<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/21/us-states-heatwave-fossil-fuel-money>
"Elected officials in states baking under sweltering temperatures – including
Florida, Texas and Louisiana – are prioritizing their donors from
planet-warming industries instead of protecting their constituents, advocates
say.
Florida has already seen unprecedented heat this year, with several cities
breaking daily heat records this month.
The state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, accepted over $1m from energy
companies in the 2022 election cycle and nearly $2m from agribusiness, another
top contributor to the climate crisis.
Last month, DeSantis embarked on a campaign to scrub most references to climate
change from state law. The very day DeSantis signed the bill into law, Key West
registered a heat index of 115 – tying with the highest reading on record for
any time of year.
The rightwing governor also came under fire in April when he signed a law
preventing Florida municipalities from creating heat protections for workers.
The legislation, which will go into effect on 1 July, was seemingly a response
to Miami-Dade county farmworkers’ efforts to enshrine rights to mandatory rest
breaks, access to water and shade, and other heat protections.
The “cruel” policy will boost the profits of business interests, including from
major agricultural and construction firms, who have contributed to DeSantis and
will have particularly egregious effects for the state’s largely-immigrant
agricultural work force, said Ernesto Ruiz, researcher at the Farmworker
Association of Florida.
Most of those workers are “subject to a draconian, regressive and exploitative
wage structure”, that bases compensation on number of crops harvested rather
than hours worked, and many are forced to wear long sleeves as protection from
the pesticides that are used widely, he said.
“We [also] hear from hundreds of farm workers that they purposely dehydrate
themselves … to avoid having to go to the bathroom, which can be 15 to 20
minutes away,” he said. “The sponsors and DeSantis … can only get away with
this law because they have what they view as unending disposable labor force.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
