DeSantis wants to rollback climate measures as he embraces ‘drill, baby, drill’ mentality
Zac Anderson, Sarasota Herald-Tribune – September 20, 2023
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attends a live taping of Hannity at Fox News Channel Studios on September 13, 2023 in New York City. DeSantis unveiled his energy policy platform on Wednesday during an event in Texas. The plan emphasizes the development of new fossil fuel resources.
Gov. Ron DeSantis dismissed fears about climate change plunging the planet into crisis Wednesday during an event in Texas where he rolled out an energy policy platform focused on developing new sources of fossil fuels.
Once hailed by environmental advocates for his green initiatives as governor, DeSantis positioned himself Wednesday as an ardent critic of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning to renewable energy sources and electric vehicles.
“We’ve seen a concerted effort to ramp up the fear when it comes to things like global warming and climate change,” DeSantis said.
Noting that phrases like “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” have grown in use, DeSantis said: “This is driven by ideology, it’s not driven by reality. In reality, human beings are safer than ever from climate disasters.”
The comments are among DeSantis’ most aggressive and extensive in pushing back against climate change concerns, which are especially pertinent in his home state of Florida where sea level rise and stronger hurricanes fed by warming waters are a major worry for climate scientists.
President Joe Biden raised concerns about climate change making natural disasters worse after Hurricane Idalia – which rapidly intensified in the warm Gulf of Mexico waters – smashed into Florida, prompting a rebuttal from DeSantis. The governor’s energy plan is an extended rebuttal to Biden’s energy and climate policies.
DeSantis wants to end subsidies for electric vehicles and pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord. He would withdraw from the Global Methane Pledge and any commitments to move toward net zero emissions, and also wants to remove the words “climate change” from some federal planning documents.
“We will also replace the phrase climate change with energy dominance in natural security and foreign policy guidance,” DeSantis said.
The governor delivered his remarks in front of an oil rig in West Texas, a major oil and gas drilling region. He promised speedy permitting of new oil and gas permits, saying his goal is to get gasoline prices down to $2 a gallon.
“We’re going to unleash our energy sector,” DeSantis said, adding: “We will green light oil and gas drilling extraction… I will demand faster approvals than any president in history. If bureaucrats are slowing down projects then those bureaucrats will lose their jobs.”
DeSantis first ran for governor in 2018 on an environmental protection platform as Florida faced a series of devastating algae blooms. Shortly after taking office he issued an executive order focused mostly on water quality initiatives, but it also incorporated efforts to help Florida prepare for climate impacts, raising hopes among environmental advocates that he would provide leadership on the issue.
DeSantis established a new state office to deal with sea level rise led by the state’s first chief resiliency officer, and pushed to fund climate mitigation efforts. His first budget proposal called for funding to address “the challenges of sea level rise, intensified storm events, and localized flooding.”
Leading environmental activists hoped DeSantis would go beyond preparing Florida for the impacts of climate change and take strong actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels and create a greenhouse effect when they accumulate in the atmosphere, warming the planet.
DeSantis touted Florida’s heavy reliance on natural gas as an energy source Wednesday, noting it produces lower emissions than coal. But environmental activists have been disappointed by the state’s energy policies and have pushed for emissions-free sources.
DeSantis questioned the dependability of some energy sources.
“We will not rely on unproven technologies that lead to blackouts… we need reliable energy in this country,” he said, adding: “When disaster strikes, when you need to get people’s electricity back on I can’t rely on windmills, I need oil and gas to get the job done.”
Ron DeSantis unveils energy platform, aims to “stop inflation and achieve $2 gas in 2025”
Katie Akin, Des Moines Register – September 20, 2023
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled an energy platform Wednesday that emphasizes American fuel production and dismisses concerns about climate change.
DeSantis announced a six-point energy plan during a campaign visit to Texas on Wednesday. The plan centers on increasing domestic production of oil and gas, while repealing or withdrawing from initiatives meant to lower carbon emissions and curb the effects of climate change.
“As president, I will fight to ensure our energy is abundant, affordable, and American,” DeSantis told the Des Moines Register in a statement. “That means protecting all liquid fuels, including biofuels, from harmful government regulation and preventing California from setting America’s environmental standards. Under my administration, we will get back to commonsense energy policies that help Iowa farmers and families, starting with eliminating mandates for electric vehicles and ending our energy sector’s reliance on China.”
DeSantis said prioritizing “American energy dominance” will “stop inflation and achieve $2 gas in 2025.”
What does Ron DeSantis have planned for Iowa biofuels?
In a Wednesday news release, DeSantis pledged to protect biofuels from “harmful government regulation” and to eliminate surtaxes on liquid fuels.
However, his policy announcement did not include details about the renewable fuel standard, a goal set by the Environmental Protection Agency to mix a certain amount of renewable fuels — like ethanol — into gasoline and diesel.
While serving in Congress, DeSantis co-sponsored a bill that would eliminate the renewable fuel standard.
A column published in the Register earlier this month offers more insight into DeSantis’ plan for biofuels. DeSantis wrote that he will work with Gov. Kim Reynolds to support the year-round sale of E15, and he would introduce higher ethanol blends, like E30, to consumers.
How would Ron DeSantis address climate change?
DeSantis calls for American energy dominance to take priority over “climate change ideology.”
He would repeal President Joe Biden’s incentives for Americans to buy electric vehicles and Biden-era rule to protect thousands of small waterways. DeSantis said he would also withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, the Global Methane Pledge and all “Net Zero” commitments.
During the first GOP presidential debate, candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believe human activities are warming the planet. DeSantis bristled at the question, telling the moderators “We’re not school children” and launching into a criticism of the media.
When pressed on the question, DeSantis said, “No, no, no — I didn’t raise a hand.”
USA Today reporter Zac Anderson contributed reporting.
How one arid city is attempting to grow 15 soccer fields of crops in the desert: ‘The world’s most food self-sufficient city’
Wes Stenzel – September 19, 2023
Saudi Arabia has enlisted Dutch greenhouse company Van Der Hoeven to synthesize a climate that will “make the desert bloom,” according to Al Arabiya News, with the goal of building “the world’s most food self-sufficient city.”
What is Saudi Arabia’s synthetic climate project?
Saudi Arabia is building Neom, a brand-new city, in the desert on the coast of the Red Sea. In order to supply food for Neom, the kingdom is paying Van Der Hoeven $120 million to create a synthetic oasis about the size of 15 soccer fields, which will allow crops to be grown in an area that ordinarily cannot sustain much life.
The greenhouses are intended to yield over 300,000 tons of produce in the next eight to 10 years.
