Ah, Earth Day. A perfect time to put throw some jam band vinyl on the record player, get out those old hemp necklaces and pay a visit to the local farmer’s market. And, if you’re in South Florida, to spend a few moments pondering how mankind’s wanton destruction of its…
Biking along a tranquil, green path in South Miami sounds pretty enjoyable. Next to a series of massive, 10-story nuclear power transmission lines? Perhaps not so much. That’s a real possibility facing the Underline, a project to transform the underutilized land below Miami’s MetroRail from the Miami River to Dadeland…
Hurricane season 2015 starts in just a few weeks and so far, most experts are forecasting another sleepy storm period in the Atlantic. But another study out this week makes it clear that it would only take one monster ‘cane to wreak an insane amount of damage in booming South…
New studies emerge by the week illustrating how Earth’s climate is changing. Sea levels are rising, and the only real question is how quickly and whether low-lying regions — like, you know, the entire state of Florida — will have time enough to react to save themselves. The only significant group…
Just a few paces from busy Brickell Avenue, Ishmael Bermudez crouches behind his little clapboard house and drinks serenely from a hose lowered into the ancient bedrock. Skyscrapers drape his property in shadows. Across the street, a Metrorail train clamors to a stop at an elevated station. All around, construction…
Miami is definitely a city that places a high importance on the body, and apparently most locals are treating theirs like a temple. That’s at least according to Livability.com who ranked Miami as the fourth healthiest city in America. Perhaps that’s not much of a surprise for a place where…
Coral Gables residents have been fighting the city tooth and nail for months to clean up and reopen Merrie Christmas Park, a small green space contaminated with everything from arsenic to cadmium. Amid legal threats, the city caved in October and — with the help of an anonymous donation — agreed…
Florida certainly is a melting pot, and apparently that even holds true for invasive species. Scientists recently discovered that two types of invasive termites have started to interbreed in Florida, an extremely rare occurrence. How could this happen? Well, global warming might be to blame. Formosan subterranean termites and Asian…
The proposals for a new supermall called American Dream Miami have caught international headlines, especially since the mega-project is set to include a roller-coaster, water park and even a ski-slope. The plan has also caught plenty of flak from everyone from politicians to economists. But now a new wave of…
This past October the city commission of South Miami, which for better or worse hardly ever makes local headlines, made national headlines by passing a resolution calling for Florida to be split into two separate states. The idea didn’t go anywhere but viral online, but the commission decided to try…
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has been fighting all month against claims by former state employees that his administration banned the use of “climate change.” With state workers now upping the ante — including news yesterday one state employee was ordered into a mental health exam for demanding to use the…
“Termites thrive in warm, moist environments,” says Doug Webb, a Terminex technical specialist, in a statement touting the company’s rankings of America’s most termite infected cities. From that alone you should be able to determine that Miami made the list, and indeed we did at number six. Terminix released its rankings…
On March 7, off a dirt road 40 miles west of Miami, swamp buggies careened into the thicket and little kids shimmied up a 40-foot wooden pole trying to grab the $50 bill stapled to the top. At a booth, Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribe member with a long black…
When New York City opened the first phase of its High Line park in 2010, Miamians naturally said, “Oh, we want something like that.” The High Line is 1.45-mile linear park built atop an abandoned elevated railway. Miami’s answer was to propose a 10-mile linear park underneath an active railway,…
The rains of God came down Saturday. The result was flooded streets, stranded cars, and bone-soaked tourists. All in all as much as eight inches dropped on parts of Miami-Dade, along with strong winds. If you were caught in Saturday afternoon’s downpour, you already know it sucked. Especially if your…
More than seven months after it was announced that the University of Miami had sold an 88-acre parcel of endangered pine rocklands habitat to a developer set on building a Walmart, the project remains stalled pending environmental certification — and the blowback continues. Today at 3 p.m. supporters will gather…
Living in Miami in 2015 and harboring any doubts about sea level rise is roughly equivalent to being a volcano truther in Pompeii circa 79 AD. The catastrophe is happening. The only question is just how quickly climate change will sink parts of South Florida. The answer, according to new…
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Barack Obama and Rick Scott may not have that much in common politically, but both the president’s and the governor’s recently proposed budgets had one similarity: lots of money for the restoration of the Florida Everglades. Last month Scott set aside $150 million in his budget for the Everglades as…
In the lab, the genetically modified mosquito larvae glow green and red to help researchers track them. The bugs’ DNA has been tweaked with a killer gene that will wipe out the next generation of blood-suckers before they can latch onto humans. Millions of the scientifically created bugs are released…
The fight over an endangered patch of native pine rocklands has sparked a planned rally at the site of the two highly controversial development projects — a proposed Walmart and the theme park Miami Wilds. “We’ll do two for the price of one,” says Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the…
Across the country, strong resistance has cropped up against the oil extraction process known as fracking, or hydraulic fracturing. Even a single fracking job requires a staggering amount of water, as well as an abundance of toxic chemicals. Some evidence suggests the “fracking fluid” that has to be injected deep…
