Senator Marco Rubio posted on X Monday to warn users of the severity of Hurricane Milton, an explosively intensifying Category 5 storm that is expected to make landfall in Florida in the coming days.
“Several years ago I asked @NHC_Atlantic to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Rubio wrote, tagging the National Hurricane Center. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.”
Rubio included an image of a map, showing the forecasted storm surge from Hurricane Milton across Florida’s western coast.
While Rubio’s post functioned as explicit evidence of worsening extreme weather, as journalist Aaron Rupar pointed out, the senator has been extremely dismissive of climate change in the past.
In 2022, Rubio wrote a snide post on X (then Twitter) about the Inflation Reduction Act, deriding it as a “climate change bill.”
“While working Americans are struggling with high prices, worried about the border and terrorized by crime the Senate is spending all night voting on a democrat climate change bill,” Rubio wrote.
Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration was able to provide more than $1 billion to help communities become more resilient to extreme weather, according to the White House. Rubio voted against the measure.
Rubio spent years downplaying the causes and effects of climate change, before eventually being forced to acknowledge its increasing effects along Florida’s coastline. Still, in a 2019 op-ed, Rubio wrote that pouring money into “reactionary” climate legislation would only hurt the U.S.
“Plans stemming from panic will constrain our economy and cripple our ability to invest future resources in solving longer-term issues,” Rubio wrote. “They would also neutralize our tenuous economic advantage over China, which is doing barely anything to reduce its emissions.”
The Inflation Reduction Act wasn’t the first time Rubio neglected to support legislation that would protect his constituents from the effects of worsening storms and natural disasters. In 2021, Rubio voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill that put $47 billion toward preparing communities for extreme fires, floods, and weather.