The project is expected to begin operating its first site in August 2024 and will be using vertical farming, artificial intelligence, solar and seawater-driven cooling systems, advanced water filtration, and numerous other technologies to bolster Neom’s agricultural capabilities.
“We will scale up to hundreds of hectares with different types of greenhouses,” said Juan Carlos Motamayor, the CEO of Neom Food.
Why is this project important?
Expanding countries’ agriculture infrastructure via synthetic means, like greenhouses, will be an essential part of adapting to our planet’s overheating.
As ecosystems change with rising temperatures, so will their capabilities to grow particular kinds of food, as many fruit, vegetable, and grain plants can only survive in a fairly narrow window of average temperatures.
As such, hotter regions may be unable to grow staple crops that they used to be able to produce to feed their populations, which means they will have to turn to alternative synthetic methods like greenhouses.
By developing and improving technologies and systems that make agriculture possible in difficult climates, we better prepare our societies for rising temperatures.
Greenhouse farming is already an important part of our agricultural systems. In the United States, greenhouse vegetable production made $3 billion in 2021, according to Extrapolate. Tomatoes make up the majority of greenhouse veggies grown in the U.S., but cucumbers, bell peppers, lettuce, and herbs are also commonly grown in greenhouses.
“We are building a synthetic climate where outdoor growing is difficult, with a goal for plants to yield produce year-round,” said Michiel Schoenmaeckers, the CEO of Van Der Hoeven.
“There is no other place in the world that is trying to develop at the scale we want to develop and implement agriculture for arid conditions,” said Motamayor.
Now a pilot study has found toxic “forever chemicals” in kale samples — especially organic ones — though its authors present this as a critique of chemical pervasiveness, not an anti-kale attack.
What happened?
The nonprofit Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH) tested supermarket kale from four states and detected the toxic chemicals in seven of eight samples.
PFAS, also known as forever chemicals because of their practically endless lifespans, are compounds manufactured for special properties, including fire and water resistance. They appear in products ranging from fire extinguishers to dental floss.
Robert Verkerk, founder of ANH, told the Guardian that his group tested kale “to look at an archetypal healthy vegetable.” Researchers expected to find small amounts of PFAS, but the levels “stunned” them.
“The fact that kale, one of the healthiest foods you can get at the supermarket, is contaminated, is particularly concerning,” ANH notes online.
Verkerk told the Guardian it was also a “shock finding” that organic kale had high PFAS levels. The contamination source is unclear, though Verkerk suspected dirty water or sewage sludge spread as fertilizer.
The results, released in June, contradict previous Food and Drug Administration (FDA) analyses that reported no PFAS kale contamination.
The FDA states online that “we have found that most foods not grown or produced in specific geographic areas with known PFAS contamination do not have detectable levels of PFAS.”
ANH takes issue with the FDA and Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) testing as “grossly inadequate.”
Although there are no limits for PFAS in U.S. foods, the EPA recently proposed a PFAS drinking water standard.
What can I do about PFAS in produce?
The EPA lists steps to reduce risks, including learning more.
ANH notes that washing produce may not be effective against PFAS. The organization urges a PFAS ban and has tools for individuals to learn more and take action.
Efforts to control PFAS may help reduce planet-heating pollution. The EPA has linked PFAS production to heat-trapping gases.
For its part, ANH plans more tests, and it calls for government agencies to improve their tests and regulations: “The issue isn’t PFAS-contaminated kale per se, it’s more that we likely live in a PFAS-contaminated world.”
Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more, waste less, and help yourself while helping the planet.
Outraged beachgoer shares shocking footage of the plastic ‘nurdles’ they collected after a storm: ‘There were probably thousands’
Hayleigh Evans – September 15, 2023
In a viral Reddit post, one user has declared war. While their enemy may be small, they are a sizable opponent responsible for mighty environmental consequences.
This Redditor is fighting plastic pollution by hunting down nurdles and removing them from nature. Nurdles are tiny pellets that are essential ingredients in many plastic products.
They are melted down to make plastic water bottles, vehicle parts, and other products.
These microplastics resemble fish eggs. Nurdles are frequently clear or white, but you may come across brightly colored pellets as well. They are lentil-sized, or about 3 to 5 millimeters in diameter.
“So many nurdles after a rain,” the Redditor writes. “I friggin hate nurdles.”
This Redditor’s quest is a noble environmental pursuit. Billions of nurdles have entered ecosystems around the world, as ships have repeatedly spilled tons of them into oceans during transport.
Roughly 253,000 tons of nurdles enter oceans each year. These toxic pellets then make landfall on coastlines, and they are especially prevalent after rainfall.
Research shows these pellets absorb and transport toxic chemicals into marine environments. Seabirds, fish, and crustaceans will mistakenly eat them because they resemble fish eggs.
This mistake can be extremely harmful, if not deadly, to these animals. Nurdles can cause stomach ulcerations that lead to starvation and introduce harmful chemicals to animals and the greater food chain.
This Redditor is one of many nurdle hunters who want to protect coastlines, wildlife, and water sources. Fellow Redditors have applauded their efforts in the post’s comment section.
“I live on the coast and saw a bunch of them in multiple colors,” one user comments. “I spent 20 minutes picking them up (especially the brightly colored ones since I didn’t want the birds or wildlife to eat them) but there were probably thousands left on that beach.”
Scientists are sounding the alarm about a dangerous problem that will soon affect 2 billion people — here’s what to know
Laurelle Stelle – September 15, 2023
As the world has gotten hotter, more people are exposed to dangerously high temperatures each year. Recent findings published in Nature Sustainability show that without policy changes, the world will heat up enough by the end of the century that more than 2 billion people will live in life-threatening hot climates, as Science Hub reported.
What’s happening?
So far, the world’s average temperature has risen by just under 1.2 degrees Celsius (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial level due to human activity, according to Science Hub. The Paris Agreement — an international treaty to limit heat-trapping gases produced by each country and stop the world from getting hotter — proposed to cap the increase at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, the new study found that with the current laws, population growth, and environmental conditions, the world will likely reach about 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial benchmark, per Science Hub.
The researchers then looked at which areas would be most affected if the temperature increased to that level. They defined “unprecedented heat” zones as areas where the average temperature throughout the year, counting all seasons, is 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.
Science Hub reported that 40 years ago, only 12 million people worldwide lived in regions with temperatures surpassing that heat. Today, thanks to the warming we’ve already experienced, about 60 million people are affected.
The study found that by 2100, 2 billion out of the world’s projected population of 9.5 billion will live in areas with an average temperature higher than 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The most affected areas will be countries around the equator, noted Science Hub: India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Pakistan.
