Florida politics, global warming, and growth ... by gimleteye

For Florida's political status quo, the environment and economy has always been about "balance", where its fingers always have tipped the scale. For instance, funding for the Everglades always had a price: either some limit on citizen's rights or other benefit to cities and agriculture.

As the debate continues in the Florida legislature whether to continue funding for land acquisition (Forever Florida) and/or the Everglades, House Speaker Marco Rubio's position suggests the question of money for the Everglades as an 'either, or' proposition in an age of budget crises is also a way to drive a wedge between Governor Crist and his own party.

This wedge appeared, in relation to the environment, in the area of energy reform last year. Governor Crist wants Florida to move to the forefront of the states. His views acknowledge the threat of sea level rise to Florida's economy. Crist's forward-looking is in sharp contrast to his two-term predecessor, Governor Jeb Bush, and favorably matches up with the views of Senator John McCain, placing an even greater divide between Republican politics of the past (Bush) and the future (Crist).

House Speaker Rubio, Bush's protege, convened his own energy summit last summer in Tallahassee, with the same skeptical points of view that hold sway in the Bush White House and supported by groups like Progressworks that continues to fund "global warming is a myth", the successor entity to the Wise Use Movement anchor, Citizens for a Sound Economy (funded by the Koch Foundation, Scaife Foundation, and corporate interests that throttled the evolution of US policy on climate change for two decades.)

Florida's big utilities, Associated Industries, Florida Chamber of Commerce, and the developers' lobby also give lip service to global warming concerns, if they pay lip service at all, modeling environmental figments of progress around a hard inner core of business as usual. These are industries, also, for whom restoring the Everglades is viewed as a drag on profits unless they can be ditched, cheaply polluted or mined.

Through these conflicting pressures on Republican politics in Florida, the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade County is a flash point: a target chosen by the Growth Machine to funnel the energy of lobbyists and land use lawyers against environmental regulation. Period.

Along these lines, it is no surprise that this year's ice-breaker is a deep-pocketed corporation: Lowe's. In 2005, it was Hialeah and former mayor Raul Martinez, a Democrat, who partnered with a host of Miami power brokers affiliated one way or another with the Latin Builders Association. The Lowe's application is particularly egregious: it is the second attempt to move the line in West Dade, with the enthusiastic assistance of county commissioner Pepe Diaz, notwithstanding the fact that Lowe's owns sufficient property inside the UDB and adjacent to its property outside the UDB to build and is using the promise of donating in the future land for a school as a magic wand for county commissioners who need something from the bag of tricks to justify breaching the intent of state planning law.

In a time of fiscal crises in Florida--in no small part, the result of the abandonment of conservative fiscal principles by the party of conservative fiscal principles-- the cross-currents of yesterday's county commission Earth Day presentation by the appointed committee to make recommendations for county action on climate change had a hallucinatory feelreinforced by the demeanor and comportment of the unreformable majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission.

While sober evidence and responses to climate change were offered from the speaker's podium, on the dais the Earth Day chattering went on: some by county commissioners and their staff, wandering of people in and out, the departure of Commissioner Joe Martinez, the getting out of chair and returning and getting out of chair by Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, who appeared to be in some considerable pain, whether from the content of the discussion or some other malady yet to be determined; the buzzing had its own life and in strange contrast to the audience patient and silent, as one speaker after another took to the podium to make the point: Miami has never, ever experienced the degree of challenge to be imposed by climate change.

Of all, Commissioner Audrey Edmunson represented the strange feel of the event. Grinning widely and for no apparent reason, she swiveled back and forth in her chair next to dour Natacha Seijas as one statistic after another was revealed on the matter at hand and gradually, finding no one to smile with her-- you couldn't tell if Javier Souto, across the crescent moon shaped table, was sleeping, dreaming, or what--Edmunson finally gave up on any facial expression at all.

Next to Bruno, Barbara Jordan appeared to be listening, and, hearing in the news bad tidings for low-lying Florida City. When given a chance to comment, at the end of the presentation, Pepe Diaz clambered aboard the band wagon of "balance". It was impossible to understand what he meant, but Commissioner Katy Sorenson had-- at any rate-- raised her hand and asked the pertinent question: under such circumstances as global warming, should we even be thinking about moving the Urban Development Boundary. Javier Souto digressed to neighborhood clean-ups, whatever.

It was odd how Commissioner Sorenson's point had the effect of sending a shock current up through the unreformable majority. It was a wake-up call: to the extent that global warming or Everglades restoration for that matter affect the business operations of the development lobby, elected officials are interested.

The reason public officials behave this way is that they can, without penalty by voters. The reason there is so little energy for the Everglades in Congress is that the Diaz Balarts and Ileana Ros Lehtinen aren't forceful on these issues.

Speaker Marco Rubio, who may challenge Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, uses the Everglades as a wedge issue because his West Dade constituents let him undeterred by "a brashness that has estranged potential allies, and a campaigner's knack for choosing the facts so he looks like a winner -- even when he loses." (Miami Herald Naked Politics).

And remember: Mario Diaz Balart earned his Congressional district that includes most of the Everglades through redistricting in 2002.

The district, that had been represented by Democrat Peter Deutsch, wrapped the Florida Keys, linking the concerns of Monroe County with the dying River of Grass. Through redistricting, the representation is separated, split between two districts. ("State Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart couldn't stop smiling Monday after a House committee he heads recommended three similar proposals that would create a congressional seat where he lives. The Miami Republican even responded to a question about "his" seat before catching himself." Miami Herald, Feb 5, 2002, "House moves redistricting plan forward")

Those lines and that redistricting was conducted under the supervision of Marco Rubio's mentor, Governor Jeb Bush.

Tomorrow, on Thursday, the County Commission will take a final vote on three applications to move the UDB. The Crist administration has already recommended against the three applications, through its agencies charged with the matter. Whatever happens, count on the unreformable majority of the Miami-Dade county commission being more animated tomorrow than yesterday.

Sea level rise will be someone else's problem long after they are gone.