Florida’s environment and economy dodged yet another bullet from the oil industry last month, thanks to the tireless efforts of Sen. Bill Nelson.

Nelson’s impassioned pleas on the Senate floor and in private meetings with Democratic senators helped defeat a bill designed to give neighboring states more incentives to allow offshore drilling. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., would have increased the revenue — up to $835 million a year — paid to states that permit drilling off their coasts.

Supporters of the measure needed 60 votes to end a filibuster and send the bill to the Senate floor, where it had a strong chance of passing. They got only 51. Unfortunately, one of the votes to end the filibuster was cast by Nelson’s Florida colleague, Sen. Marco Rubio.

Rubio, who was just elected to a second term, has much to learn from Nelson — along with fellow Republicans like former Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Sen. Bob Martinez — about the threat that offshore drilling poses to Florida.

Drilling within 125 miles of Florida’s Gulf Coast is already banned through the year 2022, thanks to a moratorium initially pushed by Nelson and Martinez and later extended through Nelson’s efforts.

But Cassidy’s bill would have provided extra royalties to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas to expand drilling off their coasts. It also would have created revenue-sharing opportunities for Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia if they permitted offshore drilling.

As Nelson rightly argued, expanded drilling off nearby states’ coasts would increase the chances of a spill that could severely damage the environment and economies of those states as well as Florida’s.

Florida’s environment — its beaches, coastal waters, parks and wildlife — is crucial to its $70 billion tourist-based economy, employing more than 1.2 million residents, and its real-estate industry.

The threat posed by offshore drilling became all too real in 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster spewed almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf and along the Gulf Coast.

“We have watched the tar balls wash up on the beaches,” Nelson said on the Senate floor. “We've seen the sugary white sands of Pensacola Beach be completely black, covered from oil.

"We saw the harm that was done not only to the local businesses that catered to tourists, such as the hotels, the restaurants, the attractions, [but to] all the ancillary businesses [such] as the dry cleaners, the real estate firms.”

Nelson also pointed out that the Gulf provides critical testing and training grounds for the U.S. military, and that two Republican secretaries of defense have said oil-related activities there would be incompatible with that mission.

Nelson’s arguments helped save the day for Florida, and not for the first time. He thwarted Cassidy’s efforts to attach a similar measure to an energy bill that the Senate passed overwhelmingly this spring. He also led the opposition to another Cassidy bill in 2015 that would have repealed the Gulf moratorium.

“We had yet another small victory today in our ongoing fight to keep oil rigs off Florida’s coast,” Nelson said after last month's vote. “And we’ll continue to fight any future drilling proposals that threaten our state.”

Unfortunately, that will probably be necessary. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves.”

Florida can count on Nelson’s continued leadership in the struggle to protect our environment and economy. We hope that, next time, Rubio will join him.

— This editorial originally appeared in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, one of The Sun's sister publications.