In the last few days I have taken drives over to Matlacha, Pine Island, Ft. Myers Beach and Sanibel. The cleanup is ongoing but it will take a long time. FEMA is working around the clock but because this in DeSantis’s Florida you don’t hear about them much. Everywhere you look there are blue tarped roofs waiting for their turn to be repaired. I hear that ours is supposed to start in December but I am not holding my breath. I am pretty sure that roofers are in great demand right now. Luckily for us we are now heading into our dry season so we shouldn’t be getting a ton of rain. Everywhere you look there is just so much devastation that the new norm will be way different than what we were used too. You try and live your life as normal as you can but the devastation and what we all have gone through is always in the back of your mind. It is the Holiday Season so my wife and I have been busy decorating the inside and the outside of our condo. I know that it is going to be a very different Holiday Season here but you just try and make the best of it.

We had a nice Thanksgiving Dinner with a few of our friends here and we, for the most part, avoided politics completely. Of course one of the people at the table stated what a wonderful job DeSantis did getting the Sanibel Causeway open but the rest of us kept our mouths shut. I know that DeSantis really didn’t do anything to get the causeway open just like he isn’t doing anything to address climate change. He wasn’t there directing anything. Florida has a really good disaster response team with Jeb Bush putting a lot of that in motion after witnessing the disaster that New Orleans was after Katrina. I was not surprised that they could get the causeway open so fast. All you need is a plan and the manpower to carry out that plan. The rest of the country has moved on to the next crisis and so has most of Florida’s politicians but we are still in the middle of it still every day and this will last for years. You still see a huge FEMA presence down here though I really don’t hear Florida Politician’s mention FEMA. The worst part is that most of this is that the media has also moved on even though this story is not close to be finished.

There are weather headlines in the news every day. 6’ of snow in Buffalo and we now have a winter storm barreling down threatening 25 million Americans. Living in Florida I have seen my fair share of weather events but these weather events are touching everyone in the country.  With all the weather destruction I find it hard to believe that so many politicians are still pushing fossil fuels. They have a thousand excuses but none are very honest as I can tell. The one I find hardest to swallow is that we can’t afford moving away from fossil fuels. I believe we can’t afford to not move away from fossil fuels. I just went through a "category 4” hurricane which was really close to being a "category 5" hurricane. So far the damage estimate is on the plus side of 40 billion dollars. That is Billion with a B. Our rivers are drying up and our ground water tables are falling. Climate Change is going to cost us billions more in the future. Why do Politician’s not want to move away from fossil fuels? I really believe that it would ruin their cash cow. Whether it is guns or oil it is the money that is talking and not the Second Amendment or the science. You want to drain the swamp? First, you have to stop the money. Too many people including the one talking about draining the swamp are just making too much money.

I have written many times that the economy of the future is a green economy and the one that leads that technology will be one of the World leaders financially. Our clinging to fossil fuels will turn us into a follower if we are not already. Who is running America now? The Saudi’s? The Russians? Billionaires like the Koch’s? Whoever is paying to influence our elections and our politicians do so they can run America. We are a country of followers already. Those guys running around with AR15 and hiding behind a misinterpretation of the 2^nd Amendment are being led around by their noses by people with money that want to have chaos. Gun advocates help countries like China and Russia, they are not Patriotic Americans. They are just stooges for powerful money people and governments that want us to fail. They want the chaos and they want the fear. Same with the Oil Companies. How many times have you heard that we want to be oil independent? I will tell you that there is no such thing. All these oil companies are international conglomerates. They are not looking out for the welfare of the average American. All they are looking out for is the bottom line. If Climate Change costs lives so be it.

Didn’t Trump say that he didn’t care about Climate Change because he wouldn’t be around anyway? That is the problem with a lot of people. They don’t think of the future. I hope that Generation Z remembers that when they are at the polls. Too many people have not been worried about Generation Z’s future.