Why is this heating worrisome?
The hotter the world gets, the more heat waves, droughts, and wildfires we experience. As Science Hub reported, studies have also linked the rising heat to everything from more contagious diseases to lower labor efficiency and more conflict between people.
“That’s a profound reshaping of the habitability of the surface of the planet, and could lead potentially to the large-scale reorganization of where people live,” study author Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, told ScienceAlert.
What’s being done?
Science Hub reported that if the global community reaches the goal set by the Paris Agreement, the affected population would be limited to half a billion people instead of 2 billion.
In the meantime, individuals can protect themselves from heat waves with these tips for cooling off.
Earth’s mysterious core may be encased by an ancient ocean floor that has mountains 5 times taller than Everest
Marianne Guenot – September 14, 2023
An artist’s impression inspired by scientists’s discovery that a structure, made of ancient ocean, might wrap around the Earth’s core, shielding the mantle from its intense heat.Edward Garnero and Mingming Li at Arizona State University
Scientists have created a detailed map of the geology beneath Earth’s southern hemisphere.
They believe an ancient ocean floor may be wrapped around our planet’s mysterious core.
The new findings could explain why the core is so much hotter than the mantle above it.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about our planet’s core, which lies about 1,800 miles beneath our feet.
Now, a new study has revealed a discovery that could help researchers piece together its mysterious inner workings.
The research suggests that Earth’s core could be encased in an ancient ocean floor that features giant mountains five times the size of Mount Everest.
Researchers made the discovery after creating the most detailed map yet of the geology beneath our planet’s southern hemisphere.
If confirmed, this “recycled” ocean floor would act almost like a “blanket” that keeps heat trapped inside the core, Samantha Hansen, study lead author and geological sciences professor of the University of Alabama, told Insider in an email.
Earth is like a giant recycling plant
Scientists have long been confused by the boundary between the mantle and the core.
About 2,000 miles under the Earth’s surface, conditions shift dramatically: temperatures shoot up drastically, and the rock composition changes abruptly from a solid bulk of rock in the mantle to gooey iron sludge inside the core.
To understand more about this boundary, scientists have looked at seismic waves coming from earthquakes. As these waves spread from the epicenter of the quake through the inside of our planet, they provide information about the Earth’s innards.
“Admittedly, to most people, seismic data is probably not that interesting to look at. It is a wiggly line that varies with time. But that wiggly line contains an amazing amount of information!” Hansen told Insider.
Researchers are seen placing their seismic equipment under the snow in Antarctica. Scientists have found looking at data from earthquakes that there may be a layer of ancient ocean floor coating the Earth’s core.Lindsey Kenyon
Scientists had previously spotted areas of so-called ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZ) — areas where the seismic waves unexpectedly slow down — near the core-mantle boundary.
But they had only found patches of this unknown structure.
Hansen and her team headed to Antarctica to understand how far that ULVZ could go. They placed seismic equipment at 15 stations on the continent and collected data for three years.
They found the ULVZ was much more widespread than previously thought. Indeed, it was present “over a significant portion of the southern hemisphere,” suggesting this layer coats the entirety of the core, said Hansen.
The layer may come from recycled bits of ancient ocean floor
Hansen and her team used modeling to understand how this layer may have appeared.
For them, the answer was clear: the layer was likely bits of ancient ocean floor, gobbled up over the ages from the surface as tectonic plates stretched and squished together.
“As the results came together – both from the seismic work and the geodynamic models – it was quite exciting to see the similarities between them,” she said.
“Together, they make a compelling case for subducted oceanic materials being the main source of ULVZs,” she said.
Due to its composition, the ocean floor is a perfect candidate for this layer, Hansen said. It’s very dense, which means it is heavy enough to sink through the mantle. It’s also likely to become more heat resistant as it faces intense pressure deep inside the Earth.
This could explain why the changes seen at the boundary between the core and the mantle are so stark.
“By having this additional layer blanketing the core, the heat won’t be able to escape as easily/readily,” Hansen said.
It’s quite important to understand how heat moves around and escapes the core. The core’s temperature variations control “where we have mantle plumes,” the pools of lava that create archipelagos like Hawaii, for instance, said Hansen.
It also influences the Earth’s magnetic field, she said.
Before we can add this new layer to science books, more research will be needed to rule out other explanations.
Some have suggested that the ULVZ could be due to another, completely unknown, material, generated by the unique chemical reactions that could be happening at the boundary. Others think the bizarre seismic data seen at the boundary is due to a specific state of melting we don’t quite understand, said Hansen.
Still, if Hansen’s team is correct, this could provide a new chapter to the story of Earth’s formation.
“If ULVZs are associated with these subduction materials, they could help us get a better understanding of how the overall plate tectonics cycle works and how our planet has evolved through time,” said Hansen.
The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advance in April.
Earth is outside its ‘safe operating space for humanity’ on most key measurements, study says
Seth Borenstein – September 13, 2023
A woman is silhouetted against the setting sun as triple-digit heat indexes continue in the Midwest, Aug. 20, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)Haze blankets the main business district in Jakarta, Indonesia, Aug. 11, 2023. Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three, one being air pollution, are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, File)
Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said.
Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said.
“We are in very bad shape,” said study co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.”
In 2009, Rockstrom and other researchers created nine different broad boundary areas and used scientific measurements to judge Earth’s health as a whole. Wednesday’s paper was an update from 2015 and it added a sixth factor to the unsafe category. Water went from barely safe to the out-of-bounds category because of worsening river run-off and better measurements and understanding of the problem, Rockstrom said.
These boundaries “determine the fate of the planet,” said Rockstrom, a climate scientist. The nine factors have been “scientifically well established” by numerous outside studies, he said.
If Earth can manage these nine factors, Earth could be relatively safe. But it’s not, he said.
In most of the cases, the team uses other peer-reviewed science to create measurable thresholds for a safety boundary. For example, they use 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air, instead of the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times. This year carbon in the air peaked at 424 parts per million.
The nine factors are intermingled. When the team used computer simulations, they found that making one factor worse, like the climate or biodiversity, made other Earth environmental issues degrade, while fixing one helped others. Rockstrom said this was like a simulated stress test for the planet.
The simulations showed “that one of the most powerful means that humanity has at its disposal to combat climate change” is cleaning up its land and saving forests, the study said. Returning forests to late 20th century levels would provide substantial natural sinks to store carbon dioxide instead of the air, where it traps heat, the study said.
Biodiversity – the amount and different types of species of life – is in some of the most troubling shape and it doesn’t get as much attention as other issues, like climate change, Rockstrom said.
