South Florida is ground zero for global warming, yet Gov. Ron DeSantis has rejected federal funding for the carbon reduction program, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pointed out recently in an NBC6 interview with Jackie Nespral.
This week, the Miami Freedom Project, an organization that advocates for equity in Miami, posted a snippet of the interview with Buttigieg to bring attention to what the group claims is the governor’s cumulative rejection of $11 billion in federal funding in recent years.
If Buttigieg’s claim is correct, Todd Crowl, director of the Institute of Environment at Florida International University, says, the rejected funds could have contributed to improve Florida’s resilience.
“Miami has the resilience 305 plan in place and so we’ve identified a whole series of projects that we’d like to do,” said Crowl. “Funds like that would have been invaluable to sort of help us reach our goals and do some very specific community-level projects.”
