What Does the Future Hold? And Which Future Is That? — EATING THE EVERGLADES

              In 2001, President George W. Bush visited Everglades National Park with his Florida Governor brother, Jeb, and let us foolish optimists know exactly what an uphill struggle it will be to restore the Everglades when he said, “We must meet the demands of growth, but without harming the very things that give Florida and the Everglades their beauty.”[1] Double-speak at its finest. The applause, laughter, and raucous whistles you hear in the background must be from a cynical but appreciative George Orwell. When our elected leaders set goals that are mutually irreconcilable, unrealistic, and certain to fail we know what the future holds. And it’s very ugly. But that’s not the end of the travesty. On January 9, 2002, George W. and Jeb got together again and signed a Federal-State of Florida agreement that is widely known as the Agreement between the Bushes.[2] Perhaps the most significant provision of that Agreement is quoted below:

WHEREAS, in recognition of this interest [in restoration flows largely from the substantial Federal resources in the ecosystem, including Everglades National Park and other National Parks], the Congress established that the overarching objective of the Plan is the restoration, preservation, and protection of the South Florida Ecosystem, while providing for other water-related needs of the region, including water supply and flood protection . . .

            Since the subject of this discussion is located in Florida I shouldn’t continue the commentary or criticism without allowing the State to weigh in with its two cents worth. After all, State legislators passed specific laws that supposedly ensure the Everglades will be restored. Let’s take a look at Florida’s Everglades Forever Act, which declares:

It is the intent of the Legislature to pursue comprehensive and innovative solutions to issues of water quality, water quantity, hydroperiod, and invasion of exotic species which face the Everglades ecosystem. The Legislature recognizes that the Everglades ecosystem must be restored both in terms of water quality and water quantity and must be preserved and protected in a manner that is long-term and comprehensive. The Legislature further recognizes that the EAA [Everglades Agricultural Area] and adjacent areas provide a base for an agricultural industry, which in turn provides important products, jobs, and income regionally and nationally. It is the intent of the Legislature to preserve natural values in the Everglades while also maintaining the quality of life for all residents of south Florida, including those in agriculture, and to minimize the impact on south Florida jobs, including agricultural, tourism, and natural resource-related jobs, all of which contribute to a robust regional economy.[3]

            Hey, everything above reads great, doesn’t it? The Federal and State Governments assert in plain English that they want the Everglades restored, right? So, why the harsh criticism about double-speak? Shouldn’t we be fair and give the process a chance before slamming it?

            Although the issue is in itself complex, the problem I have with the position of both governments can be posed in simple terms: how do you restore the Everglades’ historical hydroperiod, water quality, water quantity, and flow dynamics while keeping agriculture, tourism, and natural resource jobs (meaning environmentally destructive activities like limestone mining), not to mention water supply and flood protection for all urban and suburban settlements that now dominate south Florida (meaning places like Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties) going full tilt at the very same time? Remember the previous objections to the Corps and the SFWMD claiming that the Kissimmee River was being restored to its former glories at the same time as the cattle ranchers’ lands were protected from flooding? It’s like demanding that our prospective spouses simultaneously must be innocent virgins and also highly experienced sexual athletes. Those goals are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable. Period. That’s why the harsh words.

            Today, the only reason that agribusinesses dominate the EAA and urban settlement covers all south Florida, except for the remaining central core of wetlands and the EAA, is that the historical River of Grass was drastically altered by the Corps of Engineers’ water management techniques at the express order of the U.S. Congress. The south Florida wetlands were drained and dried out intentionally so that those modern human landscapes could be created. As a direct result of decades of drainage and water management, those very wetlands cannot be restored to what they were previously if all those socio-cultural “improvements” remain in place and even are expected to grow at the same break-neck pace as they are now. No matter what anyone says, you can’t do both simultaneously or even sequentially. You can only do one. So, if you keep agriculture in the EAA, flood control everywhere from Palm Beach south to Homestead, and limestone mining west of Miami, which at this point are political givens, the Everglades simply can never be restored other than on the most superficial, meaningless basis. Never, never, never.

            Remember the following words and then apply them to the above State legislation and the nonsense in the Agreement between the Bushes: Im-Possible. If you’re thinking “Everglades restoration” you better be focused on bare minimalism at the very most. And even minimalist restoration may be far too ambitious if you had been thinking about restoring the Everglades to an approximation of its former natural wonders. If we sit back and accept the logic in the Agreement between the Bushes and Florida’s Everglades Forever Act, you should start thinking the polar opposite of restoration. Which is the steady, continued, and certain destruction of the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp and all other central and south Florida wetlands while the powerbrokers relax in their exclusive country clubs, smoke expensive cigars, drink the finest single malts, and mock environmental values as their bulldozers continue to devour the wetlands while political re-election campaign committees revel in one fat powerbroker contribution after another. Ka-ching, ka-ching — that’s the sound of the American political system doing what it does best.

