Paradise Lost
Donald Trump’s climate denial and misinformation puts his beloved Florida in peril.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,” wrote John Milton in his 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost. The blind poet’s insights into human nature are as relevant today as they were 357 years ago. Even in his day, Milton could not have found a better example than Donald Trump of a mind capable of inverting heaven and hell, good and evil, truth and falsehood. What Milton could not have imagined was how mass communication and social media could transform Trump’s mind from “its own place” into a delusional mental space inhabited by tens of millions of his loyal followers.
This past week, as Hurricane Milton roared toward the Florida Peninsula with Old Testament rage worthy of a 17th-century Puritan epic, Trump continued to spew forth climate denial and misinformation that put the lives of his followers and other Americans in danger. His flippant denial of human-caused global warming makes light of the climate hell so many vulnerable Americans are facing. At the same time, Trump’s misinformation about government aid to victims of Hurricane Helene, last month’s “once-in-a-century storm,” creates doubt and confusion, casting a demonic shadow over rescue efforts that often reflect the better angels of our human nature. As Hurricane Milton swirls off into the Atlantic and Florida prepares for a long road to recovery, the very future of Trump’s state of residence may be the area most imperiled by his reckless indifference to climate reality.
Climate Denial: Making a Heaven of Hell
Climate catastrophes are hell. While Florida dodged the worst of Hurricane Milton’s destructive potential, we know that Hurricane Helene killed over 230 people. It is easy to become numb to numbers, to forget that these are 230 individual souls whose lives were cut short under truly hellish circumstances, 230 people whose final experiences on earth were of being drowned, crushed, or suffocated to death by natural disasters.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Republican politicians recognized the hellish consequences of an overheating planet. Some of my first childhood memories about global warming involve watching news broadcasts of George H. W. Bush attending the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. “Let me be clear on one fundamental point. The United States fully intends to be the world's preeminent leader in protecting the global environment,” Bush announced after signing the climate convention. Even as late as the 2008 Republican Primary, top candidates like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney openly admitted that human-created climate change was a very real and serious problem.
Once Trump went all-in on a presidential campaign in 2015, everything changed. Trump brought the GOP’s stance on global warming down to the lowest levels of right-wing radio shock jocks and crotchety crank uncles who can’t shovel snow off the sidewalk without also throwing in a dig at climate science. “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming,” Trump joked in 2017 after a New Year’s Eve cold snap on the East Coast. Trump’s mocking stance toward Climate Change has not evolved one bit over the years. During his most recent interview with Elon Musk on X, Trump returned to his favorite joke that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property.” The closest Trump comes to taking a serious tone in the climate debate is when he condemns climate change as a “hoax” and a “scam” costing American jobs and prosperity. But when it comes to the added dangers created by a warming climate, Trump has given the entire GOP license to laugh off the hellish consequences of a threat that Republicans once took quite seriously. By celebrating a world with less snow shoveling and more beachfront property, Trump has succeeded in making a heaven of the climate change hell now faced by the victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Misinformation: Making a Hell of Heaven
We cannot say Trump is entirely indifferent to the sufferings of hurricane victims, even if he is entirely dismissive of the role carbon emissions might have played in the disasters that befell them. In their suffering, Trump sees an irresistible opportunity to foment the resentment, distrust, and chaos that are the lifeblood of his MAGA movement. Trump has been particularly vocal in his criticism of FEMA, claiming the federal disaster agency’s response to Hurricane Helene was inadequate and that aid is being administered based on political prejudice. “They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas,” Trump said on September 30. “They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.” Trump has also used the disaster to stir up hatred against immigrants, telling his followers that all of FEMA’s money had been doled out to migrants, a line of argument showing that he is either ignorant or indifferent to the fact that each government agency works within its own budget constraints. Whether driven by stupidity, malevolence, or both, Trump’s misinformation is taking its toll on the trust that distressed communities need to properly engage with FEMA and make the most of government aid.
Natural disasters were once events when the country united in a common cause, those rare times when political differences were set aside until the afflicted were cared for and communities were rebuilt. Barack Obama and Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie were photographed in a much-publicized and debated bro hug during their joint efforts to address the destruction of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. While only a little more than a decade has passed since the Obama-Christie embrace, that kind of cross-party camaraderie seems as distant from our polarized present as John Milton’s iambic pentameter seems distant from the Billboard Top 100. As we saw during the Covid pandemic, for Trump, natural disasters are a time to sharpen rather than soften our political divisions. In discussing the Biden-Harris administration’s disaster response, Trump falsely claimed they “are universally being given POOR GRADES for the way that they are handling the Hurricane, especially in North Carolina.” Bipartisan hugs in the wake of natural disasters might not qualify as heaven on earth, but they were at least moments in time that reaffirmed our common bonds as Americans, one nation under God. The misinformation campaign being waged by Trump against FEMA seeks to make a hell of this little glimpse of heaven we once witnessed when Americans rallied together to support each other in the aftermath of natural disasters.
Reigning in Climate Hell
“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” Satan declares after being cast out of Heaven in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Liberals tend to go overboard in portraying Trump as some all-powerful anti-Christ, but I doubt Trump would disagree with Satan’s infamous declaration in Paradise Lost. The run-up to January 6th, 2021 demonstrates Trump’s willingness to plunge the country into hellish chaos to continue his reign. Similarly, Trump’s unwillingness to give even the slightest credit to the Biden Administration for any progress over the past four years shows he would not want to see the country prosper if it meant being stripped of his power.
The climate denial and misinformation being spread by Trump further confirm that regaining power matters far more to him than the safety and long-term prosperity of the nation. But it may be the state of Florida, home to Trump’s residence and Mar-a-Lago resort that suffers the most from his delusional approach to climate change. The Covid Era mass migration to Florida was in itself an act of mass delusion, willful blindness to the ecological and financial threats facing the state as the Earth grows hotter and hotter. Sprawling construction in Florida has moved forward aggressively, attracting migration from areas less vulnerable to the threats of climate change. In 2022, the Financial Times heralded Miami as “a paradise of freedom” for those weary of lockdowns and Covid protocols. The building boom in Florida was made possible partly because Trump rolled back the Obama Administration’s regulations that limited residential and infrastructural development in low-lying areas vulnerable to climate change. We can only imagine this reckless building fueled by deregulation will increase dramatically if Trump retakes the White House, putting more and more lives at risk of climate disaster. To make matters worse, the ability of Floridians to respond to and flee these risks will be impaired if Trump follows through with the Project 2025 plan to commercialize the National Weather Service and break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Only time will tell whether the Gulf Coast residents forced to flee Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton will be reluctant to return and rebuild. It’s hard to say when the breaking point will come when the cold winters of the Northeast and Midwest seem more hospitable than a sun-drenched coast where multiple evacuations are a way of life, home insurance is unattainable, and the next storm surge might deposit a massive alligator in your kitchen. One thing is for sure though, another Trump presidency will only increase the chances that the Republican Paradise of Florida will someday become a Paradise Lost.