"Improving" the home of the alligator and the gar
May 20, 2022 12:25 PM   Subscribe

The Annihilation of Florida: An Overlooked National Tragedy. Jeff VanderMeer: 'A state that had been among the wildest outside of Alaska or Montana asks its citizens to passively watch as the nonhuman world is liquidated...'
posted by Lyme Drop (10 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh wow, that turnpike is being planned directly through the my paternal family's area. My sister was in born in Lake City, my dad in Branford (he now lives in Cedar Key but has for nearly my entire life), and my grandparents' farm was outside of Branford. These areas outlined on that map are the Northern Florida I have known my entire life and they are sleepy, but to me, that's the charm. It's still a lot of farmland and wildness. I would miss it if it were ruined.
posted by Kitteh at 12:42 PM on May 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Grew up outside of Orlando in the 70's and 80's. Left the state for college and won't ever return to live given how the state has shifted over time. But he's right in the sense that Florida has always been disappearing for straight exploitation of the real estate world. I remember reading the Travis McGee novels back in the 80's and that was a constant refrain of the books how Florida was constantly being bull rushed in the name of growth and how everyone bitches about how bad it's become since they moved there.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:01 PM on May 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


Florida is basically a giant Ponzi scheme, and one of these days the flow of new money to pay off old buyers is going to dry up.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:39 PM on May 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


7 years ago, I was visiting family in Naples and had to drive out to Everglades City - I had, at that point, spent very little time in Florida and, on the way back, for the hell of it, stopped to check out the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk. It had rained heavily a few days earlier, and there was water everywhere - on the road, filling the drainage ditches on either side of it, and soaking the woods around the boardwalk, which pressed right up against it and felt very alive - we saw snakes, lots of birds, dense vegetation and, walking back to the car, two alligators, including a giant one sunning itself fearlessly on the front lawn of the administration hut.

My general impression, only reinforced on return trips, is of a place that's keeping its manicured facade in place only by great, constant, and expensive effort, poised to be quickly and for the most part totally obliterated by climate change, coming generations who can't afford to retire, and the feral nature they'd trying to, but will never totally be able to, subdue. I try to enjoy the lanai and the hot tub now, because it all feels doomed.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:06 PM on May 20, 2022 [7 favorites]


Drewbage1847, that’s exactly what I was thinking. From 1978:
Florida can never really come to grips with saving the environment because a very large percentage of the population at any given time just got there. So why should they fight to turn the clock back? It looks great to them the way it is. Two years later, as they are beginning to feel uneasy, a few thousand more people are just discovering it all for the first time and wouldn't change a thing. And meanwhile the people who knew what it was like twenty years ago are an ever-dwindling minority, a voice too faint to be heard.
posted by PussKillian at 5:39 PM on May 20, 2022 [11 favorites]


Oh hey everyone, hi from Florida! We hope you enjoy our sunny beaches and many retail outlets and whatnot

Hello also from the third most populous state in the country, home to the biggest metropolis in the Southeast, where it might be decent to assume that there's not necessarily ideological homogeneity re: development and environmental causes and the like amongst the state's many and complicated subregions (the author, writing in a deep-red county near Tallahassee, can attest to this). In short, claiming glibly that "Florida is X" and "Florida is Y" where X and Y are any number of environmental commonplaces such as "inevitably sinking into the ocean," "a parable for the rest of the nation regarding humankind's hubris toward development," "a fucking disaster," "full of people who don't know how fundamentally screwed they are," etc. etc. can be slotted is a kind of dismissal. Rather, the post, despite its title and ostensible focus, seems much less about Florida writ large and much more about one specific thing that's happening here--to wit, the construction of a new toll road through several Big Bend counties (which, as the post notes, is violently opposed by the citizenry even in scarlet counties but being pushed through by the government). But that's the thing, innit, because a huge amount of people will say "oh, Florida, unlimited development, huge mistake, hahaha they'll get theirs" while the truth is that a huge number of people in this state, despite the stereotype, do deeply care about their environment, understand the specific threats that afflict it, do believe in climate change, and are trying to do something about it.

Last year I saw a black bear on the Juniper Springs run outside of Ocala. It ran away as soon as it saw the canoe, which has (thankfully) been the reaction of pretty much every bear I've seen in the wild. There are not many bears left in Florida. They can only survive if everything else in their environment is right--if there's good soil and water to support the plants, if the plants feed the herbivores, if the herbivores feed the predators--so the presence of an apex predator is a sign that this little patch of the state, at least, is doing something right. And I'm guessing that there are not many people out there who would say "who cares about the bears, let them all die," but that same sentiment is surprisingly prevalent about Florida writ large. It's one thing to say that the state is bizarre and misguided and doomed and we should just let it sink into the ocean since that's its destiny. It's another thing to say that there are still very active, consequential, and deeply political decisions being made about the environment here, and there are an awful lot of people in this state wanting to fight for that.
posted by lorddimwit at 8:01 PM on May 20, 2022 [6 favorites]


It's one thing to say that the state is bizarre and misguided and doomed and we should just let it sink into the ocean since that's its destiny.

I should have added that I don't think this is only a Florida problem - I get the same sensation visiting the new neighborhood built on the South Boston Waterfront, including the lovely new-ish home of the Institute of Contemporary Art. The last time I was there, the water level of the Harbor was maybe 6' below the bulkhead protecting it, sea level rise projections show a regular flooding risk as early as 2050, and it will likely become an issue well before. There are a lot of pleasant, lucrative fantasies that are going to go by the wayside soon.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:36 AM on May 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Lots of Florida hate in the comments, as usual, but the United States claims to have a wetlands law, but doesn't enforce it. The US could intervene.

US logic seems to go, because the north and the west and midwest destroyed all of their wetlands before the law existed; we need to let Texas and Florida do the same? Ok then.
posted by eustatic at 7:20 AM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I remember reading about Florida in the early 20th century -- there were accounts of taking sea turtle eggs and trying to sell them to whomever until too much time passed and they rotted. And burning entire islands in the Keys to flush out whatever animals could be culled. So could you just drive 25 mph to not mess with the terns? Thanks.
posted by credulous at 11:07 PM on May 21, 2022


the United States claims to have a wetlands law, but doesn't enforce it. The US could intervene.

::puts on env planner hat::

It depends on whether there's any federal money involved or permits required. But yeah, under the pre-Trump rules, destroying a section of wetland would require a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, who themselves would have to consult with the Fish & Wildlife Service and the state water quality authority before issuing the permit. The Trump-era change to the rules reduced significantly the wetlands and waterbodies eligible for protection, and that's still being litigated.

I suspect that the Corps is under intense political pressure in Florida, and my limited professional experience in dealing with regulators in Florida is that they are primarily focused on charismatic megafauna like manatees and sea turtles, and less on the indirect and cumulative effects of development with a lot of political weight behind it...
posted by suelac at 8:30 AM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


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