Amid Hurricane Milton, GOP Reps Are Blocking Climate Action
As Hurricane Milton bears down on their districts, two Republican representatives backed by fossil fuel companies are pushing legislation that claims the climate crisis is a “false emergency.”
Vehicles move through a partially flooded street ahead of Hurricane Milton's expected landfall on October 9, 2024, in Dunedin, Florida. (Bryan R. Smith / AFP via Getty Images)
As a hurricane intensified by hot ocean water now threatens to destroy the Tampa Bay region, Florida Republicans bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry are pushing legislation that would bar the president from declaring a climate emergency.
Reps. Greg Steube and Byron Donalds, both Republicans who have together received more than $175,000 from oil and gas interests over their relatively short careers, cosponsored the House version of the bill last year, which frames the climate crisis as a “false emergency.” Steube represents Sarasota and Charlotte Counties, both south of Tampa, and Donalds represents much of Florida’s Lee County — all areas under evacuation orders as of Tuesday.
Neither Steube nor Donalds returned the Lever’s requests for comment on Tuesday.
Both lawmakers cosponsored the legislation alongside seventeen other Republicans, including several that represent the Gulf Coast region threatened by climate-intensified hurricanes: Reps. Randy Weber (R-TX), Brian Babin (R-TX), and Clay Higgins (R-LA). So far this election cycle, these three representatives have received more than $190,000 from the oil and gas industry. Mississippi senator Roger Wicker (R) — who has received more than $1.2 million from oil and gas interests since 1993 — is cosponsoring the Senate version of the bill.
The bill’s backers claim that declaring a climate emergency — which could enable the government to end offshore drilling, accelerate clean energy production, and take other bold action — would weaken national security and jeopardize valuable fossil fuel interests.
“President Biden and his radical administration are working around the clock to destroy American-made reliable energy sources,” said Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), author of the House bill, in a June 2023 news release.
A similar bill was introduced in the Senate in April 2022, where it was cosponsored by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FA), who received almost $242,000 from oil and gas interests that year. The legislation died in Congress.
Environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers have demanded President Joe Biden declare a national climate emergency, which would allow the executive branch to use powers under the National Emergencies Act to address the climate crisis. Biden has refused to do so, though he has claimed he has “practically” declared such an emergency by conserving lands, rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, and taking other environmental actions.
Experts say the devastation that Hurricane Helene left across the Southeast two weeks ago, killing more than two hundred people, and the looming disaster of Hurricane Milton, which is expected to be the worst storm Tampa Bay has seen in a century, are stark reminders of the consequences of extreme weather fueled by a changing climate.
In the years before Helene devastated parts of western North Carolina, state Republicans blocked climate adaptation measures, barred agencies from using accurate climate change science, and scuttled other initiatives that could have helped the state better prepare for increasingly severe storms.
A “False Emergency”
The climate-emergency prohibition cosponsored by Steube and Donalds was first introduced in 2022, when it was sponsored by Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WV) in the Senate and Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) in the House. So far this session, neither the House nor the Senate versions of the bill have made it out of committee.
The bill — dubbed the “Real Emergencies Act” — would bar US presidents from declaring a climate emergency using three federal laws that give the executive branch additional powers in times of crisis: the National Emergencies Act, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, and the Public Health Service Act. The proposed legislation would still allow for an emergency to be declared in the event of a hurricane or other climate change–fueled extreme weather.
Environmental groups advocating for Biden to use this authority to declare a climate emergency have mapped out ways that such powers could be used to more swiftly address climate change as Congress stymies aggressive climate action.
Using emergency powers could “lead a tectonic shift” in addressing climate change, environmental advocates say. They claim the move would allow the federal government to halt crude oil exports, end oil and gas drilling in federal waters, restrict international trade and private investment in fossil fuels, and expand domestic manufacturing of clean energy.
Yet sponsors of the Real Emergencies Act claim that declaring a “false emergency” on the basis of climate change will limit the country’s ability to “be energy independent.” Instead, they argue, Congress should “take steps to strengthen our national security by implementing” energy politics that “include our competitive advantage in fossil energy production.”
The companies behind that fossil fuel energy production have been lobbying on the matter.
In 2022, oil and gas company ConocoPhillips spent $560,000 lobbying Congress and other regulators on “planning for potential climate emergency declaration” and “general discussions” about their climate change action plan, among other issues.
Donalds received more than $54,000 in oil and gas donations in the three years following his first election to Congress in 2000, according to reporting by Politico. Altogether, the energy and natural resources sector contributed $77,155 to Donalds over that time span, making it the seventh largest industry sector to donate to Donalds’s coffers.
That support has continued. So far this election cycle, the oil and gas industry has donated more than $43,000 to Donalds, who is running for reelection this November. He has also received more than $25,000 from Koch Industries — a petrochemical empire founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch.
Koch Industries has a long history of funding climate denialism, contributing more than $145 million to such efforts from 1997 to 2018, according to data collected by Greenpeace, a network of campaigning organizations dedicated to protecting the Earth.
Donalds was also among the Republicans that voted against $20 billion in disaster relief funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA in a stopgap spending bill that passed both chambers on September 25. The agency may be strapped for cash as hurricane season continues on, officials have warned.
Like Donalds, Steube has benefited from oil and gas contributions over his seven-year career, receiving more than $52,000 from the industry since 2017, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign finance and lobbying data.
Steube has a history of voting against environmental measures, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to set cleaner car and truck standards and efforts to reduce pollution and climate threats impacting communities on the front line of environmental and health hazards.
As Milton bore down on their constituents, both Donalds and Steube appeared to recognize the storm was out of the norm. “Sarasota, we cannot take this lightly,” Steube wrote on Twitter/X on Tuesday morning.
“The office of Congressman Byron Donalds is closely monitoring Hurricane Milton and is actively coordinating storm preparations alongside federal, state, and local partners,” Donalds’s office said in a news release on Monday. “The Congressman and his team stand ready to support our Southwest Florida community and ensure all necessary resources are available.”