Thom Rumberger: environmentalist and Republican ... by gimleteye

Thom Rumberger passed away this week in Tallahassee after a long illness related to complications from diabetes. Rumberger was a life-long environmentalist and a leader. He was chairman of the Everglades Trust, an umbrella organization founded by George and Mary Barley and Paul Tudor Jones involved in supporting Everglades related groups and activities. He was a Tallahassee insider. And importantly, he was a Republican insider. While Thom Rumberger is at rest, these observations honor his memory today and now.

It shouldn't be difficult for our political leaders to embrace conservation and the values of clean air, water, and irreplaceable natural resources. Rumberger was a singular example within the GOP, but he didn't have much company that would admit in broad daylight to sharing his passion and love for what sustains all of us, irrespective of political persuasion.

Rumberger's passing is a generational loss. Floridians forget the broad bipartisan consensus during the 1960's and 1970's to protect Florida's threatened wild places and wetlands. Florida Republicans who implemented the Growth Management Act, eviscerated by Governor Rick Scott and the GOP legislature in 2011, are gone from the political scene. And we are much poorer as a result.

Watching the presidential debate among Republican candidates this week and in particular Texas governor Rick Perry's aw shucks dismissal of science related to global warming was a depressing clue. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott recently authorized the wholesale dismantling of science capacity at the state water management district. That's the sole repository of science for the Everglades. As for drilling for oil in the Everglades, the fact that Scott stumbled on the subject at all is unconscionable.

Leaders like Thom Rumberger spent decades working behind the scenes because the GOP leadership had broadly retreated on the environment, on tough regulation against polluters and enforcement. It is not a level playing field. If the free market could police itself -- one of the many justifications that propel a radical legislative agenda forward, including attacks on the US EPA--then Florida waters would not be ringed by pollution and Florida's wetlands vanished as though by an unaccounted-for Rapture.

Thom Rumberger did his level best to keep the Everglades and Florida Bay for future generations. May God speed him forward.