I just started reading Michael Grunwald's book on the Everglades, The Swamp, after hearing him speak last week and picking up a copy afterwards. It sounds like a fascinating read, especially since Grunwald in his talk framed the story of the Everglades as a momentous trial by fire for the concept of ecosystem restoration. "The ultimate test of sustainable development," he called it.
We've already lost half of the original Everglades, but late in the Clinton years a huge, bipartisan restoration plan was put in place. Saving the Everglades is now popular, uncontroversial, and well-funded. Yet nevertheless, according to Grunwald restoration is behind schedule, over budget, and off track. Meanwhile, the Everglades ecosystem is in a state of meltdown. We're on the verge of failing our test.
Grunwald's book look to be an excellent guide to the history of how we got here; moreover, the question it poses has broad application to any environmental mess. Can we really reverse the problems we've caused, before it's too late?
In this respect I was fascinated by Grunwald's response to a question about how the Everglades will be affected by climate change and especially sea level rise. The current restoration plan, he said, doesn't pay a lot of attention to this problem, but "a few feet are going to make a big difference." Hmm, how much of a difference will 25 feet make? How about 80 feet, as James Hansen warned about if the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets disintegrate? Saving the Everglades may be a test in more ways than we think.
Anyway, I encourage you to read Grunwald's book to figure out how we got into this mess, and how to get out of it. And remember: The right response to environmental books like this is not to get depressed, but rather, to get motivated--and even to get angry.
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"If We Can't Save the Everglades, What Can We Save?"
$1.49 on a 10-pack of Hostess cupcakes at Wal-Mart!
This is the dilemma of climate change - we really cannot save the Everglades if the sea level rises 25 feet. If we really think this is in the cards and we are past the "tipping point" on climate change then why spend resources uselessly? This is actually a serious question, and gets to one problem of policy vs. science. I am all for better conservation rules, gas taxes, and better energy sources (renewables, nuclear power, etc.). These give us some flexibility when things change, and are good for other reasons.
When I see people saying we are past the point of no return on climate change, (or at the point where the only thing that will stop major changes are policies that in my mind won't be implemented); then I get this sinking feeling that climate change is the perfect cop out. A lot of force behind policy changes can just be blown by. Suddenly the "teach the controversy" people are going to flip and become big science backers, saying, something like "Oh well, I guess I am convinced NOW - change is coming so we shouldn't waste money spending on this stuff that will be wiped away, we should maximize our economies now to reduce the blow."
To change the subject back, restoring ecosystems always sounds funny to me. I would rather say we are trying to manage the system to make it suite us, even if that means making it look wild. If we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to affect an ecosystem, this isn't "restoring" it is managing, and I am ok with that. This changes the way you look at results - what are you trying to achieve? I like the perspective the book "1491" gives of the Amazonian Indians - they were living in harmony with nature in a way that is different than the popular image - they were creating the worlds largest gardens.
Markk,
Hansen isn't saying that we're at the tipping point, or past it....he's warning about the tipping point looming ahead.
At the very least, we should be funding the satellite fleet that is showing us what is happening with the climate. Apparently, for whatever reason, we're having trouble doing this.
Someone should ask the Bush administration, if they're serious about climate change, why these satellites have fallen off the priorities list. Wasn't it just over a year ago that they were talking about a Mars mission? How could they have been thinking that way a year ago, but now are claiming to be in the poorhouse with regard to NASA's environmental satellites?
Actually I was thinking of James Lovelock not Jim Hansen with that remark about being past the tipping point.
Jon Winsor,
The 'Mission to Mars' is an easy sell to the American people. It 'captures the imagination' as they say. Most people, on the other hand, probably have no idea that there are satellites dedicated to monitoring the environment - or even weather (the local TV station's Doppler 3000 takes care of that, right?). As such, you can cut those projects without a ripple in the media.
Secondly, no offense but, if you think the Bush administration is "serious about climate change", I'd like to know what you are basing that on.
Thirdly, this is a coup for the administration. They get to fund their pet PR space project (Mission to Mars - I loved it at Disney World, BTW), kill a project that provides data which supports the consensus scientific opinion on climate change (which they oppose), and talk about hard choices made in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Sadly, it's going to be a long time before the US does the right thing with regard to climate change.
