Cynics will probably say that when it was certain that Hurricane Ian would strike Florida with devastating winds and storm surges, Gov. Ron DeSantis passed on the opportunity to assemble his lackeys in the Republican-dominated Legislature and enact emergency legislation demanding that the typhoon veer south away from Tampa or face the wrath of a warrior decked out in the “full armor of God,” as the governor is known to say about himself.

Ian did stay away from Tampa, no doubt to avoid a holy confrontation, instead slamming into a more southern part of the west coast. Asked afterwards about where the hurricane had been projected to hit, the governor told Florida’s Voice digital news network that “national regime media” – whatever that is — had wanted Tampa to be the target “because they thought that that’d be worse for Florida. That’s how these people think. They don’t care about the lives here. If they can use it to pursue their political agenda, they will do it. …They want to use storms and destruction from storms as a way to advance their agenda.”

The governor was kind enough to give a pass to radical left socialists and communists because President Joe Biden, supposedly the chief radical leftist socialist, immediately responded to his appeal for help. Biden made the resources of the federal government available to aid in the post hurricane recovery. He also flew to the state and met DeSantis and they had what CNN’s Chris Cillizza called a “kumbaya moment.”

Cynics may also probably say that when it was clear that the hurricane would make landfall in the state, DeSantis and his legislative cronies passed up another opportunity by not rushing to enact a law – which is an almost weekly occurrence — to empower him to mobilize a super bucket brigade to scoop up the incoming water from Ian’s towering waves and fly it to parts elsewhere. After all, the water did come from the Gulf of Mexico and this governor hates all things Mexican or Venezuelan or Cuban or … .

Not much can be done to prevent hurricanes from forming and striking Florida but much can be done to minimize their destructiveness. That requires policies which address global warming and climate change.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in a 2,000-page global report, cited Florida repeatedly as an example of a place where the effects of climate change were already being felt, both economically and environmentally, according to a February report by Tampa’s WUSF 89.7 radio, in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network.

In 2020, Brittney Miller, in a report for the US Thompson Earth Systems Institute, quoted climatologist David Zierden as telling a gathering at the University of Florida that hurricanes were getting stronger and slower, making them more destructive.

And, writing also in 2020, The Guardian’s David Luscombe noted that Florida’s “position at the end of the Atlantic Ocean’s ‘hurricane alley’ makes it twice as vulnerable” as other states. “Previous efforts to tame hurricanes were a failure and experts see mitigation strategies, including more robust codes, as the best defense,” Luscombe reported.

Luscombe pointed to the climate change record of Rick Scott, a Republican like DeSantis and currently a U.S. Senator who served as governor from 2011 to 2019. Scott not only cut $700 million from the state’s water management budget but also “rolled back environmental regulations and enforcement, gave a free ride to polluters and flipped-flopped over expanding offshore oil drilling. … The politician who came to be known as ‘Red Tide Rick’ for his perceived inaction over 2018’s toxic algae bloom outbreaks, reportedly banned the words ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ from state documents.”

Enter DeSantis, who, Laura Cassels wrote in the Florida Phoenix news site in December 2021, gave this answer to a reporter’s question about climate change: “What I’ve found is, people, when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of leftwing things that they would want to do anyways. We’re not doing any leftwing stuff.” Then Ian came calling on Sept. 28, with 150 m.p.h. Category 4 winds and storm surges that killed more than 100 Floridians, six in 10 of whom drowned, and causing property damage that could total $75 billion.

Not exactly a “leftwing thing” but, still, the governor has found good political capital in the devastation which a hurricane caused. The furor over his heartless stunt a month earlier of flying Venezuelans and Peruvians from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard “has been swept off front pages and newscasts by Hurricane Ian’s floodwaters, giving the prickly, fight-picking Florida governor a reset in the race that could let him cruise into a second term” HuffPost’s S.V. Date wrote.

Mac Stipanovich, former Republican Gov. Bob Martinez’s chief of staff, agreed, telling Date, “Ian’s arrival and aftermath has allowed DeSantis to enter the final stretch of the campaign — when many undecided voters first start paying attention — as a more mainstream governor doing important work.

This is a classic case of a very dark cloud that had a sparkling silver lining as far as DeSantis is concerned.”

What no hurricane can do, however, is blow away a governor’s record on climate change. Veteran Florida journalist and author Craig Pittman noted in a New York Times column that while DeSantis would try to point to achievements in that field, what he did was use “taxpayer money to protect the rampant development of low-lying areas such as Lee County — development that some of Governor DeSantis’s staunchest campaign contributors helped lead. …The sea walls, sewage pump stations, wastewater treatment plants and ‘living shorelines’ that taxpayers funded did little to help inland towns like Arcadia. There has been little to no attempt by his administration to stop further development in vulnerable coastal areas.”

The problem which needs urgent attention, Pittman wrote, is “the emissions that are also driving Florida’s other dangerous impacts.” But, according to him, DeSantis has been going in the other direction. “Rather than encouraging homes and businesses to switch to renewable energy or requiring any retreat from the growing risks of climate-fueled devastation, he has taken steps to protect the oil and gas industry spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “

Soon, of course, there will come a time when the “leftwing stuff” will in fact be blamed for causing hurricanes. And gullible Floridians will believe it.