OpEd: There are many things more evil than Trump. The filthy greedy American Medical Industry aka Medical Mafia is one more example of that. The truth is, Trump is a distraction. The filthy dirty media is controlled by forces even more sinister and powerful than the Orange Menace. Corporate media will never bite the hand that feeds it.
The Rise of C-Sections – and What It Means
America’s propensity for cesarean surgeries at childbirth has come with no clear benefit.
Pregnant people get bombarded with seemingly well-intentioned but confusing advice. "Don't eat sushi," for example, "but some sushi, at least certain sushi, is probably OK."
The confusion stems, in part, from muddled expectations for what pregnant people deserve when giving birth. Everyone wants safety, but most are expecting more than simply emerging from the whole process unscathed. They want dignity. They want autonomy. They want choices.
What makes for a good birth is a matter of intensely personal opinion. But in multiple surveys of American mothers, feeling informed about the options that exist appears to be a universal requirement. In this special report, U.S. News shines a light on national, state, county and hospital C-section rates. For the millions of Americans who will give birth this year, knowing the cesarean rate of the hospital where they plan to deliver should spark important conversations with their providers about what type of care they want. Yet the numbers alone can be confusing, particularly without clarity about what cesarean rates truly indicate and why they matter.
Since the early 1970s, the likelihood of a mother undergoing a cesarean in the United States has skyrocketed by 500%. Although cesareans are designed to rescue babies from danger, rates of survival and brain injury among infants born close to their expected delivery date have not changed. Mothers have not benefited either – in fact, the opposite has occurred. Americans today are 50% more likely to die in the period surrounding childbirth than their own mothers were, a risk that has remained consistently three to four times higher for black mothers compared with white mothers.
For obstetricians like me, there is a simple decision threshold we must meet before applying a scalpel to a person's skin: The benefits must outweigh the inherent risks. In the moment of choice, my colleagues and I always believe we are meeting this standard. But conveniently, we never get to observe what would have happened had we not done it. When I do a cesarean and the baby comes out looking great, I think, "It's a good thing I did a cesarean!" And when the baby comes out looking lackluster, I think, "It's a good thing I did a cesarean!" Either way, it's easy for everyone to believe it was the right choice.
With no clear benefit to the inexorable rise of cesareans, our national statistics call this belief into question – and put the risks into stark relief. For mothers, birth complications such as hemorrhage, infection and organ injury are three times more likely to occur with a cesarean compared with a vaginal delivery – risks that increase with each subsequent cesarean a mother has. Even in the absence of complications, taking care of a newborn infant is a much more difficult task when a mother has a 10-centimeter incision on her abdomen.
The challenge is that we have no idea what the ideal target cesarean rate is, and it is unlikely we ever will. Even for the pregnant person directly in front of me, truly knowing if the cesarean was necessary can be impossible. Nonetheless, due to growing concern about the harms of avoidable surgery, and based on near certainty that rates can be safely lowered, the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has set a national target of a 23.9% first-time cesarean rate for "low-risk" women. Recently, insurance companies, hospital accreditors and others have begun suggesting that hospitals aim to meet this same target.
It is worth mentioning that applying the same, somewhat arbitrary target to all hospitals may not be fair. Depending on where a hospital is and who it serves, there could be important, legitimate differences in how much surgery is needed. At the same time, even when caring for pregnant people with similar needs, some hospitals still continue to perform way more cesareans than others.
It is plausible that hospitals with very high cesarean rates are not set up as well to support people in labor and therefore deserve our scrutiny. For a well-equipped hospital, cesareans are easier to accommodate than normal labor. They can be scheduled and predicted. They don't take as long as normal labor. They also require less staff time and thus cost less, despite commanding higher reimbursements. In the current system, the scales are permanently tipped toward doing more surgery.
Some hospitals try harder to counteract this pressure than others. In fact, whichhospital a birth occurs at may be one of the biggest determinants of how the birth occurs. From one American hospital to the next, cesarean rates vary from 7% to 70%. Rather than being driven by personal preferences or medical needs, this appears to suggest that the likelihood of getting a cesarean is largely driven by the choice of hospital.
