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You may have heard about a sudden rash of newspaper editorial boards, including the one at the company where I work, declining to endorse a candidate for president. Let's talk about it. With days until this most consequential election, we're going deep on matters of life, death and drowning.

Editorial boards represent the voice of an institution, separate from the news side. Board members are different from columnists (hi), though columnists can sit on a board. I have never wanted to be on ours at the Tampa Bay Times simply so I could perch on my happy rear and disagree as needed. Like now.

To be sure, media consumers today don't care much about industry terms, and they don't stress the differences between an article, an op-ed, an editorial or a column. I even get emails that say, "I loved your ad!" Everyone from Taylor Swift to a random guy with one slipper is out there making an "endorsement," supposedly different from a "recommendation." No wonder people flee the news and return to "Love Island."

There's also nuance among news outlet defections. The Tampa Bay Times, for instance, has a small editorial board under independent ownership that decided months ago to forgo a presidential endorsement and focus on local races. At the Washington Post, billionaire owner Jeff Bezos appears to have pushed a prewritten endorsement into a vat of acid like it was the Joker.

All those things being true, I still think we made a bad call, missed a prime opportunity to represent the interests of Floridians as Donald Trump seeks power that would put the storm-ridden state in more danger.

Our editorial board should have endorsed a candidate for president, specifically, Kamala Harris. While I'd rather be writing about wine pairings for leftover Halloween candy (pinot noir mellows the sharp edges of a Reese's bat), I will go ahead and write the endorsement I would have liked to see.

In Florida, as all over the country, the race for president is a local one. There are a million inroads to this vote, from reproductive freedom to the cost of groceries. Let's start with our very existence.

Florida just stared down the barrel of two historic, deadly hurricanes. Helene and Milton lacerated the Gulf Coast in ways that will take years to unfurl. We're combating debris piles and moldy walls, navigating insurance adjusters and corrupt contractors, wading through the comedown of emotional trauma. We're still watching the tropics bubble and froth.

Please understand, this hurricane season was not a surprise. Back in May, federal meteorologists issued their toughest-ever preseason forecast, citing factors including a warming Atlantic. A study this year found that storms are becoming so strong, we may need a Category 6 class. Mayors in St. Petersburg and Tampa voiced concerns that our coasts could become unlivable.

We're watching the predictions unfold in real time.

Not a single country is doing enough to slow the erratic chaos of a warming planet. Harris hasn't said clearly what her administration would do to fight climate change, and she has wobbled on the environment in pursuit of votes. But she lives in reality and believes in science. She cast the deciding vote in the Senate for the Inflation Reduction Act, devoting billions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At this point in our collective apathy, there's no magic lever to stop wild weather. But our next president has to move in a direction that mitigates the intensity of disasters, relies on advanced forecasting and robustly funds recovery.

Which brings us to Donald Trump. He doesn't believe any of this. In fact, he is actively inviting discord to the natural world because mayhem is where he thrives.

He thinks climate change is a hoax. In September, he called environmental concerns "one of the great scams of all time." As president, he pulled the country out of the Paris Agreement, an international treaty to confront climate change. He rolled back myriad environmental regulations to ding Obama-era progress and open up land for oil projects. He is obsessed with drilling on public lands. He asked oil executives visiting Mar-a-Lago to give his campaign a billion dollars. He has quipped that sea level rise will create more oceanfront property. Run that zinger by the devastated homeowners, the students flooded out of apartments, the retirees processing trauma.

Trump's anti-science record and public statements are so atrocious that you needn't even dive into the dreaded Project 2025, where the possibilities get worse. The Heritage Foundation's manifesto is backed by many Trump supporters; Trump himself has unconvincingly attempted to avoid it like a neighbor who keeps popping up at the grocery store. In it, you'll see a goal to eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and have the National Weather Service sell data to private forecasters. That's ending public forecasting, folks. That's metal rooster weathervanes and the smell of the air.

If you're not happy with FEMA's response to the storms -- and many are not -- consider who, between Trump and Harris, will take those concerns more seriously. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, when 3,000 people died and the power grid was destroyed, Trump responded by literally tossing out paper towels and waiting three years to release substantial aid, dropping desperately needed funds just before the 2020 election. He's spent our last two storms rollicking in misinformation and repeating debunked lies, suggesting that FEMA was diverting disaster money to bring in migrants who could somehow vote for Harris.

I'd hate to see what happens to Florida after a disaster should we elect people Trump doesn't like. His fearmongering style has imprinted on Gov. Ron DeSantis, who once showed a modicum of environmental responsibility but traded more hopeful notes in favor of his administration harboring secret plans to build golf courses in Florida state parks, wiping references to climate from state statutes and blocking workers from staying safe in extreme heat.

So, endorsements. Maybe they're dying or at least have become a changing species. Maybe making a stand for president would be piling noise into an echo chamber. Maybe it's pointless.

But I keep thinking about a poll from earlier this year. The Environmental Defense Fund hired a Republican pollster to collect data, and the results surprised him.

Republican voters in Florida, it turned out, were concerned about energy costs and reliance on natural gas. They believed the impacts of climate change were real. They were worried about much of our electricity coming from piped-in fossil fuel. This red state was more environmentally conscious than any of its peers in the country. Because voters here have to be.

How many of those would-be Trump voters are running dehumidifiers and ripping out drywall? How many are cutting corners to pay mounting insurance premiums? How many are mourning the loss or injury of someone they loved? How many are watching mattresses pile up in landfills and feeling a nagging itch that none of this is right, that Floridians can't keep living in willful ignorance? How many are lining up to vote, a pen in hand and a wave of dissent brushing their backs?

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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