Is Climate Change Responsible for the Living Conditions of inland communities? How Governor DeSantis and his elected officials have criticized the way that Florida’s climate has changed

The sea walls, sewage pump stations, wastewater treatment plants and “living shorelines” that taxpayers funded did little to help inland towns like Arcadia. Many homes in Central Florida are still underwater two weeks after the heavy rain. One study found that climate change may have added 10 percent to Ian’s rainfall.

Expensive resilience projects like the ones the governor has supported can only ever be a temporary fix. As the sea level goes up, they will have to be replaced. A bridge that’s been raised by a foot will have to be raised another foot and then another. The sea walls and the other infrastructures are the same thing. They do not address the cause of climate change, only the symptoms.

If Governor DeSantis ever gets serious about a changing climate, the place to start is with the emissions that are also driving Florida’s other dangerous impacts: the intensifying heat waves that put outdoor workers at risk of dehydration and death, the warmer ocean waters causing rapid intensification of storms like Ian and the toxic algae blooms, which are also exacerbated by pollution.

That means agricultural discharge and sewage leaks have jacked up the levels of nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in nearby waters. Microalgae blooms block sunlight from reaching seagrass. The dead seagrass can help blooms. This cascade of pollution has destabilized Florida’s ecosystem for plants and herbivores; scientists estimate that about 95 percent of seagrasses have died off in parts of the Indian River Lagoon. The animals are also dying without them.

Rachel Silverstein, the executive director of the environmental nonprofit Miami Waterkeeper, said that it was indicative of how dire the situation was. “The point where we would need to artificially feed a wild animal because their ecosystem is so destroyed that they cannot find food for themselves is pretty extreme.”

The supplemental feeding program began in early 2022, and was resumed this winter because of the persistence of an unusual mortality event. Silverstein said that the feeding program probably kept the manatees alive, but that it’s not sustainable for them to rely on an artificial food source in the future.

The marauding mammals are picky about the temperature of the water. That’s simply because they don’t have much body fat. Aarin-Conrad Allen, a marine Biologist and PhD candidate at Florida International University, believes that people think it is a big marine mammal and has a lot of blubber. They will go over to warmer areas when the water dips below about 67 degrees and is not well-insulated. “That’s why they go to these power plants,” he says, and it’s what draws so many to the Indian River Lagoon, which stretches about 160 miles down Florida’s space coast.