For some Americans, particularly those with generous health insurance and those who live in or close to cities, being aware of the wide differences in cesarean rates may be helpful in deciding where to go or not go for care. Still, many Americans do not have a choice. There may only be one hospital within reasonable driving distance that delivers babies. There may be only one hospital that is affordable. Even in these cases, knowing the hospital cesarean rate is helpful.
Pregnant people deserve to be able to have conversations with their providers about how the hospital cesarean rate may or may not apply to them personally. They deserve to understand how the hospital is taking steps to counteract the rise of cesareans, to invest in labor support, and whenever possible, to avoid the risks of surgery. Improving health care is always easier said than done, particularly in a domain as complex as childbirth. But if more conversations like this occurred, we might see more safety. And more dignity as well.
Read more U.S. News reporting on C-sections in America:
The punishments are brutal and final and because Islam is evil a lot of innocent people will be unfairly killed and maimed by those savages but still amputating the hand of thieves and cutting out the tongues of liars would certainly make the world a better place.
Imagine how the world would be if the filthy rich and their errand boys within the US government were to have their hands cut off and their tongues cut out. That would be a deterrent. How unreasonable is it really? We chemically castrate rapists and pedophiles even though actual castration would be more humane.
Thieves and liars do perhaps even more damage to the world than rapists. Many rapists get caught and punished but the biggest thieves and liars rarely suffer the consequences of their behavior. Trump has lied and stolen his ass off all his life and was reward for it and now that were are in the post truth era the filthy rich don't think twice about lying and stealing.
Think about how satisfying it would be to take a thief like Trump and chop his tiny money grubbing hands off with a dull hatchet. Think of the thousands of people who were swindled by Trump and imagine how their lives would be now had they not been victims of theft. While is may sound barbaric, cutting off the hands of thieves would improve the lives of people everywhere.
The United States was lied into the second Gulf War and lied into Vietnam e.g. Gulf of Tonkin false flag. The loss of life and suffering was immeasurable but human life is cheap and the profits of the military industrial complex are what really matters especially now in the post truth greed is good era.
No more Mister Nice Guy
There is not good in everyone, A lot of homo-sapiens are simply no damn good. Allowing the to go unpunished is as barbaric as their evil deeds. In the post truth and greed era victims rarely receive justice because the filthy rich corporate criminal elite are above the law. The peasants will never get a fair shake so long as liars, thieves and whores own all the power..
The first and most important thing you can do is to use VPN or a safe proxy server. Trump and his mob are dangerous. They don't call Trump Trumple Thin Skin for nothing. The site is supposed to be up sometime in 2022. Start plans now to decimate it.
Learn the fine art of trolling.
Pretend to be one of them. Employ a technique called Poe's Law. One of greatest Poe's Law practitioners is Fat Bastard of Bigger Fatter Blog and Bigger Fatter Politics. Fat Bastard's clever parody of the fat acceptance movement's absurdity was so much like the sophistries of the actual movement that newbies to the movement didn't know they were being clowned.
Create dissension, paranoia and mistrust or should I say to increase and exploit the insanity that already there? When you get the MAGAts fighting among themselves you win.
Surveillance is vital. Learn the forum and learn who the easiest and most fun mark will be. The aim is to make one of them flip out, meltdown and make criminal threats.
Tag team: Work with another troll.
Brigade: Target several MAGAts with many allies.
Become a trusted insider and get behind enemy lines. Trump's site will be rigged so free speech and honest debate won't be happening there. Find a mark and tell the mark how much you agree and admire him. You will probably be able to private message members so gain a mark's trust and learn all you can.
Trolling 101.
1. Keep your posts short. Trumpers are barely literate.
2. Trumpers often use excessive, wrong and unnecessary punctuation.
3. Paraphrase a MAGA but paraphrase them incorrectly. Ex "What MAGA King is trying to say is, "The wall was completed but the Liberals are smuggling Mexicans into the country". A post like this will infuriate the original author while making the MAGAts look as dump and paranoid as the really are. Think like Alex Jones and post anti-Trump stuff he and Ann Coulter have said.
4. Start posts such as:
"Why is Fox News Gone Liberal? "
"Can Steve Bannon Be Trusted"
"Look What Michael Cohen Did: Can Any Jew Be Trusted"
"Donald is NOT a Chicken Hawk!!!"
"Why Has Jared Kushner Abandoned Donald?"
"The Rich Know What's Best For Us"
"It's Just a Coincidence That the Trump/Kushner Building is at 666 Fifth Avenue.
It's Just A Coincidence that Donald's Grandmother Elizabeth Christ Trump died on June 6, 1966.
5. Trigger those scumbags into making death threats against our leaders and report them to the FBI.
6. Have a goal and have information at your finger tips.
Poe's law applies not only to the absurdity of beliefs, but also to the absurdity of the arguments that are used on behalf of those beliefs. Arguments on behalf of young-Earth creationism and theodicy are especially known for their absurdity.
The Republican Party and the right-wing movement are expert and prodigious liars. This causes great frustration and anger for Democrats, progressives and others who believe in real "we the people" American democracy. The American people have become massively confused and disoriented by the Republicans' torrent of lies.
Why are the Republicans able to lie so much and so easily? There are two primary reasons.
The foundational explanation is that the modern Republican Party and right-wing movement are sociopathic. The Republican Party meets those criteria, as I explained in an earlier essay at Salon:
As detailed by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, exhibiting three or more of the following traits is sufficient for the diagnosis of sociopathy:
Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms and obligations
Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them
Very low tolerance to frustration, a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence
Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment
Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalization for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders adds these two qualifiers:
Deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
Moreover, today's Republican Party is almost fully a neofascist political organization and personality cult centered around Donald Trump. Its goal is to overthrow America's multiracial secular democracy and replace it with an apartheid-style plutocracy (flavored with theocracy). Assaulting empirical reality, undermining any sense of shared truth and values and replacing it all with an approved narrative that serves their goals is a primary method that fascists and authoritarians gain control over a society.
In his own way, Republican strategist and mastermind Karl Rove predicted such a future in 2004 with his observation about the Iraq war: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Donald Trump publicly lied at least 30,000 times while president and faced few if any negative consequences for that behavior. Moreover, he came within several thousand votes of "winning" the 2020 presidential election because of his strategic use of lying, deception and trickery, including voter suppression and voter intimidation.
After their defeat at the ballot box, Trump and his allies and followers then weaponized the Goebbels-inspired "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was somehow "stolen" from him by Joe Biden and the Democrats. The Big Lie was integral to Trump's coup attempt and his followers' attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Big Lie is also being used as fuel for the Republican Party's Jim Crow-style efforts to prevent Black and brown Americans from voting.
In all, Donald Trump was not a cautionary tale for today's Republicans. He was a role model for present and future behavior.
Contrary to what the hope-peddlers and happy-pill sellers of the mainstream news media would like to believe, the Republican Party is not in disarray, in the midst of a "civil war" or "trying to find its soul." The party is largely united behind Trump and the Big Lie.
We conducted a large, mostly cell phone survey with an oversample of Republicans in the 2022 battleground for the U.S. Senate, governorships, and House, and it is painfully clear Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and Kevin McCarthy know their party. The Trump loyalists who strongly approve of him are two thirds of those who identify as, "Republican." And they are joined by the Trump aligned to form a breathtaking, three quarters of the party in the electoral battleground states and districts that will decide who leads the country.
Their report also finds that "Donald Trump's loyalist party is totally consolidated at this early point in its 2022 voting," and that Republican voters are more engaged with the 2022 midterms than are Democrats. "And with such high early engagement of Republicans and white working class voters in this survey," the report concludes, "the era of Donald Trump shaping the electorate is not over either."
These findings are especially ominous for what they suggest about the efficacy of the Republican Party and right-wing's "cancel culture" and "culture war" narratives, despite the way members of the liberal chattering class may mock such strategies.
Democracy Corps further argues that "Trump's current focus on the stolen election" must not be dismissed as "an amusing side-show":
It is about Blacks and Democratic politicians in the cities using illegal voting procedures and stuffing ballot boxes to steal away Trump's great victory his battle to save America. This survey shows what are the true drivers of GOP identity — the deep hostility to Black Lives Matter, undocumented immigrants, and Antifa. And imagine their reaction to the flood of unaccompanied children at the border, the guilty verdict in Minneapolis, and Black Lives Matter protests after each police shooting of unarmed Blacks.
There is no escaping the reality that Trump's Republican Party is a self-consciously and self-confidently anti-democratic, anti-immigrant party that will battle for the future of white people in a multicultural America.
The Trump loyalists — again, two-thirds of the party — respond with deep emotion to the term, "MAGA," that captures their whole embrace of Trump's battle to make America great again. And it is an unfinished battle and campaign.
If Democracy Corps' polling data and other analyses are correct, then the future of American democracy is even more imperiled than many political observers have so far accepted or understood. The Republican Big Lie strategy (and all the little lies that sustain it) would not be effective if their voters and other supporters had not been trained, for years or decades, to respond positively to it.
This socialization process begins with foundational lies, dogma and myths about the Republican Party, such as the ludicrous contention that it believes in "small government" and "fiscal responsibility." During the last few decades, Republican administrations have invariably increased the size of the budget deficit. Serious economists have also shown that "supply-side" or "trickle-down economics" are a massive intellectual fraud.
Republicans have repeatedly cut taxes on the richest Americans and corporations, leaving the economy and the federal budget in far worse shape, compared to Democratic administrations. "Small government" has been shown to be a racist term of art, used to justify destroying the social safety net and undermining the common good in ways that disproportionately impact Black and brown Americans.
For decades, the Republican Party and movement conservatives have branded themselves as defenders of "freedom." But in practice they have supported Christian theocrats and others who want to take away women's reproductive rights, end secular democracy and limit the civil and human rights of other groups they deem to be "less than" or not "real Americans," such as nonwhite people, the LGBTQ community Muslims, immigrants and other marginalized groups.
Through Fox News, right-wing talk radio, the internet and social media, the spread of conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation, the Republican Party and conservative movement have created a fact-free alternate reality for their followers. In that echo chamber, lies and misrepresentations about empirical reality and the truth are laundered and transformed into narratives that serve the groupthink and collective cult mentality of the American and global right.
Fake right-wing "populism" rejects science, critical thinking and other forms of expert knowledge as tools of "political correctness," used by "elites" to manipulate and oppress the "freedom" and "liberty" of the "average person." In that sense, "populism" is a breeding ground for lies.
Because politics is now a core aspect of how Republicans and Trumpists define their personhood, lying is easily normalized. False claims have become integrated into their thinking about the world and reality.
What can be done to counter the Republican Party and Trump movement's powerful weaponization of lies against American democracy and a healthy society? This new post-Trump world, in which neofascism is not a hypothetical possibility but is ascendant and growing in power, requires pro-democracy forces to adopt new ways of thinking.
Democrats, the news media and the American people need to accept that when Republicans, Trumpists and their allies and followers lie it is not a miscommunication, an error, a misunderstanding, a moment of confusion or honest disagreement about questions of public policy and politics. When Republicans and other members of the right lie, it is a weapon — and part of a determined strategy to undermine democracy and reality itself.
Democrats and the media also need to accept and understand that today's Republican Party and right-wing movement are not engaged in "normal politics," where the rules and norms of a healthy, functioning democracy are respected by all sides, where there is give-and-take, honest negotiation and then final compromise in the service of the public interest.
Ultimately, the struggle for American democracy in the Age of Trump and beyond is existential. It will be decided around basic questions of what is true and what is not — and the public's willingness to know the difference and then act accordingly. Based on the historic power of the Big Lie, the forces of democracy are fighting at a great disadvantage.
Daily COVID death could reach 5.5 thousand per day by January 2022 When I came across this projection I thought of Hannibal Smith from the A-Team and while Mr T may pity the fools, I don't. Projections also show that by 1/22/2022 there could be over 1 million dead Trumpanzees. When you consider the fact that many parts of Trumpistan fail to honestly report COVID 19 cases number could be much higher.
Most of the deaths will be MAGAts of voting age. 1 million less MAGAts means one million MAGAts will be unable to vote. COVID deaths will remain steady throughout February but as we reach full herd immunity and the virus becomes endemic, we will see mostly COVID hot spots in rural areas of Trumpistan for perhaps years to come.
Few places on the planet are more at risk from the climate crisis than south Florida, where more than 8 million residents are affected by the convergence of almost every modern environmental challenge – from rising seas to contaminated drinking water, more frequent and powerful hurricanes, coastal erosion, flooding and vanishing wildlife and habitat.
If scientists are right, the lower third of the state will be underwater by the end of the century. Yet despite this grim outlook, scientists, politicians, environment groups and others are tackling the challenges head on.
Below are some of the biggest threats posed by the climate crisis to south Florida today, along with solutions under consideration. Some of these solutions will have a lasting impact on the fight. Others, in many cases, are only delaying the inevitable. But in every situation, doing something is preferable to doing nothing at all.
Sea level rise
The threat: By any estimation, Florida is drowning. In some scenarios, sea levels will rise up to 31in by 2060, a devastating prediction for a region that already deals regularly with tidal flooding and where an estimated 120,000 properties on or near the water are at risk. The pace of the rise is also hastening, scientists say – it took 31 years for the waters around Miami to rise by six inches, while the next six inches will take only 15 more. At such a rate, many of Miami Beach’s landmarks, the world famous South Beach, and the picturesque art deco hotels of Ocean Drive, will be lost within three decades, according to some studies.
A king tide in Hollywood, Florida. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
Possible solutions: Dozens of municipalities, the four counties of south-east Florida, and partner groups such as the Nature Conservancy have combined their efforts through the south-east regional action climate plan to tackle the crisis. In Miami Beach, dubbed the “ground zero” of sea rise, a multifaceted and costly Rising Above program is already under way. It includes elevating roads, building new sea walls and installing new and higher capacity pumps and drainage systems to alleviate flooding. In the Florida Keys, the approach will probably tilt more towards managed retreat: abandoning areas too expensive to maintain and focusing on measures with a better cost-benefit ratio. Parts of the Keys are going to simply disappear, some within two decades.
The cost: The participating counties and municipalities are contributing to a $4bn statewide spend, including Miami Beach’s $400m Forever Bond, a $1bn stormwater plan and $250m of improvements to Broward county’s sewage systems to protect against flooding and seawater seepage. In the Keys, many consider the estimated $60m a mile cost of raising roads too expensive.
Water contamination
The threat: Saltwater from sea level rise is seeping further inland through Florida’s porous limestone bedrock and contaminating underground freshwater supplies, notably in the Biscayne aquifer, the 4,000-sq mile shallow limestone basin that provides drinking water to millions in southern Florida. Years of over-pumping and toxic runoff from farming and the sugar industry in central Florida and the Everglades have worsened the situation. The Florida department of environmental protection warned in March that “existing sources of water will not adequately meet the reasonable beneficial needs for the next 20 years”. A rising water table, meanwhile, has exacerbated problems with south Florida’s ageing sewage systems. Since December, millions of gallons of toxic, raw sewage have spilled on to Fort Lauderdale’s streets from a series of pipe failures.
The Biscayne aquifer square lake between the Everglades and Miami. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
Possible solutions: A comprehensive 30-year Everglades restoration plan was authorized by Congress in 2000 to “restore, preserve and protect” the south Florida ecosystem by improving water flows to help flush the salinity, and a 78bn-gallon Everglades agricultural area reservoir (EAA), a key component of the congressional plan, is earmarked for land once leased by big sugar. The restoration plan, however, has stalled amid funding wrangles, and the storage reservoir plan delayed several times.
The cost: The Everglades restoration plan was originally priced at $7.8bn, rose to $10.5bn, and has since ballooned to $16.4bn. Donald Trump’s proposed 2021 federal budget includes $250m for Everglades restoration. The estimated $1.8bn cost of the reservoir will be split between federal and state budgets.
Hurricanes
The threat: In October 2018, Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle as the first category 5 cyclone to strike the US since 1992. In the devastating hurricane season just one year before, major storms named Harvey, Maria and Irma combined to cause damage estimated at $265bn. Scientists have evidence the climate crisis is causing cyclones to be more powerful, and intensify more quickly, and Florida’s position at the end of the Atlantic Ocean’s “hurricane alley” makes it twice as vulnerable as any other state.
Damage to the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach after Hurricane Irma. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
Possible solutions: Previous efforts to tame hurricanes were a failure, and experts see mitigation strategies, including more robust building codes, as the best defense. Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which destroyed more than 63,000 houses, led to the implementation of a statewide construction code that is updated every three years, though there are regional variations, and criticisms that industry lobbyists have too much sway.
The cost: With homeowners and businesses largely bearing their own costs, the specific amount spent on “hurricane-proofing” in Florida is impossible to know. A 2018 Pew research study documented $1.3bn in hazard mitigation grants from federal and state funding in 2017, along with a further $8bn in post-disaster grants. Florida is spending another $633m from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on resiliency planning.
Wildlife and habitat loss
The threat: Florida’s native flora and fauna are being devastated by climate change, with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory warning that a quarter of the 1,200 species it tracks is set to lose more than half their existing habitat, and the state’s beloved manatees and Key deer are at risk of extinction. Warmer and more acidic seas reduce other species’ food stocks and exacerbate the deadly red-tide algal blooms that have killed incalculable numbers of fish, turtles, dolphins and other marine life. Bleaching and stony coral tissue disease linked to the climate crisis threaten to hasten the demise of the Great Florida Reef, the only living coral reef in the continental US. Encroaching saltwater has turned Big Pine Key, a crucial deer habitat, into a ghost forest.
A ghost forest by the Everglades. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
Possible solutions: The diverse range of challenges requires a piecemeal approach. A state and federally funded “Noah’s ark” is collecting and preserving coral chunks at venues including Nova Southeastern University as disease research continues. A new state taskforce of marine scientists and biologists is tackling the blue-green algae outbreaks that have choked Florida’s inland waterways. As for the Key deer, of which fewer than 1,000 remain, volunteers leave clean drinking water to replace salt-contaminated watering holes as herds retreat to higher ground. A longer-term debate is under way on the merits and ethics of relocating the species to other areas of Florida or the US.
The cost: Florida is spending $4m in the current financial year for expanded water quality analytics related to “nutrient over-enrichment” and $3m annually for the next five years on Red Tide research. A 20-year project backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to restore 3m sq feet of the Great Florida Reef is estimated at $100m. Such projects can only scratch the surface of the incalculable investment that will be needed to save the states species and their habitats.
Coastal erosion
The threat: Tourist brochures showcase miles of golden, sandy beaches in South Florida, but the reality is somewhat different. The Florida department of environmental protection deems the entire coastline from Miami to Cape Canaveral “critically eroded”, the result of sea level rise, historically high tides and especially storm surges from a succession of powerful hurricanes. In south-eastern Florida’s Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, authorities are waging a continuous war on sand loss, eager to maintain their picture-perfect image and protect two of their biggest sources of income, tourism dollars and lucrative property taxes from waterfront homes and businesses.
Federally funded imported sand is used as one of mitigation measures against the climate crisis. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
Possible solutions: With the other option abandoning beaches to the elements, city and county commissions have little choice but costly replenishment projects with sand replacement and jetty construction. Federal law prohibits the importation of cheaper foreign sand, so the municipalities must source a more expensive alternative from US markets, often creating friction with residents who don’t want to part with their sand. Supplementary to sand replenishment, the Nature Conservancy is a partner in a number of nature-based coastal defense projects from West Palm Beach to Miami.
