Florida faces unfavorable tide

New report calls for climate action, but not everyone's listening

Posted by Miles Grant (Guest Contributor) at 1:57 PM on 30 May 2008

With more coastline than any state in the lower 48 and about a tenth of its economy ($65 billion a year) based on tourism, Florida has more to lose than any other state from the threats of global warming. Rising sea levels creep closer to coastal development. Warmer tropics fuel stronger hurricanes. And higher ocean temperatures kill coral and harm fish populations, threatening the state's $4.5 billion sportfishing industry.

Plenty of reasons that a report released yesterday should serve as a call to action on preparing for inevitable changes from global warming and cutting emissions now to avoid the worst impacts. Preparing for a Sea Change in Florida was produced by a broad coalition of environmental groups.

The report makes several key recommendations:

To reduce the effects of higher ocean temperatures, Preparing for a Sea Change recommends that Florida and federal agencies work to restore the health of coastal and marine ecosystems to enhance their ability to cope with the stress of climate change.
To deal with acidification, Florida must be a leader in efforts to minimize global warming through major reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.
To prepare for rising sea levels, the report recommends that Florida and federal agencies discourage development in vulnerable areas, and work at restoring and protecting natural buffers such as coastal wetlands and near-shore reefs.
The report also recommends that Florida prepare for extreme weather events, such as heavy downpours and droughts, through better protection and restoration of shoreline vegetation and wetlands, and by upgrading stormwater management to account for more frequent and heavier rainstorms, increasing water-use efficiency through conservation, and recycling treated wastewater for industrial use and irrigation.

Florida's Republican governor, Charlie Crist, has made climate action one of his administration's top priorities. Last year, Gov. Crist signed executive orders aiming to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. Crist's orders also set new emissions targets for power companies, automobiles, and trucks and toughened conservation goals for state agencies.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) has been a strong supporter of climate action, co-sponsoring the Climate Security Act, due to hit the Senate floor next week.

But Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) has been a consistent opponent of climate action. Sen. Martinez managed just a 7 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters during the 109th Congress. He fought to weaken the energy bill last year. Sen. Martinez has even voted against a simple resolution calling for the U.S. to take action on global warming.

Will Sen. Martinez take the new warnings of threats to his home state into consideration during the Climate Security Act debate? That's a tough one to forecast. Stay tuned.

For story: Florida faces unfavorable tide
1 Comment | Post a Comment

BS v. Actions

Climate change has been a perfect example of how humans will refuse to make any sacrifices in order to solve serious problems. All we ever get is crap about some magical technological solutions. No one advocates raising the gasoline tax and building bigger and better public transit. No one advocates outlawing all sprawl and phasing out ecologically and socially immoral suburbs -- in fact, the sprawl continues. No one advocates restricting use of electricity to a certain per capita amount. No one advocates moving people out of ridiculously cold climates, in which humans did not evolve and to which they're not suited, in order to use less energy and thus emit less greenhouse gases. And no one advocates lowering human population so that the overall human greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

When I say "no one," I'm obviously not referring to a few bloggers or "radical" environmentalists. I'm talking about politicians and their ruling class masters, who are the only ones who can make these decisions, short of some sort of revolution. Even most credible scientist like James Hansen only advocate partial solutions that have no chance of actually solving the problem.

Specifically, Florida has no decent public transit in its two major metropolitan areas, Miami and Tampa Bay. Its residents also use massive amounts of electricity for air conditioning. So, while its celebrated governor pays lip service to global warming by demanding a large reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases, there is no mechanism advocated for actually reducing them.

And there you have it. The last humans will probably end up like those "Water World" or "Road Warrior," still worshiping the machines that destroyed the Earth and the fuels that feed them, continuing to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere while directly suffering the major negative consequences of doing so.

by Wolverine at 3:57 PM on 30 May 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.