Author
Twenty years on, plan to restore FL’s Everglades runs into climate questions
I’ve been humming the opening lines of a certain Beatles song lately. Why? Because it was 20 years ago today — no, wait, actually it was on Dec. 11, 2000 — that plans to restore the Everglades got their official OK with a bizarre little ceremony at the White House. This happened during the three-week-long […]
Development would’ve wiped out this FL habitat, but Destiny took a hand
Don’t you just love a good Florida story? I sure do. Not just the short ones, like the one about the Gainesville driver in a road range incident who accidentally ran over himself. I love the longer ones, too, the ones that take a few twists and turns and wind up with a surprise at […]
Fishy business with FL Legislature’s push for wells north of Lake O
My dad has always enjoyed fishing. When I was a kid, he loved taking me with him and showing me how to bait the hook, cast the line, and not freak out when my rod suddenly bent double. One important thing I learned from him was that a placid surface can be deceptive. A lot […]
Floridians, be thankful for the pains in the butt
Jackie Lane knows a lot of people think she’s a pain in the butt. They wish she would just shut up and sit down. Stop causing so many problems for the paper mill near Pensacola. Stop putting people’s jobs at risk. “The community is not particularly fond of environmental activists,” she told me this week. […]
How ‘DeathSantis’ could become ‘Governor Green’
Dear Gov. DeSantis, First, let me offer my condolences on your loss. I’m sure it hurts. You hitch your wagon to the TV star in the White House, he helps you become governor, and you’re looking forward to four more years of easy politicking with his help — and then BOOM, the star collapses. Millions […]
Ignoring Legislature, Central Florida voters say clean water is a right
Not a lot of people noticed it, but something pretty interesting happened in Florida during last week’s election. No, I don’t mean the fact that the state most vulnerable to climate change somehow decided to cast more votes for the presidential candidate who has claimed climate change is a hoax (a claim lacking any evidence […]
Greyhound shutdown shows how FL politics has gone to the dogs
Several times over the past month or so I have gone out to Derby Lane to hang out at the dog track and talk to people about The End. Derby Lane is a St. Petersburg institution. Founded in 1925, it is the oldest continuously operated greyhound racetrack in the nation, now employing about 400 people. […]
Trump’s sneering at solar is stupid in the Sunshine State
A 74-year-old man stopped by Florida’s massive retirement mecca known as The Villages last week. That wouldn’t be big news except it was President Donald J. Trump, who fit right in among all those golf-cart riding senior citizens (as would his challenger, Joe Biden, 77). Trump felt the need to campaign at The Villages because […]
EPA keeps public in dark about building roads from phosphate’s radioactive waste – so we can better see the eerie glow?
Florida’s highways have frequently been built on a foundation of chicanery and political foolishness. We’ve got toll roads that were built using fudged financial figures (Looking at you, Polk Parkway and Suncoast Parkway). We’ve got a Bridge to Nowhere that was built purely to benefit the then-speaker of the House but then went bankrupt (Hi […]
Veep’s glib and evasive answer on climate change and hurricanes bugs Florida man
Last week, the big news out of the vice-presidential debate was the bug news. A fly landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head and stayed there for more than two minutes. Fly jokes flew all over the internet. Someone created a Twitter account for the infamous insect, and it soon had more than 200,000 followers. […]
A whale of a tale gets a happy ending (for now)
The world’s most endangered whales got some good news last week. It’s quite a tale. Before he came down with coronavirus due to consistently ignoring what scientists told him, President Donald J. Trump visited Florida last month to announce he was ordering a halt to any plans for offshore drilling near our Atlantic coast. Of […]
Phosphate waste threatens bay again, so what if we bottled it?
Seventeen years ago, when I was a reporter for what was then known as the St. Petersburg Times, I drove across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to tour a 700-acre industrial site near Port Manatee. My destination was an old fertilizer plant that the state’s top environmental regulator, during our tour, called “one of the biggest […]