feet) of sea level rise, much of
Miami's downtown district would be flooded.
TALLAHASSEE, FL – It's test time in Tallahassee, as one man wants to get lawmakers and other state leaders to state once and for all where they stand on climate change and the risk it poses to Florida.
Environmental engineer Bart Bibler is the driving force behind what he calls the climate-change "litmus test." In it, he's asking policymakers to acknowledge climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity, and that Florida is particularly vulnerable.
He says Floridians have the right to know where their elected officials stand.
"Because it drives all policy," says Bibler. "And
without that fundamental clarity about the position of
elected officials, there's all kinds of ambiguity to a
renewable future."
So far, only a handful of state lawmakers surveyed have
been willing to go on the record as climate-change
affirmers.
The
full results are posted at Tallahassee350.org, with
Bibler including those who refused to respond as
"deniers."
Experts say sea level rise driven by climate change
threatens Florida's infrastructure, fresh water supply,
real estate, beaches and tourism, which is why Bibler
believes in an election year in particular, the public
needs to know what all candidates and those already in
office plan to do about it.
"I hope that this will spread to Congress, to every
elected official across America and even globally," says
Bibler. "I think it's the fundamental issue of our
lifetime. Every local elected official in my city and
county is being asked."
Bibler is a former state employee who found himself at
the center of controversy last year for allegedly
violating the Scott administration's unofficial ban on
using the term "climate change."
He received a written reprimand and eventually left the
Department of Environmental Protection and is now
working for a solar-energy firm.
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