Florida Republican Tired of Fellow GOPers Debating Whether Climate Change Is Real

While he may not do his homework when addressing government officials at House hearings, Rep. Curt Clawson (R-FL) has been doing some thinking about a different subject that affects him and his constituents pretty directly: climate change. Usually, those are not words that come together in a sentence that also include “(R-FL),” but in this case, yes — Clawson is a Republican from Florida who seemingly believes in climate change. We found one!

Clawson did not, however, go much beyond saying that he wants to stop talking about whether the issue of climate change is real and find solutions instead. But what he did say would certainly set him apart from other Republicans in his home state, most especially Gov. Rick Scott, who wanted to flat-out ban the phrase from official state communications.

Here is exactly what Clawson said, and we advise you to prepare yourselves for a rare example of climate change sanity in Congress:

“All the chatter about is climate change real or not, I’m not sure how that helps my constituents. I’d just like to be prepared for the next hurricane.”

Okay, maybe it’s not that he believes in anthropogenic climate change, but he does recognize something terrible happening in his state — rising sea levels, tons and tons of hurricanes — and it also just so happens that the globe’s temperature is rising. But it’s a start.

[h/t Think Progress]

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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