Mike Thomas, Orlando Sentinel: falling on a green carpet ... by gimleteye

At The Orlando Sentinel, opinion writer Mike Thomas' breezy beat includes the environment. Thomas, who wrote worst timed editorial of the century-- blasting environmentalists for being overly concerned about deep well oil exploration days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster-- now weighs in, "Rick Scott will finish off what's left of Florida's environmental movement".

Thomas is right, but how he got there is unrecognizable. In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote opinions on the environment and politics regularly for the Sentinel for three years until political pressure in the newspaper editorial staff pushed my editor to push me off the page. (My work is archived at alanfarago.wordpress.com) Here's Thomas on April 23, 2009: "Some places, like Alaska's Bristol Bay, are too precious, too unique and too valuable to allow drilling except in a national energy crisis. The deep waters off the Gulf of Mexico hardly fall into this category. It's nothing but an undersea desert out there. But you'd hardly know it listening to the worn-out, hysterical screeching about oil-stained shores destroying the environment and the economy." And Thomas again, on May 1, 2010, "The only shameful ploy I see in this drilling debate is opponents using outdated scare stories about oil-coated shorelines destroying our “pristine” beaches. The last offshore blowout of an American well happened 40 years ago off the Santa Barbara coast in California. Ever since, the industry has vastly improved its technology and safety record..."

On the devastating course Florida is taking under Governor Scott, Thomas arrives at the same conclusion we, at Eyeonmiami, reached long ago: that Rick Scott is going to finish off Florida's environmental protections. But Thomas knows a little of what he is talking about when he speaks of golden age of environmentalism. He misses the practical reasons that environmentalists have been beaten down to a few. They are all traceable back to the nuclear arms race in campaign contributions that deform democracy. It is a point Thomas fails to mention.

But back to Thomas' imagined golden age.

The generation that sprang out of the 1960's and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was under attack from the first, by well-funded entities. Today they include the billionaire sugar barons who use anti-environmental tactics as part of their marketing budgets and have for decades. But 40 years ago, it was the US Chamber of Commerce that decided it was time for the conservative movement to develop and organize against environmental laws.

Yes, in the meantime there have been billions of dollars spent on state parks and big projects, like restoring the Everglades. But there have been trillions -- many trillions-- deployed to forms of growth that harm the environment. Suburban sprawl, the encroachment of Big Ag on wetlands and watersheds; the bottom line is that economic interests who profit from commandeering water resources are undeterred by the intent of laws. Their names are stamped on university buildings, department chairs, and hospital walls.

The mainstream media, including Thomas' employer The Tribune Company, have been under continual pressure to pull back from anything but a neat, non-controverisal, green focus on the environment; certainly not the underlying political poison that infects county commissions and local municipal governments from one end of the state to the other, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic shores. Here's one example: the public relations firm serving Big Sugar in Miami: Wragg and Casas. Joanna Wragg was a career senior editor at The Miami Herald. Nothing having to do with criticism of sugar was allowed in the paper unless it passed her judgment. When she retired, she went to work for sugar directly. There are many examples of the mainstream media ignoring the facts -- Dr. Larry Brand's comes to mind as does the suppression of the work of former Naples Daily News reporter Cathy Zollo. Look to the Miami New Times for Brand's story and to the archives for Zollo who reported out the conflict between environmental protection and the building boom until her editors got queasy.

Thomas writes, "Nasty globs of algae infest our springs. Lake Butler is turning green. Dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon are dying. Red tide is blooming. And who is there to care?" There are not many to care, in part because the mainstream media failed to do its job; tackling tough, hard stories that cross economic interests and persisting. Hell, even Carl Hiassen left Miami.

Thomas also makes mistakes of fact: "As governor, Bob Graham wanted to turn green into a mainstream issue. This recession has taught us it remains a luxury item." People who are close to the Florida environmental movement well know that Bob Graham's compromises on the Everglades restoration-- allowing aquifer storage and recovery for example to be the centerpiece of the original CERP while federal prosecutors were pulled off the case against the state and sugar--, and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to attack him for it, was a baleful example. Graham may get awards and accolades and even claims that the Everglades are his signal achievement in a long career, but in reality the deal that Graham supported in the early 1990's to let Big Sugar off the hook for its nutrient pollution of the Everglades was tragic.

It is the same error being repeated now by Senator Bill Nelson, who is seeking to deflect the US EPA that after a decade of inertia is finally, under Barack Obama's pledge to science over politics, attempting to deal with onslaught of pollution of Florida's waters. To tell the truth: there has not been a single mainstream media story on this facet of the nutrient problem: political leadership that fails to meet the test of protecting the public commons because of special interest money in politics.

Thomas writes, "What I see now are green-group professionals trying to rally masses who have more pressing issues to worry about. This cannot sustain a movement that always took its strength from grass roots." As a writer and activist who has focused on grass roots for twenty years (I am conservation chair of the grass roots organization founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Friends of the Everglades and past leader of Sierra Club in Florida), I can say with confidence that we have all been swamped by the arms race for political money. There is the root of the problem, and Thomas makes no mention of it at all.

It is a curious omission, given the fact that Thomas was right-- early on-- about the horrendously weak candidacy and Democratic campaign of Alex Sink as governor. With so much room to make this connection, why does Thomas take aim at a good subject then just whiff at it?

