It has been a long time since Republican Claude Kirk was governor of Florida, and the current generation of anti-science Republicans would do well to reflect on what he accomplished.
Kirk was the first Republican governor in Florida's 20th century. In the Jacsonville newspaper, state senator John Thrasher -- a key operative and one hired to help defeat the constitutional amendment Florida Hometown Democracy last year, said Mr. Kirk was "a Republican when being a Republican wasn't cool." Thrasher misses the point of Kirk's signature accomplishment, entirely.
Kirk rose to the governor's office at a time when forward looking, thoughtful Floridians could see that the state's irreplaceable natural resources would be steamrollered by overdevelopment unless the state developed and implemented environmental protections. Observing changes to neighborhood streams and treasured wetlands wasn't as difficult when one grew up thrashing about, fishing and hunting. With only a few million residents, Kirk grew up when wading birds outnumbered Floridians. When he had the chance as governor, to speak up, he knew it was only common sense to protect what made Florida unique.
Kirk and staff, including environmentalist Nathaniel Reed, took imagination, charisma and political strength to conservation even before another Republican-- Richard Nixon-- stood before the nation and enacted the signature environemntal laws of the United States.
On the other side of Kirk's forward looking conservation ethic, a powerful lobby of builders and developers had already pushed through their visions of progress. A world of Florida Levitowns was on the horizon.
I first experienced the glories of the Everglades and Florida Bay as a young man in the early 1970's. I knew nothing, at the time, of politics or what Claude Kirk and his team accomplished. It was still possible to experience these great treasures as they had been for hundreds if not thousands of years. Only a few people knew, then, that our grand Everglades was sputtering already. They didn't need "science". They had common sense and applied it to those initial attempts to use the law and public policy to save what we valued. In doing so, they triggered a 40 Year War on the Environment that animates, to a large degree, Florida's GOP and nationally, too.
What a positive result it would be, if Claude Kirk's passing triggered both reflection and a reversal of so much harm done to Florida's natural resources by the state's Republican leaders.
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