Comedian, Florida Man and 2024 Gasparilla grand marshal Bert Kreischer was recently asked to defend the state. You see, people from other regions love to make Floridians do this, as if all residents are long-suffering public defenders working pro bono for an obviously guilty party.
“Don’t sleep on Florida …” he said on the show “After Midnight.” “Everything in Florida kills you. We have alligators, poisonous snakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, bath salts. We have lightning so bad, we can’t even have giraffes at our zoos.”
Kreischer is correct, I fear. As we cross into hurricane season this week, it’s worth remembering how Floridians are just built different. Where else do average families have survival kits stocked in the weird half-cupboard over the fridge? I bet nobody in Illinois has the stones to decapitate a lubber between sips of Miller Lite. Furthermore, wood storks literally knock on my door seeking snacks. Floridians simply do not freak out when a dinosaur descendant comes calling, only briefly wonder if we may be pregnant.
We are, as Kreischer put it, “the ones who are going to save you” when the dead start walking. That’s a vital skill set, because we’re on our own out here. Under the current political conditions, Floridians will apparently have to bootstrap our way through history’s biggest existential threat.
State leaders, who continue to guzzle bathtub gin at alarming rates, have decided now, of all times, in the Year of Our Lord 2024, to smudge the existence of climate change from state statues. A law signed this month by Gov. Ron DeSantis erases the word “climate” in nine places, moves policy away from renewable energy goals and axes a host of other environmental measures. DeSantis, naturally, took the opportunity to go on X, formerly Twitter, and dunk on “radical green zealots.”
Well, then. Florida Man, are you ready to apply a heavy layer of zinc oxide in pursuit of defeating the radical green zealots? Is your insurance policy solid, or has it been canceled? Do you know the whereabouts of your mylar blankets and water purification tablets? What’s the condition of your jon boat? We must prep for the worst in Florida, where climate change doesn’t exist.
Some considerations to the contrary:
• Federal meteorologists are forecasting an “extraordinary” hurricane season with the Atlantic Ocean already heating to typical August levels. Boiling waters will bump against a hurricane-happy La Niña, a cocktail as treacherous as a rum runner in a plastic bucket.
• A new study confirms that storms are becoming so strong, there may be justification for a Category 6 hurricane classification. This reads like a SyFy network movie, especially after the trauma of back-to-back Category 4s Ian and Idalia.
• Street flooding continues to run amok everywhere from Shore Acres to inland Riverview. Jacksonville roads could become inaccessible to emergency vehicles. Pensacola officials are asking some homeowners to raise their homes or take a buyout. In St. Pete and Tampa, both mayors are signaling concerns about the eventual livability of our coasts.
• An event called a “heat dome” in Mexico, Central America and, yes, Florida, is putting pressure on the energy grid and killing both humans and howler monkeys, the latter of which are dropping out of trees. There is no way to make this amusing. It’s awful.
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It can be easy to write off the above list as fear mongering. The view out the window might appear sunny and calm at the moment, and Hollywood has conditioned us to picture environmental disaster as hiding in the New York Public Library with a young Jake Gyllenhaal. But, guys, this is it! The crisis is already happening! The United Nations warns that more extreme, unrecoverable disasters will accelerate. This makes it all the more bonkers that the state’s Republican-led Legislature prioritizes fossil fuel profits and treats our safety like an infant playing peekaboo instead of reaching for meaningful solutions around transportation, energy and development.
But, uh, yeehaw? Floridians will get through it as colorfully as possible, of course. We will do what we always do, which is climb ladders, board up windows, fill bags with sand, grit our mojito-drenched teeth and be there for our fellow leathery man. So as Kreischer said, “give us some leeway when we take our shirt off at Buffalo Wild Wings.”
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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist offering her thoughts on current events, life and culture. She can be reached at shayes@tampabay.com.
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