“Biodiversity is fundamental to keeping the carbon cycle and the water cycle intact,” Rockstrom said. “The biggest headache we have today is the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis.”
University of Michigan environmental studies dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the study, called the study “deeply troubling in its implications for the planet and people should be worried.”
“The analysis is balanced in that it clearly sounds a flashing red alarm, but it is not overly alarmist,” Overpeck said. “Importantly, there is hope.”
The fact that ozone layer is the sole improving factor shows that when the world and its leaders decide to recognize and act on a problem, it can be fixed and “for the most part there are things that we know how to do” to improve the remaining problems, said Carnegie Mellon chemistry and environment professor Neil Donahue.
Some biodiversity scientists, such as Duke’s Stuart Pimm, have long disputed Rockstrom’s methods and measurements, saying it makes the results not worth much.
But Carnegie Mellon environmental engineering professor Granger Morgan, who wasn’t part of the study, said, “Experts don’t agree on exactly where the limits are, or how much the planet’s different systems may interact, but we are getting dangerously close.”
“I’ve often said if we don’t quickly cut back on how we are stressing the Earth, we’re toast,” Morgan said in an email. “This paper says it’s more likely that we’re burnt toast.”
Proud purple to angry red: These Florida residents feel unwelcome in ‘new’ Florida
Tom McLaughlin, USA TODAY NETWORK – August 21, 2023
When Alexander Vargas was a senior at Port Orange’s Spruce Creek High School in 2021, he spoke at a school board meeting to fight for recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school board voted against the idea, but the superintendent later decided the week should be acknowledged.
Jean Siebenaler moved to Florida following her retirement to bask in the warmth of the Sunshine State.
“I finally thought I’d be sitting on the water with an umbrella drink in my hand,” she said.
The Milton resident, a military veteran and retired physician, now says she wonders if Florida was where she needed to relocate after all. Having been politically active in her home state of Ohio, she finds beach time consumed by “steaming and stewing” over the state of the state and local politics.
“It’s very upsetting, the direction we see Florida heading,” she said. “Every day I wonder why I am living here.”
For many, Florida has changed. What was once a proudly purple state has turned an angry red, they say. Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the dedicated backing of a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, is waging war on what he calls “wokeism” — a term he has loosely defined as “a form of cultural Marxism.” But many — people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, non-Christians, teachers, union members, students — feel it is a war against themselves, as they face ridicule, discrimination, and, potentially, violence.
The NAACP, Equity Florida and the League of United Latin American Citizens each issued travel advisories for Florida. The NAACP advisory states, in part, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ individuals.”
“Under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis, the state has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the Democratic ideals that our union was founded upon,” the advisory states.
Democrats feel vilified because of affiliation
There exist widespread reports of people abandoning the state because they no longer feel welcome here. Following her family’s exodus to Pennsylvania in May, former Brevard County resident and Democratic Party activist Stacey Patel told FLORIDA TODAY, “It’s like breathing, you know? After holding your breath for a really long time.”
Nikki Fried, the state’s former commissioner of agriculture and current Florida Democratic Party chair, predicted 800,000 immigrants had left the state after DeSantis signed SB 1718 into law. It imposes strict restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers in the state.
Democrats also count themselves among the groups feeling persecuted. Patel’s family was vilified, she said, for its party affiliation.
Siebenaler, who has stepped into the position of legislative chair for the Democratic Women’s Club of Florida, attended an early June meeting of the Santa Rosa County Commission to call out Commissioner James Calkins for labeling the Democratic Party as evil.
“I took an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she told the governing board. “And I must speak out against the hate speech that is emanating from the Santa Rosa County Commission dais.”
Calkins has been admonished on several occasions by the public and his peers for his incendiary rhetoric and disruptive behavior. But Siebenaler is not one to typically show up at county board meetings.
“It’s very, very upsetting. We’ve lost all sense of sanity, logic and civil discourse. It’s so difficult to sit in on meetings because it’s such a clown show,” Siebenaler said. “People are so dramatic, so theatrical. It makes me just so sad that we have gotten to the point where the average person doesn’t want to go to these meetings, where all people do is yell and scream.”
Teachers are heading for the exit
Similarly, according to Lisa Masserio, the president of the teacher’s union in Hernando County, a minority segment of that county’s school board attached to Moms For Liberty is creating chaos in that area.
The school district typically provides at its May 30 meeting an accounting of how many teachers will be leaving the school district that year. This year it was announced that of the 49 people not returning to Hernando County schools next year, 33 had voluntarily tendered their resignations.
Masserio estimated the number of resignations had approximately doubled those of the year before and would create “the highest number of vacancies we’ve had in a long time.”
“We’ve seen so many resignations of people who have made the decision ‘I don’t want to teach here,’ ” she said.
Eighty-three percent of the Hernando County teachers with three years or less experience were among those who resigned, said Dan Scott, a former World History teacher at Springstead High School.
Scott, who was in his third year of teaching, was one of “13 or 14” at Springstead alone who chose to pursue another occupation, in large part, “based on the overhead decisions in the government of Florida,” he said.
“There are a lot of limitations being placed on teachers in regards to how we can communicate with students and what kind of content we’re allowed to discuss within the curriculum,” he said. “Education has become a very hostile environment from top to bottom.”
Among the limitations, Scott said, were soon-to-be-imposed sanctions on what text he could use. Among the outrages, a school board member stalking school hallways searching for items that didn’t correlate with the curriculum. In other words, Pride flags, Scott said.
“Not everyone left for the same reasons I did. For me, I didn’t want to teach if I couldn’t teach the truth and if I couldn’t represent students the way I thought I should,” he said. “I let every student be exactly who they wanted to be, whatever religion, whatever they identify as. I tried to give everybody their space. Whenever I couldn’t do that any more I realized I didn’t need to be in this career.”
Scott has returned to school himself to embark on the study of technology and cybersecurity, and Siebenaler remains steadfast in her dedication to battle the state’s continuing rightward trek. “I’m hoping it’s a blip on the historical radar and that I live to see sanity come back,” she said.
Others around Florida are facing what they view as ostracization by their state government in different ways. These are their stories:
‘Fighting with one hand tied behind your back’
David Lucas, left, unwittingly became the poster child for urban renewal in the early 1960s when he was a small child. His father, Harold Lucas, at right, was shopping for fishing poles in Sears on Beach Street in Daytona Beach when a man asked if it was OK if he photographed his son. The elder Lucas said OK, not realizing the photographer was a government official involved in the urban renewal program that wound up leveling many homes and businesses in Midtown.More
David Lucas grew up listening to his 90-year-old father’s stories of how cruel the world was to Black people in decades past.
