Palm Beach County's new Climate Change Coordinator and the polarizing of debate about climate change

If Palm Beach County was expecting to quiet the debate on climate change and rising (maybe) sea levels by hiring a Climate Change Coordinator they got a very different result. If anything that decision has further polarized the issue and made people dig in their heels on whichever side they fall on.

If you're a reader of this blog you know my position is that I don't have the answers. Maybe the climate is changing and maybe it isn't. Maybe the seas are rising and maybe they aren't. However, what I do know is this: The debate about rising seas and the climate isn't doing anything to fix our streets in Lake Worth and also not doing anything to make our neighborhoods any safer. Two commissioners in the City, Ryan  Maier and Chris McVoy, are fixated on the issue and are losing focus on the local, pressing issues at hand.

The residents of Lake Worth deserve better.

Echoing the frustration many have about this issue is Randy Lundi of Jupiter. He penned a "Point Of View" that was published in The Palm Beach Post. Here are two excerpts:

     Here is rationale, according to an email that Natalie Schneider [the Palm Beach County Climate Coordinator], who holds the new position, sent to County Administrator Verdenia Baker and other county government executives: “the purpose of this (internal county sustainability action) team is to drive county climate resilience and sustainability initiatives, capturing countywide and site-specific activities that support that initiative.”
     What? It will take a year to figure out what that means. [emphasis added] Or is it deliberately open-ended so that it can mean anything, at any time, for bureaucrats? Meanwhile, time, energy, money and resources will be spent to further the narrative of supposed climate change due to man and sea levels rising.
     First it was global cooling; then it was global warming; and when neither phenomenon proved sustainable in the environment, the narrative changed to “climate change.” This is an environmentalist retreat to a safe zone, where the “climate change” definition can satisfy either global cooling or warming — whatever trend is happening at the moment — to promote an agenda and political narrative.

[and. . .]

     America has cleaned up her act. Don’t depend on other nations to do the same.

Lake Worth Vice Mayor Scott Maxwell has these thoughts on the issue and hopefully this will carry the day in the little, 6 square mile City of Lake Worth with so many issues to address: