As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Ron DeSantis seemed eager to appear sensible on environmental issues. The Republican, hoping voters would overlook his record as a far-right congressman, assured Floridians that he not only intended to protect the Everglades, he also believed humans were contributing to climate change.
After narrowly winning that race, the editorial board of The Tampa Bay Times applauded the fact that DeSantis was taking the climate crisis seriously in ways his Republican predecessor did not. The editors went so far as to describe DeSantis as “Florida’s green governor.”
Five years later, the GOP governor is now a GOP presidential candidate, doing his best to appeal to a party base that’s been conditioned to believe that the climate crisis is an elaborate hoax. Predictably, it has led DeSantis to embrace climate denialism in ridiculous ways. The New York Times reported on the Floridian traveling to Texas yesterday to unveil his energy plan.
In a policy rollout at an oil rig site in Midland — a West Texas city that derives much of its economy from oil production — Mr. DeSantis seemed to make a general-election argument, promising to roll back several of the Biden administration’s climate initiatives, calling them “part of an agenda to control you and to control our behavior.”
The fact that a far-right presidential candidate took a far-right position while appealing to far-right voters was not especially interesting. The governor’s phrasing, however, stood out for me.
To try to address the crisis, DeSantis said, is to pursue “an agenda to control you.”
A few months ago, the Florida Republican pushed a similar line on Fox News. “You have an itch on the left, they want to control behavior,” DeSantis said. “We saw the same thing with Covid. A lot of that wasn’t about your health, it’s that they wanted to control your behavior. They just don’t want people to be happy and make their own decisions.”
This comes up with unnerving frequency. It was just a couple of weeks ago, for example, when Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told Fox News viewers that those who believe climate science are “driven” by the desire to take “control over our lives.”
In July, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise appeared on Fox Business and pushed the same line. “They don’t want to talk honestly about science; they just want to control your life,” the Louisiana Republican said in reference to the climate crisis, failing to identify who “they” might be.
It appears, in other words, that a variety of prominent Republican leaders don’t just reject climate science, they’ve also convinced themselves that reality-based observers are secret totalitarians, hellbent on micromanaging Americans’ daily lives for nefarious purposes.
At this point, we could marvel for a while at the tone-deaf hypocrisy, highlighting how ridiculous it is to hear the party of abortion bans, book bans and LGBTQ+ discrimination whine about those who would try to “control our behavior.”
But I find myself stuck on a question I’d love DeSantis, Johnson and Scalise to answer with a sincere response: “When was the last time you had a meaningful conversation with someone who’s left of center?”
I’m obviously not in a position to speak on anyone else’s behalf, but I know plenty of folks who’d identify themselves as “progressives” or “liberals,” and I’ve literally never heard any of them say, “You know what would be great? If government would control everyone’s lives. It’s annoying when people are happy and make their own decisions, so let’s pretend that planetary temperatures are rising as part of an elaborate ruse in order to get bureaucratic systems to crack down on everyone’s day-to-day activities.”
This might surprise Republicans, but people on the left don’t think this way. We have no reason to think this way. We’re desperate for action on climate change, not because we’re proponents of government control over the public, but because the climate crisis risks catastrophic results for life on the planet.
If GOP voices such as DeSantis know the truth but peddle nonsense anyway, such a cynical approach to politics is indefensible. But if Republicans like the Florida governor genuinely believe that the left has embraced totalitarianism, perhaps they should take a little time to talk to some progressive voters to learn otherwise.
