Attorney General Moody defends the fossil fuel industry, not Florida

How will Florida’s attorney general, Ashley Moody, observe Earth Day this Saturday?

According to the nonpartisan National Association of Attorneys General, a state attorney general’s job is to represent the public interest—not private, special interests—by, among other things, “enforcing federal and state environmental laws.”

Moody has been doing the exact opposite: Instead of defending her constituents, she defends the fossil fuel industry.

The most vulnerable state to climate change, Florida has already sustained billions of dollars in damage. Regardless, Moody has routinely joined lawsuits and other actions attacking federal environmental safeguards, especially those designed to mitigate the impact of climate change.

Not only does Florida rank as the hottest state, it also is home to seven of the top 10 hottest U.S. cities, and dangerously steamy days are predicted to jump from 25 to 130 a year by 2050.

Routine flooding is already a major problem, and — thanks mainly to sea level rise — some 1 million Florida homes will be at risk by the end of the century. Then there’s the 79 tropical and subtropical cyclones the state has suffered since 2000. One of the most recent, Hurricane Ian, caused $50 billion to $65 billion in insured damages, making it the costliest disaster in the country last year.

Instead of protecting Florida, Moody collaborates with other Republican state attorneys general (AGs) to block efforts to address climate change. In 2021, she signed on to a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its decision to revoke the Keystone XL pipeline permit. Last July, she and 23 other AGs threatened to sue the Security and Exchange Commission if the agency adopted a new rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their climate risks. And, last October, she issued a press release announcing that she and 19 other AGs opposed a Department of Transportation rule requiring states to reduce on-road carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Why is Moody ignoring the climate crisis? At least partly—if not largely—because Republican AGs and their political organization, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), receive substantial financial support from the fossil fuel industry and electric utilities.

Since 2017, Moody has received nearly $339,000 from oil and gas companies and electric utilities as well as $300,000 from RAGA. More than half of her energy industry-related donations came from Duke Energy ($155,000) and Teco Energy ($85,000). Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and their trade groups collectively donated more than $10 million to RAGA over the last decade.

That kind of money buys loyalty, and the collective actions of Moody and her fellow RAGA members show just how effective it can be at frustrating efforts to address the climate crisis.

As Florida’s top legal officer, Moody is supposed to function as the “people’s lawyer,” representing the interests of state residents. Nonetheless, she consistently puts the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of the health and safety of her own constituents.

This Earth Day, Floridians should let her know how they feel about that.

Pam McVety, a biologist, and Tallahassee resident who worked for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for 30 years, is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Science Network.

Elliott Negin is a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) senior writer based in Washington, D.C.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Attorney General Moody defends the fossil fuel industry, not Florida