            More than a kernel of truth resides in the oft-quoted saying that developers are only giving people what they want. But don’t tell me that argument deserves serious attention. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the role of responsible government to step in and establish restraints when citizens take actions that will prove detrimental to the country’s or the State’s present and future well-being? Hello? Anyone remember 1999 through 2008 when Wall Street banks and investment firms and the role Washington politicians played in drastically reducing the authority of government regulators so those companies could rake in more and more millions as they raped their clients and consumers as well? Take a good look at what’s happening in Florida. Intentionally inept environmental regulations equal natural system destruction. Period. Just don’t tell me that that is inadvertent or unanticipated or unintended.

            Tell me this, dear Readers. If we didn’t have Federal clean air and clean water regulations does anyone but die-hard reactionaries believe industries would have voluntarily spent hundreds of millions to cut pollution? Get real. If we had been smart enough to structure tax credits intelligently it might have happened. But we weren’t and it didn’t. The sad truth is sometimes government’s most important function is to protect us from ourselves. From our basic thoughtlessness, indifference, stupidity, and unbridled avarice. But no government in Florida history has proved itself a responsible environmental steward. The future is not overly promising if that characteristic remains unchanged and Florida keeps tumbling asshole over elbow toward social, economic, and environmental chaos, which is the path the State is on today. That potential reality is hanging out there for all but the willfully blind, the indifferent, or the greed-obsessed to see. As in too many other states, laws passed in the bright sunshine at the behest of the politically connected powerbrokers are merely window dressing to appease their critics as the total urban warfare that is sprawl continues to enrich them and their fat-cat political cronies.

            The problem is that the very nature of Florida politics militates against the possibility of the State changing its stripes, environmentally speaking. So, if the State government has no interest in preventing its well-connected citizens from destroying the very land that sustains them, perhaps the Federal government will have to assume that role. Fat chance, the pessimists say. Not with agribusinesses, mining companies, and land developers so cozy and warm, cuddling in the core of the Republican nest. Just ain’t gonna happen. Better invest in some political campaign futures like the Big Three powerbrokers if you want real returns on your money. Those fat old boys really know how to get Congress to pipeline the goodies straight into their pockets. That’s because their marches on Washington are made with fully loaded grease guns.

            The bleak and remorseless prognosis many cynical observers see for south Florida is a product of the explosive growth the State has experienced and, even now after the housing bubble imploded, is unwilling to control. That particular future is nothing more than wall-to-wall subdivisions connected by one architecturally meritless retail strip center after another. In that future the River of Grass is gone. The Big Cypress is but a lingering memory. Or perhaps it survives as the name of yet another bustling regional shopping mall, maybe something on the order of The Grand Galleria at Big Cypress. Is that the legacy we want to leave our grandchildren and their grandchildren? An even more unsettling thought is that what we have done and will do with our environmental stewardship in Florida speaks to the future of our entire nation.

            Unless major changes arise in the way we understand and discharge our environmental responsibilities, I’m happy to say that I will be dead before the eyes of our nation witness the full-scale destruction that today seems so inevitable. What real chance is there for a future that holds out the hope of hundreds of millions of Americans living in balance with the environment? It’s a tough question, one that all too few leaders in south Florida are willing to address. The best answer to that is another question. Do voters appreciate the role that munificent and unending political campaign contributions play in the creation of legislation and in controlling the actions of regulatory agencies?

            The reason why the remaining natural and partially natural environments in Florida seem doomed to savage alteration and eventual destruction lies in the critically flawed nature of Florida politics, and that includes Democrats and Republicans alike. There’s no significant difference between those guys, regardless of party affiliation. And don’t forget the greed principle so beloved by developers and businessmen that they would disinter their mothers in order to be able to sell the land and make a tidy profit. Land to them is only dirt; its intrinsic ecological value has no meaning. Just dirt that can be sold at the highest price the market will bear. Dirt whose only role in life is to be transformed into nothing less than gross profits and thus into fat.

In a world some scholars have characterized as a fusion of the sacred and the profane, for powerbrokers and their fat-cat politicians only the profane counts and is to be exploited to the max. Therefore, the Everglades, Big Cypress, Loxahatchee Slough, and the Green Swamp are regarded simply as financial opportunities to develop more subdivisions, strip centers, lime rock mining pits, muckland sugarcane farms, orange groves, grazing land, and bio-medical research campuses. More-more-more is the goal because that’s the only way powerbrokers and their pet politicians will continue getting fatter. And that’s the sorry truth.

