COMMENTARY It's a good bet Pre-Columbian peoples would have been smarter about modern hurricanes than Florida's climate change denier-in-chief has shown himself to be amid turbocharged storms.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Christopher Columbus guy. And there鈥檚 nothing wrong with that.
This week, DeSantis was still observing Columbus Day while much of the rest of America was giving props to the actual discoverers of America on what鈥檚 now known as Indigenous Peoples鈥� Day. And that鈥檚 his prerogative.
The Spain-sponsored Columbus was certainly a world-altering explorer, even if he did usher European enslavement and small pox into the New World. So if, on our hemispheric founder鈥檚 day, Florida鈥檚 anti-woke knight of Columbus prefers to honor Madrid over Miccosukees every second Monday in October, let him knock himself out.
But I鈥檇 advise DeSantis that when it comes to his own place in the history books, he might spend these difficult hurricane recovery days across his state thinking less about the Ni帽a, the Pinta and the Santa Mar铆a and more about the Maya, the Ta铆no and the Kalinago.
The former were Columbus鈥� ships; the latter were among the most important Pre-Columbian peoples in our part of the Americas.
And they appear to have been smarter about hurricanes than DeSantis is showing himself to be.
Smart enough, anyway, that I doubt they would have dismissed credible climate-change science as contemptuously as Florida鈥檚 governor did, once again, after Hurricane Milton tore through the state last week.
READ MORE: It's time to dump Columbus Day and make it Beringia Day 鈥� to celebrate what we are
DeSantis was asked if human-made global warming 鈥� how fossil fuel-generated greenhouse gases have trapped heat in our atmosphere like thick attic insulation 鈥� helped make Milton a more turbocharged storm.
Faster than you can say 鈥渙wn the libs,鈥� and quicker than Milton morphed from a Cat 1 to Cat 5 monster out in the Gulf of Mexico, the governor who recently decreed that the term 鈥渃limate change鈥� may not be officially uttered in Florida ridiculed the idea.
鈥淭hey try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it鈥檚 something,鈥� he said, referring to climate scientists as if they were delusional psychiatric patients. 鈥淭here鈥檚 nothing new under the sun.鈥�
If Pre-Columbian peoples had seen evidence that they were giving the hurricane god more destructive muscle, my bet is they would have listened.
That kind of old-school obscurantism 鈥� you get the feeling DeSantis and other climate-change deniers would strike Copernicus鈥� heliocentric solar system from textbooks if they thought there were MAGA votes to be had 鈥� couldn鈥檛 be more perilous in a place like Florida.
has concluded that as global warming has turned waters like the Gulf鈥檚 into hot tubs, it has produced hurricane 鈥榬oid rage 鈥� giving the storms more power, and especially more water and devastating storm surge, than they would have had otherwise.
In the crosshairs
Attitudes like DeSantis鈥� encourage a continuation not only of the fossil-fuel reliance that brought us this ramped-up menace, but of the that鈥檚 put so many more millions of people and property in its crosshairs.
I think Pre-Columbian indigenous groups that inhabited the islands of the hurricane bowling alley known as the Caribbean basin might have responded differently.
Take the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles. They were much more careful than cavalier about the wind spirit 贬耻谤补办谩苍 (whence comes the English 鈥渉urricane鈥�) and built homes with resilient materials like palm trunks. (It didn鈥檛 escape their notice that palm trees withstand the wickedest winds.)
The Ta铆no employed savvy structural designs like circular, spaced walls that helped deflect gusts and balance air pressure. Meanwhile, the ancient Maya over on the Yucat谩n peninsula devised wind temples with webs of holes that loudly whistled when hurricanes approached.
If you had given these people sound evidence a thousand years ago that something they were doing was angering 贬耻谤补办谩苍 or giving the god more destructive muscle, my bet is they would have at least listened.
In fact, they probably would have paid more attention than DeSantis鈥� hero Columbus and the Europeans who colonized the Caribbean after his 1492 鈥渄iscovery鈥� of the Americas did. Historians point out their structures 鈥� whose builders took little notice of the adaptive innovations of the 鈥減rimitive鈥� Pre-Columbians 鈥� were routinely flattened by 贬耻谤补办谩苍.
What鈥檚 more, I bet if those indigenous peoples had to pay exorbitant sums for windstorm insurance, they would have been doubly attentive to the science that DeSantis spurns.
But in Florida鈥檚 statehouse and legislature, owning the libs matters more than containing the premiums.
So they鈥檒l keep honoring the statues of Columbus instead of the structures of the Indigenous.
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