I should have put scare quotes around "serious". I don't think they're serious. But that's their public stance. So someone should challenge them on this and prompt some sort of public discussion. Why are we fully funding a man-powered study of Mars while endangering the study of Hurricanes and Climate Change on Earth? Especially when it would take half the funding? It seems like a question that should get some air time.
It's strange that this issue gets so much more media in Europe than it does here. What's driving that?
to answer Chris' question -
the Klamath-Siskiyou. Maybe. I hope.
On Lovelock--I've never read his work, although I've run into articles about his Gaia Hypothesis, which always seemed to me along the lines of philosophical speculation instead of hard science. (Not that there is anything wrong with that. Good philosophical speculation can be interesting.)
But on the basis of this Real Climate article about his latest work, it would seem that this new material is along the lines of speculation as well. This seems to me singularly unhelpful. The last thing we need is alarmist speculation. We need to build the "signal to noise" ratio on climate science in the public space, not introduce more noise. We have enough of a task getting the public clear on what we do know. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not a climate scientist) but introducing Lovelock's speculations on top of all that seems to add more noise.
Um... don't the Everglades become moot (as does the entire Florida penninsula) if the glaciers on Greenland keep melting?
Looks like that link to the Real Climate article on Lovelock didn't go through. Here it is: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=256
Quick off-topic note:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is back at the HufPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/a-poisonous-move-for-…
More mercury in flu shots?
Question: Is there more mercury in flu shots or in dental fillings?
I posted a trackback to your prior post about "The Swamp", with some comments about another swamp (at www.postnormaltimes.net) - the biggest in the world, where only a few inches drop in water levels could make it look like the scrubby area that surrounds it, and destroy the home of 650 species of birds etc. In other words, small changes can make catastrophic differences. More to come about drop in funding levels for gathering scientific information needed to understand what is going on.
It doesn't take much melting at all to make the Everglades history. The entire southern half of Florida ranges from 0 to around 20 feet above sea level; the Everglades itself being on the low end of that. Only takes a bit more salt intrusion to write the sucker off.
I'm as green as the next guy, but southern Louisiana's wetlands and the Everglades are history, folks. We could cut carbon emissions to 0 tomorrow, and the lag effect would still overwhelm both.
The Everglades is basically the result of an "experiment" by the Army Corps of engineers -- an experiment gone bad, by some measures, at least.
Over the years, there have been many such experiments by the Corps and others (For an interesting read on the subject, I suggest John McPhee's book "The Control of Nature").
The primary lesson of the Everglades is that natural systems are exceedingly complex and that people should be very careful mucking about with them (and in this case, in them) before they have a proper understanding of how they work.
The lesson of the Everglades has obvious overtones for the current largescale "experiment" that mankind is performing on the earth's climate.
It should really come as no surprise that even the climate scientists who believe in the reality of human-induced global warming (ie, most of them) have recently been caught off guard by how fast the Greenland is pack is melting: much faster than anticipated and at a rate that is accelerating. http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345926.ece
If one does not have a sufficiently good understanding of the physical systems involved, there are bound to be surprises , particularly with complex systems like the global climate system.
This can even be the case when one has a very good understanding of how the system operates but lacks insufficent baseline data. With complex systems, small changes in initial conditions can result in very different outcomes.
The problem, of course, is that the global warming contrarians turn this on its head, essentially saying "We may be pleasantly surprised by the way things turn out and because of this, the precautionary principle [assuming worst case scenario] is not warranted."
"We may be Pleasantly suprised"?
Perhaps. But I suppose that really depends on who "we" are. If you live on an island that is just a few feet above sea level, the water in your living room is far more likely to be UN-pleasant.
For anyone looking for another great read on the Everglades, try Ted Levin's "Liquid Land." It won the John Burroughs prize for nature writing last year and discusses many wildlife and habitat management concerns.
To me, after working for Everglades protection/restoration since 1961, Grunwald's is the best Everglades book yet written. Certainly more accurate and honest about our political processes, historic and current, and how they have been used to reward dreamers and scoundrels at the expense of nature and the taxpayer.
Anyone who is interested in the role of science and policy should be fascinated by Grunwald's account of how, in the 1990s, our government and political leaders and even most environmental groups cast science (and the best interests of the Everglades) aside in order to measure ecosystem restoration in terms of dollars promised, as if turning Everglades restoration into a porkbarrel project would cause Florida real estate and agricultural interests to voluntarily inhibit their usual impulses. I think Grunwald's book is essential reading for anyone who cares about the politics of biological integrity.