While the 60-year-old Lucas has been spared much of what his father’s generation endured, he’s been getting an unexpected reality check on how some things have yet to improve for minorities.
The flurry of bills passed in Tallahassee over the past two years that impact voting, immigration, education, guns and LGBTQ+ people has left his head spinning.
“I just don’t understand how they can make so many changes so fast,” Lucas said. “As a Black man it’s alarming because we have so many different fronts we have to fight.”
The new laws have already impacted Lucas and his wife, who works alongside him at their Jamaican food restaurant in Daytona Beach’s Midtown neighborhood.
She’s from Jamaica, and while she’s not a U.S. citizen yet, she’s in the United States legally and has a visa. Some of Lucas’ friends from Jamaica, other Caribbean islands, Russia and Poland also have visas, but others are undocumented.
Several of those friends cleared out of Florida and headed north more than a month ago after a new immigration law left them scared they could be sent back to the countries they chose to leave.
“They were people who had lives here,” Lucas said.
David Lucas and his wife Claudette are shown in front of their restaurant, A Golden Taste of Jamaican Food and Treats, on Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard in Daytona Beach. Lucas is still trying to digest all the new laws passed in Florida the past two years that impact voting, education, immigration, guns and LGBTQ+ people.
The new law requires employers with 25 or more workers to use the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system to confirm employees’ eligibility to work in the United States beginning July 1. E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility.
The new Florida law imposes penalties for those employing undocumented immigrants, and enhances penalties for human smuggling.
The statute also prohibits local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented immigrants, invalidates ID cards issued to undocumented immigrants in other states, and requires hospitals to collect and submit data on the costs of providing health care to undocumented immigrants.
Lucas is also bothered by a new law that will allow people to carry concealed weapons without securing a permit, taking a previously required class, or getting fingerprinted.
“You’ll have a lot of armed heroes,” Lucas predicted. “A lot of people don’t know how to use a handgun, but they’ll have their chest poked out waiting for a reason.”
Lucas said permitless carry has him personally worried.
“Now I don’t want to go anywhere there’ll be a lot of people,” he said.
A third of Black men in the United States have felony convictions, which prohibits them from purchasing or possessing a firearm. Lucas is afraid that’s going to mean many of them will be left vulnerable as more people than ever will be carrying concealed firearms without a permit.
Lucas is also bothered by recent changes in Florida laws that could make it more difficult for some people to vote.
“Voting is most important because that’s how things are changed,” he said. “That’s how jobs are created and taken away, laws are created and taken away. If you don’t have the strength of voting, then you’re basically fighting with one hand tied behind your back.”
New laws impacting what’s taught in Florida classrooms are also not sitting well with Lucas.
“I have children now that are in school not learning history the way it happened,” he said.
It appears to him to be an effort to erase pieces of history “like it doesn’t exist.”
Lucas said some people around his age aren’t pushing back on recent changes impacting minorities.
“They close their eyes and hope it’ll get better,” he said. “They say we’ll just have to live with it. Younger people aren’t going to have it. They have groups trying to fight it.”
‘Pretty damn depressed’
Erin Rothrock of Lakeland is a transgender man. He said the current political atmosphere in Florida makes him depressed and scared.
Until recently, Erin Rothrock felt relatively stable and content living in Florida.
Rothrock, a veterinarian and a married father of four (with another on the way), was considering buying into a clinic to become a business owner. His wife has a well-established law practice. Their children are enmeshed in their schools and have plenty of friends.
But Rothrock, a transgender man, no longer feels secure in Florida, his home since 2009.
“Emotionally, if I think about it, I get pretty damn depressed,” said Rothrock, 39, a Lakeland resident. “And I get scared.”
Rothrock said the climate of acceptance in Florida for LGBTQ+ people, and especially for transgender residents, has dramatically altered.
“It really feels like it’s really changed in the last six months,” he said. “Before that, it really felt like — OK, yeah, there are some conservative people around, but things aren’t bad. And now it’s just like — OK, now we have this environment where these conservative ideas and these conservative people are just making life miserable for people that are living here.”
He added: “I mean, it’s really uncomfortable. It’s off-putting. It’s unwelcoming, and it feels dangerous.”
Discussions with other transgender people have lately taken on a fraught quality, Rothrock said.
“So, conversations I’ve had with a lot of other trans people — besides just the usual, ‘Hey, how you doing? How’s life? How’s school? How’s work? How are the kids?’ — it’s ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling? Have you had any problems? Have you had any trouble getting your meds? Are you going to move? Where are you going? I’ve heard this place is safe,’ ” he said.
Rothrock and his family are considering a move out of Florida. He said he knows other transgender people who have already taken that step.
“I’ve got a friend in Canada that’s begging me to move up,” he said. “They’re offering to assist me. I’ve got a friend in New York begging me to move up. They’re offering to help me.”
Rothrock said that what’s happening in Florida seems to counter the prevailing overall trend in the country.
“I feel like nationally there’s a big push and pull because we know that the general consensus is that most people are OK with gay marriage, support gay marriage,” Rothrock said. “They support transgender people being able to transition and use the restroom that they fit into. But I feel like there’s this real pushback from that conservative base. At this point, I think they’ve outmaneuvered the progressive side.”
The push for new laws — in Florida and elsewhere — targeting medical care and other aspects of life for transgender residents seems a reaction against their increased visibility and acceptance, Rothrock said.
“I think it’s that backlash to the small gains in equality that we’ve made,” he said. “You know, we see it time and time again, historically, that whenever minorities get progress and make some advancements, there’s always a backlash. After the Civil War, there were these Jim Crow laws because Black people got too much power. Marriage equality (emerged), and now we have these new transgender restrictions and restrictions on what people can do.”
New guidelines on gender-affirming care are affecting adults and not only minors, Rothrock said. He recently had to scramble to find a new provider for his regular supply of hormone treatment and briefly ran out of medication.
“I don’t do well mentally, my mental state declines, when I’m not on my medication,” he said. “So I’ve got a therapist; I talk to her on a regular basis. I do everything I can to mitigate those things. But that’s extra mental baggage.”
‘Fear culture’ in the classroom
There is ‘no way’ retired educator Lillian De La Concepcion Martinez would step back into the classroom to do the work she once loved: teach Spanish and Art History to students in Manatee County.
Born to Cuban parents in Miami and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Martinez served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Coast Guard in the mid-1970s, and worked as an educator at Manatee County schools from 1989 until she retired in 2020.
