The Everglades face a boatload of human-caused problems, not the least of which is global warming.
On Wednesday, traditionally Earth Day although many Earth Day events were held this past weekend, President Obama
will be visiting the Florida Everglades to deliver a speech on the impacts of climate change on the environment, the economy and our health. Florida is ground zero for many of the impacts climate change is already visiting on the United States.
That seems not to worry Gov. Rick Scott or the Senator-who-would-be-president Marco Rubio. Both are stubborn climate-change deniers although Rubio has danced around the subject a bit more than the governor. Employees of the state Department of Environmental Protection have been ordered not to mention "climate change" or "global warming" in official communications, emails or reports. It's not known whether Scott will require them to wear earplugs during Obama's visit.
In his regular Saturday address this past weekend, Obama said: "There’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change":
Stronger storms. Deeper droughts. Longer wildfire seasons. The world’s top climate scientists are warning us that a changing climate already affects the air our kids breathe. Last week, the Surgeon General and I spoke with public experts about how climate change is already affecting patients across the country. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security.
Like much of low-lying southern Florida, the Everglades face obliteration from sea-level rise due to global warming. Salinization of fresh water there has been happening for some time, and it's clear that the sea will penetrate deep inland, dooming much of this wetland just as it will doom Miami. But the Everglades have longstanding problems unrelated to global warming as well.
For the past century, what Everglades defender Marjorie Stoneham Douglas called the "river of grass" in her 1947 book, this fragile wetland has suffered assaults from urbanization, drainage and flood control projects, invasive species, chemically laden agricultural run-off and diversion of water. It now supplies water to 7 million south Floridians and that's at risk. The original area of the Everglades has shrunk to half its size as agriculture, most of it sugarcane, has intruded into sub-tropical land of saw grass where 67 endangered or threatened species of aquatic birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians live.
Follow me below the fold for more on this subject.
Fifteen years ago, President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. It was meant to be completed by 2030. But, halfway along, it's mired in local and state politics. As Ledyard King of the Ft. Myers News-Press pointed out last month, none of the 68 projects that are part of the restoration have been completed, and only 13 have even been authorized.
One of the key elements, eco-advocates says, is buying 46,800 acres of land from the U.S. Sugar Corp. The land is needed for storage of polluted water, the overflow from Lake Okeechobee of phosphorus-rich agricultural run-off. A spokesman for the Audubon Society says that purchase is the "linchpin" for the restoration project. "If you don't do this, the rest of it all starts to fall apart," he said.
But just two weeks ago, despite weeks of protests by environmentalists, that purchase was effectively canned by the South Florida Water Management District board on the grounds that it wouldn't make much of a difference and cost too much.
"There hasn't been a sense of urgency," said former Florida Gov. Bob Graham, a Democrat and former U.S. senator who co-sponsored the Everglades restoration law. "There's an attitude of, well, if it doesn't happen this year, it'll happen next year or two years from now, or three years from now."
This it-can-wait attitude is, of course, widespread. Not just about the Everglades but global warming as well.
In his weekly address, President Obama said:
[Climate change] is an issue that’s bigger and longer-lasting than my presidency. It's about protecting our God-given natural wonders, and the good jobs that rely on them. It's about shielding our cities and our families from disaster and harm. It's about keeping our kids healthy and safe. This is the only planet we've got. And years from now, I want to be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye and tell them that we did everything we could to protect it.
But we
aren't doing everything we could. It's true, as the president said, that the United States added more solar power last year than the total that had been installed since the 1980s up through 2008. Welcome progress without a doubt.
But the 2014 installations tallied six gigawatts. Another six gigawatts is predicted for 2015. By year's end, that would mean a total capacity nationwide of just 25 gigawatts. The total U.S. gigawattage from all energy sources right now is around 1,100 gigawatts. Even if solar installations were tripled, only half our electricity would come from that source by 2050.
Too friggin' slow. Accelerating the pace of such installations requires not only that we enact policies encouraging more solar and other renewables but also that we fight and beat the fossil fuel industry and its marionettes in the federal and state governments.
That will open the way to ending the all-of-the-above energy policy that currently encourages continued extracting and burning of fossil fuels that got us into this predicament in the first place. The initial step in that process should be to block fossil-fuel leasing on public lands, on- and off-shore.
Waiting until next year, or the next or the one after that is unwarranted delay. And delay is just denial in disguise.
