Florida State Rep. John Wood (R) recently said that he doesn’t consider carbon dioxide a pollutant because it comes from God, the Tampa Tribune reported.
During a discussion with Rep. Dwight Dudley (D) about the effects of air pollution on public health, Wood said,
“If you consider CO2 to be a pollutant, than everybody zip up their mouths and don’t exhale for the rest of the meeting because you are polluting the air. CO2, in my opinion, is not a pollutant. God gave us CO2 to grow plants, for us to exhale, everything else.”
Currently, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is in charge of creating the state’s plan to comply with the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations to cut carbon emissions by 2030.
Despite his obvious lack of scientific knowledge, Wood is sponsoring legislation would require the state legislature to ratify the DEP’s proposal before it’s submitted to the EPA. Given that both houses are currently Republican-controlled, it’s unlikely that an effective plan would be able to get ratified.
Wood thinks that Florida complying with the EPA’s regulations would place “draconian costs” on the state and have little impact on the effects of climate change, specifically rising sea levels.
“The impact of the level of the sea … is equivalent to the difference of this piece of paper,” Wood said, holding up a single piece of paper. “For me, that is not good science. That is not a good reason to implement this provision on the people of Florida.”
Wood’s fight against the EPA, combined with Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) well-documented denial of climate change, could have catastrophic effects on Florida. Scientists have referred to the Sunshine State as “ground zero” for global warming and have predicted that the city of Miami could be underwater within 100 years. To keep perpetuating the lies that climate change is neither real nor human-caused will only ensure disaster for Florida.