The influence of special interest money on both the media and politics has pushed the national debate on the economy and the environment far to the right of most people's interests. And the environment, as a social issue, has company in this phenomenon: concern for the poor, for the weak and incapable, for the rights of workers and for people of all faiths and persuasions: these western, liberal and yes, Christian, values have been distorted beyond recognition by conservatives who wear American flag pins on their lapels and carry a Bible next to their cheat sheets derived from Fox News.

The hypocrites rule Tallahassee and Washington. America and Florida is desperate for "jobs", but no one knows how to get jobs moving after thirty years of massive globalization, stripping the United States of industry while failing to keep up with the demands of a global economy. There is one final point on the absence of environmental leaders to carry the torch forward. The men and women who lead the nation's environmental movement in the 1960's and who were my mentors and examples in the late 1980's were, all, children of the Great Depression. They shared an ethic-- not just of the environment-- but also of pitching in and contributing to the public good. This is not imagined. For environmentalists born of "the greatest generation" the example of shared pain and contribution to a common cause were inspiration models. In South Florida, they had names: Dagney Johnson, Grace Maniello, and George Kundst. They didn't ask for or want monuments. And for their environmental activism they were not celebrated. Today they are gone. There are a few of us who continue to fight, day in and day out, but we are not just "an army of ants" fighting against greed; we are fighting against a society that has abandoned its true values and instead wears them like pins of the American flag on their lapels or in narrow, self-centered reading of Scriptures that omit, conveniently, how people once chased the money changers from the temple and took the sanctity of God's creation as gospel.

I doubt the Tea Party has the foggiest notion of the dynamics at work. Nor does Mike Thomas. (Click, 'read more', for the full text of the Sentinel OPED by Thomas)

orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/os-mike-thomas-environment-apathy-03020110307,0,1215213.column

OrlandoSentinel.com

Rick Scott will finish off what's left of Florida's environmental movement

Mike Thomas

COMMENTARY

6:51 PM EST, March 7, 2011

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If Rick Scott could create 1,000 jobs by barbecuing manatees, sea pigs would be roasting on a spit tomorrow.

They apparently taste like elephant.

Just how much outrage would that cause?

I'm beginning to wonder.

The green glory days are coming to an end in Florida.

And now we have a governor who pretty much will finish the job to a rousing round of apathy.

The end of a most amazing era is going out with a whimper.

Florida did things no state had done before. We rejected the massive flood-control projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. We stopped the Cross Florida Barge Canal. We restored the Kissimmee River. Next up was the Everglades. We spent billions of dollars preserving land.

We led the nation in abused kids and cheap jobs, but by God we had the best network of state parks in the country.

The environment was becoming an alpha issue in Florida, elevated to the level of education, taxes and crime. Any politician had to raise his right hand and swear allegiance whether he meant it or not.

The movement was led by the greatest armada of environmentalists ever assembled in a single state — Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Art Marshall and Marjorie Carr, to name a few.

Grass-roots groups like Friends of the Wekiva formed to fight local battles.

It was pave versus save.

We led the nation in both destroying and preserving natural lands.

We bought 2 million acres. We had the Conservation and Recreation Lands Program, Save Our Rivers, Save Our Coast, Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever.

What couldn't be bought was fought over.

The developers were armed with money, lawyers and lobbyists. The greenies countered with an army of intelligent and passionate activists who were well-versed in the intricacies of regulatory battle and usually backed by the media and public-opinion polls.

We had rules and regulations to protect everything from wetlands to beach mice. We had local planners, regional planners and state planners. We had five water-management districts and the Department of Environmental Protection. And behind them lurked even more federal agencies. There were zoning boards and governing boards, administrative hearings and lawsuits.

The forces of green would use each and every one of these assets in lengthy battles of attrition with the forces of concrete.

As one developer groaned: "It's like being attacked by ants."

That forced the inevitable compromises, the bigger retention pond, a few more acres of open space, a few less units per acre.

This is grueling, time-consuming activism.

It requires people with the affluence, passion and time.

Their ranks are thinning fast. The environmentalists I mentioned above are long dead. And I don't see them being replaced.

Nasty globs of algae infest our springs. Lake Butler is turning green. Dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon are dying. Red tide is blooming.

And who is there to care?

Rick Scott plans to abolish the Department of Community Affairs, gut the budgets of the water-management districts, and dispense with all those layers of rules, regulations and agencies. When you do these things, you lessen the need to compromise.

Scott also wants to dump the land-buying programs.

He wants to hand over the land we bought to the Department of Management Services, which traditionally oversees office buildings. I am guessing some will be put up for sale eventually.

There was a time when each of these proposals would warrant full front-page-Sunday treatment.

But there is 12 percent unemployment and a collapsing state budget.

As governor, Bob Graham wanted to turn green into a mainstream issue. This recession has taught us it remains a luxury item.

Florida's massive investment in its environment was funded by its massive growth. Every time a developer flipped property or sold a condo, it was money in the land-buying bank.

The enemy fed the insurrection, and now the enemy is gone.

What I see now are green-group professionals trying to rally masses who have more pressing issues to worry about.

This cannot sustain a movement that always took its strength from grass roots.

Most people here don't even know what the place used to be like. How can you miss what's gone if you never knew it was there?

And those of us who do will be gone soon enough.

mthomas@tribune.com or 407-420-5525

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