Hurricane Ian has passed, but the effects linger on. In addition to the forty billion dollars worth of property damage and the 114 people who died in the hurricane itself, seven people have died from a flesh-eating bacteria whose emergence has been laid at Ian’s door. Many Floridians are finding they don’t have the money to build back after losing their homes. Governor DeSantis has issued an executive order to extend property tax deadlines and reached out to President Biden for assistance from the federal government for those hardest hit. Meanwhile, activists are exploiting the disaster for their climate change agenda.

It would be better for all concerned to pause for a moment and contemplate the reality of Florida. Whether or not the climate is changing, whether or not any of that change has anything to do with human activity, the truth is that Florida was never a place where God intended man to live. The first Americans to visit Florida, back in the 1830s, were soldiers who were deployed to harass the Seminole Indians. The men were appalled by the conditions they found in Florida.

A typical opinion of Florida can be found in the writings of an Army surgeon who recorded, “Florida is certainly the poorest country that ever two people quarreled for.... It was the most dreary and pandemonium-like region I ever visited, nothing but barren wastes.” If the soldiers had had their way, they would have left Florida to the mosquitoes. I have been to Florida and, personally, I agree with the anonymous wag who said if he owned Miami and Hell, he would rent out Miami and live in Hell.

Image: Great Blue Heron in the Everglades by Matthew T Radar. License: CC BY-SAW 4.0.

Florida is a paradise today because more than half of the Everglades were destroyed to create a rather dubious living space for humans. Environmental activists either don’t know this fact, or they choose to ignore it. After all, Florida has a $1.3 trillion gross state product, hundreds of miles of sparkling beaches, and Disneyland.

The damage to a place that sticks out literally like a sore thumb in the middle of yearly hurricanes, and the injuries and deaths that inevitably occur, are as nothing compared to the artificial paradise created by destroying so much of the environment and rendering it uninhabitable to the animals that actually do belong there. Perhaps it is time for those who are so concerned with the environment to consider returning some part of Florida to its natural state and its natural inhabitants. At least it would save some lives, and the rest of the country would not have to pony up to pay for federal relief for catastrophes that occur on a regular basis.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of Future Slave, a story about a 21st century black teenager who goes back in time and becomes a slave in the old south.