            It’s not high-energy physics we’re talking about. Just follow the money. Watch the shell carefully and you will discern the hand-off from developers, mining firms, and agricultural interests to the politicians’ election campaigns. It’s a flawed system we tolerate because we lack the collective will and the courage to change it. I mean, who’s getting hurt here? The Everglades? The Big Cypress? Who gives a rat’s ass anyway? I got my air conditioned subdivision house and a pick-up truck and SUV in my two-car garage with the bass boat sitting in the side yard. What the hell do I care about some stinking swamp? You know, I ain’t never seen a gator that could generate jobs or electricity.

            The truth is that coming generations are the ones that will suffer, not us so much. As a nation we have been shitting in our nest for two hundred years and sooner or later society will be forced to pay the price. Regardless of what Republicans and others connected to the powerbrokers like to claim, our actions have environmental costs and consequences. They can be postponed for a time but they can’t be wished away or ignored, no matter what people like Julian Simon and his see-no-environmental-evil followers say. After all, if you don’t think past civilizations disappeared when they destroyed their environments, you probably know little about the Mayans, Easter Island, or Angkor Wat. Listen to Jared Diamond, writing in Harper’s Magazine in 2003:

One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Few people, however, least of all our politicians, realize that a primary cause of the collapse of those societies has been the destruction of the environmental resources on which they depended.

            Please tell me, why is it that profit and greed have been able to dictate our environmental heritage? I can only hope-pray-trust that people make an effort to understand the relationship between campaign contributions and political accessibility. In our country, political accessibility rules. And the surest way to get accessibility is through large and regular campaign contributions to politicians of both parties. Fat businessmen of all varieties have a natural desire to surround themselves with fat politicians. Remember the great line Shakespeare put in Julius Caesar’s mouth? “Let me have men about me that are fat.” All I can say is that old Julius would feel perfectly at home in the Florida political crowd. Porkers all getting fat by eating the Everglades. Burrrrp.

Implications

            Despite loud trumpeting and elaborate smokescreens to the contrary, the State of Florida has no effective growth management tools to regulate or limit the heavy population in-migration to Florida as a State or to its magnetic coastal regions. Nor are there effective tools to mitigate the adverse environmental effects generated by that migration. Why? Because the State lacks both the will and a reason to create and implement tools that work. As a general observation, land use and environmental planning can never succeed where back-room political deals have created and continue to maintain a tilted playing field. That’s been the harsh political reality of Florida for well more than a hundred years and that’s why the State has no interest in effective environmental or growth management legislation. No matter what intentional misrepresentations flow out of the Governor’s mansion.

             The developers’ environmental feeding frenzy, consuming ever more “dirt” to satisfy the demands of increasing numbers of people, has a set of inevitable but easily foreseeable consequences. If you open your eyes. But only if, and that’s a big if, people want to see what their future holds. Even if it’s through a glass darkly. We either face those consequences now or for future Florida generations it will be too late. In the real world, no possibility exists that the demands of south Florida growth can be met while protecting an extraordinarily fragile resource that is required to sustain that growth. No matter what President George W. Bush and Governor Jeb Bush were so fond of saying without the slightest hint of insincerity or hypocrisy.

            Truth is, no way can two 180° opposed land use variables be maximized simultaneously. Period. End of story. In the case of south Florida, an irresistible force has met a very fragile object and we are witnessing the inevitable crunch. The Everglades is dying and has been dying for almost a hundred years. No mistake. As it must given political reality and our lack of collective will to change that situation. For Florida powerbrokers to thrive and grow fatter, the Everglades must be destroyed. The real problem is that we seem frozen in the headlights of a speeding eighteen wheeler, absolutely powerless to move. As much as it deeply hurts to write this, if the above growth scenario written by agribusinesses, developers, and the mining guys in cahoots with the fat-cat politicians continues to dominate the Sunshine State, my advice is to hurry and see what’s left of the once natural and beautiful Florida landscapes. Before they disappear completely. Or before they are so altered as to be totally unrecognizable for the treasures they once were.

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[1] Quoted in Michael Grunwald, “Growing Pains in Southwest Florida – More Development Pushes Everglades to the Edge,” Washington Post, June 25, 2002.

[2] Available on the internet: http://exchange.law.miami.edu/everglades/010902_Comp_Ever_Restoration_Plan_Benefits_Agreement.htm

[3] 2000 Florida Statutes, Title XXVIII, Natural Resources; Conservation, Reclamation, and Use; Chapter 373, Water Resources 373.4592, Everglades Improvement and Management.