Politics, ethics, and sea level rise ... by gimleteye

In a 1991 paper, EPA climate scientist Dr. Jim Titus wrote, "Sea level rise is an urgent issue for coastal environmental planners for the very reason that it lacks urgency for directors of public works. If environmentalists do not lay the necessary paperwork today to institutionalize a gradual abandonment of the coastal plain as sea level rises, the public will almost certainly call upon engineers to protect their homes in the years to come." ("Greenhouse Effect and Sea Level Rise: The Cost of Holding Back the Sea") Nearly twenty years have passed, and the only evidence of addressing the issues of building and development in coastal zones is study after study. To spur the building boom, "conservative" politicians and public officials eviscerated what limited regulatory authority existed to control development in the path of sea level rise -- in particular, during the Bush eras in Tallahassee and Washington.

Miami and Miami-Dade is an instructive example. When the county commission authorized and spent more than $3 million on the nation's most complete watershed study in the United States, to evaluate where future growth should occur, the builders, developers, and mortgage bankers successfully sabotaged the results. The study was dismissed by the unreformable majority.

Now, Dr. Titus is the lead author of a recent scientific paper, "State and local governments plan for development of most land vulnerable to rising sea level along the US Atlantic coast." Here is how it begins: "Environmental regulators routinely grant permits for shore protection structures (which block wetland migration) on the basis of a federal finding that these structures have no cumulative environmental impact. Our results suggest that shore protection does have a cumulative impact. If sea level rise is taken into account, wetland policies that previously seemed to comply with federal law probably violate the Clean Water Act."

Members of the Miami Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force (I was a task force member until 2009) also spent a few years studying the subject and reached a conclusion: we have to change our land use patterns and start blocking shoreline and wetlands development that campaign contributors want. But this runs straight up against land speculators and the development/ construction lobby. These well-funded corporate interests rely on the arguments of "property rights" and state law inhibiting action by local governments as a way to leverage private profits against socialized risk. It is the story of Florida.

Recently, The Miami Herald reported: "Jim Murley, director of Florida Atlantic University's Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions and chairman of a state energy and climate commission, said political leaders will need to start doing more, including something many have been loath to do -- saying ``no'' to some development. "I would suggest to you we need to reset the way we think about doing land-use planning in the future,'' he said. "We're going to have to start to understand how we can accommodate where to put the water.'' Environmentalists have been screaming for stronger growth management for years and say they've gotten back mostly lip service. Many remain skeptical that politicians will follow through on climate issues, citing how economic issues have pushed Gov. Charlie Crist's green agenda to the back burner." ("South Florida counties to team up to combat climate change", Miami Herald, Oct 24, 2009)

In fact, the South Miami Dade Watershed Study exhaustively, and a great expense, looked at the watershed of Miami-Dade and clearly mapped out the policies and intersection of planning and water. Today the study sits on a shelf in the Miami-Dade Department of Planning: thanks to de facto chair of the commission, Natacha Seijas, and her chief of staff, Terry Murphy. (Murley was a Chiles era cabinet officer, Secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs, that supervises growth management plans throughout the state.)

Today, the issue of ethics and leadership falls squarely on the shoulders of the Cuban American majority in Miami-Dade. Miami Mayor Manny Diaz claims to be "the green mayor", but his green is not about restricting development where it should never occur because of the costs that flood control and abatement impose on taxpayers. Diaz, instead, is about bicycles and recycling and green building: nothing about where building is allowed. In fact, some of the worst flooding in the city now occurs at high tides and around buildings whose zoning and permitting Diaz supported. Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez has tried to block movement of the Urban Development Boundary, partly on the issue of environmental impacts, but the county commission has repeatedly over riden his veto votes.

The truth is that great profits have been wrung from systematically avoiding the costs to taxpayers of unsustainable growth in Florida. This recession-- the deepest since the Great Depression--rests directly on the shoulders of an incumbent majority in South Florida that is, by coincidence of history, mostly Hispanic. What environmental activists have discovered in Miami, is that Hispanic voters are strongly pro-environment; partly as a result of understanding that the root cause of so much destruction is political corruption. Unfortunately, the leaders they help elect and return again and again to office change colors as easily as chameleons. Commissioner Javier Souto thinks he is an environmentalist because he advocates cleaning up dumpsters and bus stops (whose benches proliferate political signage) in his Westchester district. Seijas now finds time on the dais to proclaim how sensitive she is to the environment.

If Seijas and the unreformable majority of the county commission, or the new mayor of Miami, want civil discourse on the environment, the path to reconciliation could begin by stopping development in wetlands and those coastal areas that will be hit first and hardest by sea level rise: South Miami Dade, in particular, where Florida Power and Light is proposing $20 billion in new nuclear reactors.