Climate change is already making life more difficult in South Florida, and the signs remain ever more ominous that it will get worse. Just this week, scientists found that the Gulf of Mexico is freakishly hot for the tail end of winter — which could fuel monster hurricanes…
On February 24, Florida Power & Light — Miami’s electricity monopoly and the single biggest donor to politicians in Florida — lost a court battle with the Miami, South Miami, Pinecrest, and Miami-Dade governments over whether the company could string power lines from massive, 80-to-150-foot towers through South Miami-Dade County.
Because good climate-change news is about as common in Florida as a calm and pleasant rush-hour drive on I-95, let’s start there first: The vast majority of the Sunshine State now believes global warming is a real phenomenon supported by scientific evidence. That’s great! But this is Florida, so you know there’s a Lake Okeechobee-size “but” hanging at the end of that first sentence.
Sea-level rise has become such a problem in Miami-Dade that even Republican leaders admit the issue is real. “It’s not a theory,” county Mayor Carlos Gimenez said of global warming in January. “It’s a fact. We live it every day.” For once, we wish Gimenez had spent more time hanging out with his old golf buddy Donald Trump.
It’s no secret that it’s best not to live near one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund sites. They’re the most polluted places in America. But those sites also tend to be crammed near low-income communities and communities of color that don’t live there by choice.
Donald Trump might in fact hate brown and Latino people so much that he’s now hellbent on unleashing a record-breaking hurricane on South Florida, some sort of biblical wall of water that can carry “criminals” and “rapists” and Jorge Ramos and everything else Trump can’t stand about Miami into the sea. There’s no other way to explain his recent actions this week: According to multiple memos leaked to the Washington Post, the president is gunning to juice up the hurricanes that hit Miami.
Last month, a judge upheld Coral Gables’ ban on Styrofoam products, finding that a state law barring the city from enforcing the ordinance was unconstitutional. Now some city officials want to take on another notorious pollutant: plastic bags.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: The State of Florida is nearly ready to approve a major project from Florida Power & Light, but environmentalists are adamant that it could irreparably harm the Everglades. There are so many scandals swirling around FPL’s Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station…
In South Florida, the regulated monopoly of Florida Power & Light is the only game in town when it comes to keeping your lights on. That means that despite FPL’s history of jacking up rates, fighting to store radioactive waste beneath our aquifer, and spending $8 million on a deceitful anti-solar amendment, consumers basically have no other choice but to patronize the utility giant.
For now, Donald Trump can dismiss New York Times reports about his incompetence as “fake” and get away with it, because without knowing who’s leaking White House information, Americans will always have a sliver of doubt about whether Trump’s administration can really have become such a deranged Tilt-a-Whirl.
Into the quiet, a voice rang out amid the trees. “Everyone remain in prayer!” a man in a brown jacket instructed. “Keep your prayers focused! Keep your intentions pure!” Beneath the blue Suwannee County sky, someone tapped out a beat on a tribal drum. Two young women sat cross-legged behind…
The State of Florida is effectively run by shills for the oil, gas, and energy industries. Floridians know what that means: Every time well-meaning citizens or politicians try to lobby the state to pass energy or environmental regulations, the leather utility company boot stomps on Tallahassee’s neck. It’s not fun.
Miami Beach will soon chop down an estimated 815 trees in North Shore Open Space Park. On its face, this is very bad news: The park is the only public beachfront green space on the whole barrier island. Hundreds of residents have signed petitions urging the city to stop the plan.
No cherry-picked scientific studies can refute this fact: If the world doesn’t reduce the carbon it’s dumping into the atmosphere, Miami will drown. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects the seas could rise more than five feet by the year 2100. The flood would force millions of South Floridians to flee their homes.
Anne Posschelle rides her bike to and from work every day on the tree-lined, waterside Indian Creek Drive. But one night last week, as she neared the curve by 26th Street, she was horrified to see that almost all of the foliage — including protected mangroves — had vanished.
You can’t put a price on public safety. But technically speaking, if you want to split hairs, keeping Miami disease-free costs real money. Jaws dropped last fall when Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez revealed the county spent roughly $10 million fighting Zika, a figure it was no doubt unprepared…
The Turkey Point nuclear plant sits on the southern edge of Miami-Dade, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only county affected by the Florida Power and Light plant. Last year, Miami-Dade officials sanctioned FPL and warned that the canals used to cool the plant’s wastewater were leaking into Biscayne Bay. Radioactive materials were…
For 23 years, a science station on Virginia Key tied to the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science has carefully tracked conditions in Biscayne Bay. Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the school, has never seen anything like the data coming in since September.
Jack Black was standing in the dark-green, jungle-like backyard of South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard. The actor gazed at the blue-black pond with its prowling bass and sunfish, then up at the roof. Gleaming white solar panels, the slender, geeky Stoddard explained, power his whole house, including air conditioning and…
Earlier this month, environmentalists were aghast when the feds shot down a last-ditch effort to prevent Florida Power & Light from storing radioactive waste beneath Miami’s underground water supply. More than 1,500 people have now signed a petition demanding that lawmakers take action.
If you’ve lived in Florida for more than a few months, you’ve hopefully absorbed some firm rules regarding the living dinosaurs that populate our swamps and canals. You never swim at night, and honestly should never set foot in any freshwater that isn’t a swimming pool. You don’t feed the…
For better and worse, Florida’s early settlers exerted their will over almost every aspect of the Everglades, from the swamp’s water flow to the sharp sawgrass. But despite their best efforts at conquering nature, insects are still getting the best of us a century later. Zika-carrying mosquitoes briefly destroyed Miami’s tourism economy last year. And when locals aren’t swatting away mosquitoes, they’re blasting entire cans of Raid at palmetto bugs, South Florida’s unique brand of hideous, gigantic flying cockroaches.
