Climate Change

Diallo-Sekou Seabrooks was working a job as a concrete finisher last summer when he started feeling dizzy and lay down in the bed of a truck before heading home. The next day, the same thing happened.

Local advocates recently met with Jacksonville Representative John Rutherford to talk about climate change and a national carbon pricing bill.

The Jacksonville Resiliency and Climate Change Coalition, a newly formed advocacy group working to raise awareness of the local impacts of climate change and sea level rise, is looking to better engage minority communities.

During Thursday’s meeting, the first since February, Jacksonville’s Special Committee on Resiliency voted to establish three new subcommittees, which residents are being encouraged to join.

As Florida’s 2020 legislative session comes to a close, lawmakers can celebrate the bills they passed. But hundreds of other proposals died along the way, including a bill that would have established a state-wide office of resiliency.

A new coalition of organizations and community members is working to increase public awareness of the local impacts of climate change and sea level rise, advocate for local climate action, and support Jacksonville’s new Special Committee on Resiliency.

Aidan Chau is a junior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, where he majors in clarinet performance. Like many teens across the globe, he’s worried about what climate change could mean for the future.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has announced that he has joined the bipartisan Senate Climate Solutions Caucus. It’s the first caucus he has become a member of since taking office in 2011.

Florida’s first-ever chief resilience officer, Julia Nesheiwat, has been hired as President Donald Trump’s new homeland security adviser.

A bill that would require state-financed coastal developments to account for sea level rise got its first no vote in a committee stop on Thursday, and it came from a prominent Northeast Florida senator.

Leaders from around Northeast Florida are calling on Jacksonville - the largest city in the region by far - to appoint a chief resilience officer or establish an Office of Resilience, but Mayor Lenny Curry is not yet taking a position on the issue.

Jacksonville’s new Special Committee on Resiliency held its first meeting on Monday and several committee members openly supported the idea of appointing a chief resilience officer.

Sixty percent of the nation's heavily polluted Superfund sites—nearly 950 of them—are at risk from the impacts of climate change, including hurricane storm surges and flooding that could spread their toxic legacies into waterways, communities and farmland, a new federal report warns.

Jacksonville City Council President Scott Wilson has announced the formation of a committee that will look to make the city more resilient to flooding, sea level rise, and severe weather.

The last time the Florida building code changed, it required any new construction along the coast to elevate buildings a whole foot. Just three years later, that doesn’t look like enough. There’s a call to go up yet another foot.

Jacksonville’s Naval Station Mayport is among the many military bases that will have to deal with significantly hotter days, according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Mayport has historically seen eight days a year with heat index values over 100 degrees. By 2050, that number is projected to jump to 74 days.

A group of scientists and academics from local universities and colleges have signed onto a letter asking Mayor Lenny Curry and the City Council to develop a plan for reducing fossil fuel emissions in Jacksonville and to start preparing the city for the impacts of climate change.