“I’m of a different generation,” Martinez said. “When I showed up to boot camp, my staff sergeant looked at me, because I was this pretty girl, tan, nice clothes and I had this designer luggage with me. Nobody told me I couldn’t bring any clothes and I was carrying my suitcase.”
“He gets all us girls together and says, ‘well you girls are going to learn to cuff like a man or grow hair on your chest.’ Can you imagine that now? It’s almost like people are too sensitive nowadays, they take everything personally,” she said.
Lillian De La Concepcion Martinez
But he is glad she never had to experience the fear her former coworkers say they experience as educators today.
“There is a fear culture in the classroom now,” Martinez said. “I’m glad that I retired when I did, because I don’t know that I would want to teach under these circumstances. They did call me a few months back because they wanted to know if I wanted to come back and teach. I said, not ‘no,’ but ‘hell no.’ There is no way.”
Martinez began her career teaching English to migrant students as a tutor in Manatee County, then as a parent social educator. She attended the University of South Florida at night, and when she graduated in 1999 she became a teacher. Her last teaching job was at Lakewood Ranch High Schoo from 2003 until she retired.
She loves to teach, and always enjoyed using music and poetry and other outside-the-box strategies to teach her students.
“I just have a love for the language, for the culture, so I like to get them enthused,” Martinez said. “I love teaching Spanish 1 because they are fresh, but I really love teaching (Spanish) 4 because I could do so much with them culturally, and with poetry.”
“I think the last couple years (the song) “La Gozadera” was very popular,” she said. “I played that one for my level one kids like their second day. I gave them a sheet and said ‘write down how many countries that they say in Spanish that you recognize,’ just to see what they could hear, and they would surprise themselves when they were able to pick out a lot of words.”
“My kids had to memorize José Martí poems,” she said. “I said ‘guys, it will help with your language’ because of the flow. You can’t come up here and just say, ‘Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma.’ You have to have emotion. That’s what they had to work on and it helped with their fluency.”
But today, under the watchful eye of parents and politicians, Martinez said she doesn’t know how others would perceive many of the books she kept in her classrooms, or the historically accurate lessons she imparted to her students.
“I had a lot of books in my classroom by Spanish authors,” she said. “Books that I had read, and they were open and free for kids that wanted to take a book and read it. I did have a lot of multicultural-type books. Biographies on Hispanic people, artists. Frida. Dalí. Celia Cruz. Roberto Clemente.”
“And I’m hearing that a lot of those books are being pulled now, because they reflect a culture that’s different,” she said. “What is it, that it could ‘stress them out’ for whatever reason. Like with Celia Cruz, you have to talk about communism. She fled Cuba, and she said as long as Castro was alive she would never set foot in Cuba again. That’s very political. I don’t know if I could teach that now. You know? Because that’s a political statement. And Celia Cruz is Afro-Cuban, she identified as that. Could we even say that?”
Martinez questions the future of art history classes, especially after an incident in March when Hope Carrasquilla, a former principal at the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after teaching sixth-grade students about Michelangelo’s “David” and showing photos of the masterpiece sculpture.
“Somebody complained that it was pornographic,” Martinez said. “I just rolled my eyes and told a former colleague of mine that is also retired, I said, ‘you wait and see.’ This is after they banned the AP African Studies program. I said ‘pretty soon, they are going to drop AP art history,’ because there is nudity in AP art history.”
She wonders about her lessons about the casta paintings, and how lessons about their historic significance would be perceived today.
The paintings were drawn in the 18th century as a way to establish hierarchical scale of races after Spanish colonization of the Americas led to anxiety over racial mixing between Spanish colonizers, indigenous people and African slaves.
“The casta paintings, it’s treated like a work of art but it’s really an anthropological piece, because of what they documented in that artwork,” Martinez said. “I talked about one, but there were others. It’s really about the mixing of the races, and that white European is No. 1 on the hierarchy.
“I don’t know if that would fly right now,” she said.
“I like history, so I used art to teach something about the stuff that was going on,” she said. “It was never like ‘oh my god, Spaniards were bad, or anything.’ No. Those are just facts, it’s just the way it was. We can’t change history, all we can do is just not repeat it.”
“Gut punch after gut punch’
Andy Crossfield was in an airport in Lyon, France, last year when a fellow tourist from North Carolina learned that he and his wife, Emily, hailed from Florida.
“Don’t you just love your governor?” the woman asked.
Crossfield replied, “Are you kidding?”
Crossfield, a Lakeland resident and a self-described liberal Democrat, said the episode in France offered a reminder of his status as an undisputed political minority in Florida.
A Georgia native, Crossfield moved to Florida in 1978, during the tenure of Gov. Reubin Askew, the state’s third-to-last Democratic leader. Crossfield said that he didn’t become politically engaged until after his retirement in 1997 from a career as a mutual fund wholesaler.
He has since served as president of the Lakeland Democratic Club and an officer with the League of Women Voters of Polk County.
Crossfield, 70, said Democrats and Republicans seem to perceive virtually all occurrences through different lenses. He compared the phenomenon to the 2015 internet fad involving a photo of a dress that some perceived as blue and black and others as white and gold.
“We see instances of an event, and right away we try to figure out, ‘Is that good for my side, or is that bad for me?’ ” he said. “And this is politics taken to the extreme.”
Crossfield said the political divide has become personal for him and fellow Democrats. He said his relationship with his brother, who is conservative, has become strained.
“Everybody’s lost friends and neighbors over this,” he said. “You can’t have anything in common when you wish a completely different future for the country.”
Has Crossfield maintained friendships with any conservative Republicans?
“I try,” he said. “They make it difficult. I mean, they’re intelligent people, but they want to believe the most ridiculous things. I had a woman tell me — that I had a pretty good relationship with, I guess — that COVID was a fake. All these people that were dying, (it) was just a lie. And that (former President Donald) Trump had intercepted the virus and had his people manipulate it into something benign.”
Andy Crossfield, a self-described liberal Democrat living in Lakeland, holds a spark-spitting, windup u0022Trumpzillau0022 toy in his office.
Crossfield said it is “humbling” to be a Democrat in Florida at this point. He is highly critical of the policies promoted by DeSantis and the Legislature.
“We seem to have Jim Crow 2.0 now, because the attack on voting rights is very frightening,” he said, “The restrictions that Florida has put on people who just want to register people to vote is outrageous.”
Crossfield said he now avoids watching the news because he finds Florida’s politics so irksome.
“I think the electorate, the populace, is responsible for this,” he said. “Life is so hard that they’ll take somebody who wants to stick it to somebody they don’t like, rather than make my life better. I hate to say that, but that’s what it looks like to me.”
Crossfield lives in Polk County, which has not elected a Democrat to any partisan office in well over a decade. In recent cycles, some Republican legislators and county commissioners have been reelected without opposition.
“We have a catch-22 that I don’t know how to solve,” he said. “You can’t get quality candidates unless you have support from the grassroots. And you can’t get grassroots support after gut punch after gut punch results from elections without a quality candidate. I don’t know what breaks first.”
Crossfield empathized with liberal friends who yearn to flee the state.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of people who say, ‘Well, I’m going to leave,’ ” he said. “Somebody on Facebook posted this thing, saying, ‘Don’t leave Florida. Fix it’. And I think I responded, ‘Florida is not an old car that would shine with a little TLC. In fact, every time we take it in for repairs, the mechanic is stealing parts off of it.’ That’s where we are.”
When asked if he has become depressed about Florida’s politics, Crossfield found optimism in the performance of Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz, an evangelical Christian and a Republican who has defied some expectations by supporting the removal of a Confederate statue from a downtown park and by not blocking the city’s issuance of LGBTQ Pride proclamations.
Crossfield said he now concentrates on small, concrete measures to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. For example, he and others in the local chapter of the League of Women Voters are promoting the distribution of gun locks.
“All we’re trying to do is just pick these areas that we can make some good, some change,” he said. “And yeah, that gives me hope.”
‘To hell and back because of who they are’
Transgender Stetson University student Alexander Vargas wants the same things other people his age do: To finish college, find a career he enjoys, and share his life with friends and family. Some new state laws are making his day-to-day life harder, including one measure that’s making it more difficult for him to find a bathroom he can legally use.More
Alexander Vargas is a 19-year-old college student. His biggest worries should revolve around getting good grades, figuring out what kind of a career he wants after college, and deciding what he wants to do for fun every weekend.
Instead the Stetson University psychology major is always reminding himself to steer clear of public men’s restrooms so he won’t get fined for using bathrooms that align with his gender identity, but not the gender he was assigned at birth. Stetson officials have set him up with a one-person restroom he can use on campus, but once he leaves school property, bathroom access becomes a problem again.
He’s also adjusting to new state government rules that have made it more complicated for him to get the testosterone his doctor prescribes so he can more fully live as a male.
The young transgender man is trying to figure out if he should move to another state where basic day-to-day living wouldn’t be such a struggle, and he could escape the worsening anti-LGBTQ+ climate in Florida.
“Moving out of Florida is a last resort if things get worse, like if I can’t receive my gender-affirming care,” Vargas said. “I could move to another state and switch schools. It would be the easiest way to do it.”
He has both a “Plan B” and a “Plan C,” but he hopes he never feels compelled to use either one. Vargas would prefer to stay right where he is.
Vargas has a very supportive family he still lives with in eastern Volusia County. His partner and job are in the area.
He would love to finish his last two years of college at Stetson as he progresses toward his goal of working with autistic children and using art therapy as a form of communication for the kids when they become nonverbal.
“My life is here, and the thought of uprooting it is terrifying,” he said.
Vargas has been called a freak and he’s had slurs hurled his way.
He’s seen others in Florida subjected to the same things.
“I have trans friends who’ve been to hell and back because of who they are,” Vargas said.
Two years ago, when he was a senior at Spruce Creek High School, he found the courage to speak out.
Vargas attended a school board meeting to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the wake of a board vote that shot down recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school superintendent eventually decided the week should be acknowledged.
Vargas knows his family and friends have his back, and that empowers him to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. But if things ever do get bad enough for him in Florida, he’ll start a new chapter somewhere else.
“I’m just waiting for that last straw,” he said.
Fighting against misinformation and fear
Grace Resendez McCaffery, the publisher of the Pensacola-based La Costa Latina Newspaper, a Spanish-language newspaper that covers Northwest Florida and South Alabama, has lived in Florida for 30 years after moving from her hometown of El Paso, Texas.
She founded La Costa Latina Newspaper a year after Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004. She saw the need in the region for a Spanish-language publication, and her newspaper has become a hub of information for the Hispanic community in the Panhandle.
Since DeSantis signed SB 1718, which targets immigrants who lack a permanent legal status, Resendez McCaffery has worked to fight against misinformation about the new law as well as make the broader community aware of its impact on the Hispanic community.
She said it’s discouraging to see a law like SB 1718, but is more worried about the state’s actions being adopted at the national level.
“I don’t have plans to leave,” Resendez McCaffery said. “I have imagined what would happen if our governor became the president.”
“If these types of policies became national policies, I think that would be pretty unpleasant,” she said. “And I have toyed with the idea that I might have to somewhere (out of country).”
Grace Resendez McCaffery, right, and Jessica Rangel, 21, hug as they and other protestors in support of DACA gathered at the corner of Palafox and Garden Streets in Pensacola on Sept. 5, 2017. United States attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the end of the DACA program.
In the meantime, Resendez McCaffery sees her mission as getting accurate information out to her community.
“My concern is an individual’s need right now,” she said. “They’re hungry, or they need housing, or they need just some support to know that not everybody hates them. Sometimes that’s all they want to know. And so, I know that my purpose here is to kind of relay that.”
Heartbreak and anger
In March, Jason DeShazo spoke to a Florida Senate committee while dressed as Momma Ashley Rose, his drag character, in a demure yet colorfully checkered dress with a fluffy blond wig.
“Do I look like a stripper?” the Lakeland resident asked members of the House Judiciary Committee, as they considered a bill intended to curtail drag performances.
With the legislative session over and the law taking effect July 1, DeShazo said it is a bleak time for Florida’s drag performers and the LGBTQ+ population in general.
“It’s kind of a mix between heartbreaking and anger, right?” said DeShazo, 44. “You just want to kind of shout it from the rooftops, like, we’ve got more important things to worry about. We worry about a drag queen reading stories to children when children are having to learn how to do active-shooter training and how to get away from active shooters in schools. And you’re telling me that I’m the issue?”
DeShazo, a gay man, has been performing in drag for more than 20 years. He created Momma Rose Dynasty, a nonprofit that he says has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support LGBTQ-oriented charities.
DeShazo specializes in “family friendly” shows and readings, at which his matronly character serves up affirmation and acceptance for youngsters who are LGBTQ or unsure about their sexuality or gender.
Last December, about a dozen men wearing Nazi attire showed up to protest a Lakeland event DeShazo had organized. The demonstrators projected lights onto the venue’s exterior bearing such messages as “Warning: Child grooming in process” — a claim DeShazo vehemently rejects.
