Gov. DeSantis stonewalls question about climate change, accuses media of ‘virtue signaling’

Florida’s Governor isn’t giving an inch when it comes to indulging local media’s questions about whether or not the climate is changing, even in the wake of two major hurricanes that ravaged his state.

During a press conference, Ron DeSantis unceremoniously rejected a reporter’s question about when Floridians will hear the words “climate change,” fiddling with the nylon sleeve on his Florida State Guard jacket as the former baseball star settled into the box to tee off on the hanging curve.

“The chance of me virtue signaling for people in the media is zero. So do not count on that. I don’t subscribe to your religion,” DeSantis said to applause as he denounced the “tired refrain and song and dance.”

“I get you have an agenda. I understand that. I think you should be more honest about what that would mean for people taxing them to smithereens, stopping oil and gas, making people pay dramatically more for energy. We would collapse as a country so this whole idea of climate ideology driving policy, it just factually can’t work,” DeSantis added.

DeSantis, who signed legislation stripping the term “climate change” from state law just this year, has dismissed the phenomenon as a catalyst for hurricane consequences, including when discussing tornadoes well away from the center of Milton’s murderous gyre last week.

“I just think people should put this in perspective. They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something. There’s nothing new under the sun. You know, this is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history and it’s something that we will continue to deal with,” the Governor counseled.

As a presidential candidate, DeSantis flirted with acknowledging a more nuanced reality at times.

The Des Moines Register reported that DeSantis admitted human activity is one of a “variety of factors” driving the earth’s warming — a fact reporter Katie Akin notes that he’s been reluctant to admit.

“DeSantis’ own stance has changed: During the first GOP presidential debate, he did not raise his hand when candidates were asked if human activities are warming the planet. But in the Dec. 9 interview with the Register, DeSantis said he does believe human activities are a factor in the changing climate,” Akin observed.

That said, as DeSantis completed his doomed Iowa campaign, he made sport after that interview of going after hecklers concerned with climate change, suggesting that belief was transitory and intended for a certain audience.

Indeed, one needs a scorecard to track DeSantis’ positions, which shift like Florida’s coastline during storm surge events.