An Orlando high school canceled DeShazo’s appearance in March as Momma Ashley Rose at a long-planned “Drag and Donuts” after-school event, under pressure from the Florida Department of Education.
And then the Legislature passed and DeSantis signed the bill officially titled “Protection of Children.”
“It’s just something that we never thought we would have to go through again,” DeShazo said. “This is stuff that our community went through in the ‘50s, ’60s and ’70s. It’s just kind of a shocker that drag has become such a target — not only just drag, but the trans(gender) community, too, is a huge target with what’s happening politically right now.”
Jason DeShazo of Lakeland performs as the drag queen Momma Ashley Rose. He said he is shocked that drag performers have become such a political target in Florida.
Since the Nazi incident, DeShazo said he has been forced to spend hundreds of dollars at every event for extra security. He has also bolstered protections at his house in response to death threats.
In May, the group Fathers for Freedom urged supporters to “accost” parents who took children to a tea party brunch in Lakeland staged by DeShazo’s organization. He said he was relieved that no protesters actually showed up.
“So, it is a daily fear,” he said. “I mean, I can honestly tell you that there are times I’m walking through a grocery store and I’m having to look over my shoulder because you never know, right? Especially now that my face as a boy and in drag is out there.”
DeShazo said he sought legal help to review the new law, and he is confident that his performances do not violate it. His costumes do not feature prosthetic breasts, one of the elements identified in the law as potentially lewd when used in “adult live performances.”
DeShazo said he knows of two drag queens who have already fled Florida and another who is making plans to leave. But he is determined to stay.
“I have no judgment for anyone that wants to leave because I think everyone has their own reasons — and valid reasons,” he said. “But for me, of course I want to pack up and leave. I don’t want to have to sit here and worry about my life and worry about what laws are going to be passed next to dehumanize me. But who’s going to stay and fight if we all leave? If everyone who is different, that they’re trying to drive out of here, leaves, who’s going to be here to stay and fight for the ones that can’t leave?”
Does DeShazo feel that as a gay man and a drag queen he is no longer welcome in Florida?
“Politically, 100%,” he said. “It’s been known that we’re not welcome here. It’s been known that we’re not wanted here. But it definitely seems like the people don’t necessarily agree; the majority don’t agree.”
The publicity surrounding the taunts by neo-Nazis in December produced an outpouring of solidarity, DeShazo said.
“I think people are starting to see other people’s true colors, like, other people’s true discriminations and hate,” he said. “At the same time, we’ve had a huge influx of support, right? I would say 90% of the contacts we get are support, are love, are ‘We thank you for what you’re doing. Keep fighting; we stand with you.’ But that 5% to 10% is a lot to weigh you down because that could make a huge difference.”
AI tech jobs are popping up and the salaries are huge
Diane King Hall, Anchor – August 18, 2023
Are AI job wages of up to $900,000 justified?
Streaming platform Netflix (NFLX) is sharing artificial intelligence job postings offering salaries of up to $900,000. NYU Professor Vasant Dhar sits down with Yahoo Finance Live’s Diane King Hall to discuss whether these AI jobs wages are wholly justified amid widespread artificial intelligence adoption and current labor market conditions. “Assuming [these companies] get some clarity around what AI really means for their business, these numbers are justified,” Dhar states. “Now, the trouble is that there’s a high variance in people’s abilities and skills to actually translate something into real sort of money, business profits.” Inversely, companies have sought value and efficiency through the adoption of AI models this year, resulting in layoffs and projected downsizing. “We should not conflate the ability of the computer to speak well with knowledge,” Dhar says, adding: “The thing to keep in mind is that these pre-trained models make it easy to build applications really quickly, but they’ll inherit the limitations of these models.”
The AI boom is trickling into the job market, and the pay is good, if you can get it.
Netflix recently posted a position paying as much as $900,000 for someone with extensive experience working with machine learning platforms. (The posting appeared to be taken down after a little too much press, but one with a similarly high range is still visible if you search AI.)
It’s not the only high-paying job in generative AI. Nvidia has postings paying in the $400,000 range. Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google also have positions with lucrative salaries advertised.
“AI is the new Wall Street,” NYU Professor Vasant Dhar says. “Now it is Big Tech that is making big money, these are the new cash machines. It is all about intelligence, the future is all about intelligence. There isn’t enough supply of really good people.”
With the six-figure jobs piling up, AI might not be the jobs destroyer that some thought, at least for certain skilled professions.
And as Netflix hires AI positions paying nearly a million dollars, its writers remain on strike — in part due to issues surrounding generative AI.
SAG-AFTRA actors and Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers walk the picket line during their ongoing strike outside Sunset Bronson studios and Netflix offices in Los Angeles, California, U.S., Aug. 11, 2023. (Mario Anzuoni/REUTERS)
The challenge, Dhar says, is that “there is a very high variance of ability out there. Some people are worth every penny, you can’t pay them enough, and there are people who aren’t worth it. The question is, can you tell the difference?”
If AI isn’t at the core of a company’s business, that distinction becomes even harder and more important, which gives companies already in the AI game — think Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft — a leg up.
Job market disruption
While these new lucrative jobs are popping up, AI is displacing others. A new study by Technalysis Research, “Generative AI in Enterprise,” shows that 10% of companies polled have replaced humans in roles with AI. The study also showed that another 36% of companies are expecting an impact of AI on staffing.
“The reality is, just as we have seen with any major technological innovation, there are shifts in the workplace and some roles get displaced,” said Bob O’Donnell, the president of Technalysis and analyst who conducted that research.
So why are people shaking in their boots about the impact of AI on the labor market?
O’Donnell says that the key difference now is who it’s happening to.
“It has happened in the past, but it was blue collar and now people are more concerned because of the potential impact to white collar,” he said.
The OpenAI logo in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, Tuesday, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (Michael Dwyer/AP Photo)
Man versus machine
AI’s impact on the labor market ultimately depends on how good it is, since the early developmental jobs at Netflix and Nvidia are unlikely to move the needle for anyone but the lucky few.
Arthur AI researchers conducted a Hallucination Experiment to see just how good generative AI is at answering a slew of questions ranging from math facts and US presidents to Moroccan political leaders.
There were several cases where the bots devolved into hallucinations, instances where generative artificial intelligence delivers misinformation. GPT-4 performed the worst on the test of US presidents, but it did the best on math. Anthropic’s Claude 2 performed the best on US presidents. Meta’s Llama 2 needs work overall; researchers noted more hallucinations with its large language model compared to GPT and Claude 2.
At least for now in the battle of man versus machine, generative AI has shown itself to be imperfect, capping the pace of structural changes, at least somewhat.