The cost: Authorities usually match federal funding for replenishment projects. An $8m project restored almost 125,000 cubic yards to three Broward county beaches last winter, and $55m will be spent on a 400,000-sq yd restoration on three others beginning in the fall. The region’s showpiece, Miami Beach, benefited from 61,000 cubic yards of new sand this year at a cost of $16m. Statewide, Florida spends an average $50m annually on beach erosion.
Climate gentrification
A front yard in Little Haiti. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
The threat: “Climate gentrification” is a buzzword around south Florida, a region barely 6ft above sea level where land has become increasingly valuable in elevated areas. Speculators and developers are eyeing historically black, working-class and poorer areas, pushing out long-term residents and replacing affordable housing with upscale developments and luxury accommodations that only the wealthy can afford. In Miami, the controversial Magic City Innovation District in the neighborhood of Little Haiti is a billion-dollar, 17-acre, towering behemoth blending commercial, residential, entertainment and hotel space. It has drawn legal action from locals who say their rights have been trampled.
Possible solutions: Experts argue there are ways to lessen the impact of climate gentrification on local populations without the need for displacement, such as providing affordable working space and housing for existing residents, and using sustainable construction practices and environmentally friendly materials. Magic City’s developers insist they are committed to the neighborhood, including below-market-cost housing. Local authorities and activist groups are working to “protect” areas by investing in revitalization and affordable housing projects.
Construction bordering the Everglades. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
The cost: No study has yet calculated the overall cost of affordable housing lost to the climate crisis. Private developers will bear the expense of mitigating the impact on the neighborhood – $31m in Magic City’s case over 15 years to the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust, largely for new “green” affordable housing. The University of Miami’s housing solutions lab has a $300,000 grant from JPMorgan to report on the impact of rising seas to South Florida’s affordable housing stocks and recommend modifications to prevent it from flooding and other climate events. A collaboration of not-for-profit groups is chasing $75m in corporate funding for affordable housing along the 70-mile south Florida rail trail from Miami to West Palm Beach, with the first stage, a $5m project under way to identify, build and renovate 300 units.
Politics
The threat: Florida has long been plagued by political leadership more in thrall to the interests of big industry than the environment. As governor from 2011 to 2019, Rick Scott, now a US senator, slashed $700m from Florida’s water management budget, rolled back environmental regulations and enforcement, gave a free ride to polluters, and flip-flopped over expanding offshore oil drilling. The politician who came to be known as “Red Tide Rick”, for his perceived inaction over 2018’s toxic algae bloom outbreaks, reportedly banned the words “climate change” and “global warming” from state documents.
Possible solutions: It’s too soon for deep deliberations on Scott’s successor, fellow Republican Ron DeSantis, but in little more than a year in office he has made several moves that surprised environmentalists. He appointed Florida’s first chief science officer, created an algae taskforce, struck a deal to prevent drilling in parts of the Everglades, and won a tussle with Florida’s legislature to expand an ambitious land acquisition and preservation program. Last month, state legislators approved the first dedicated climate bill. It appears a promising start for a new administration, but activists say more needs to be done. In January, the Sierra Club awarded DeSantis failing grades in an environmental report card, saying he failed to protect Florida’s springs and rivers and approved new roads that threatened protected wildlife.
The cost: Florida’s spending on the environment is increasing. The state budget passed last month included $650m for Everglades restoration and water management projects (an instalment of DeSantis’s $2.5bn four-year pledge) and $100m for Florida Forever. A $100m bridge project jointly funded by the state and federal governments will allow the free flow of water under the Tamiami Trail for the first time in decades.
View of Miami Beach and Fisher Island from water. Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova
Florida has woken up to the threat of climate change but it is not yet clear how effective the response will be. The challenges are innumerable, the costs immense and the political will to fix or minimize the issues remains questionable, despite recent progress.
At stake is the very future of one of the largest and most diverse states in the nation, in terms of both its population and its environment. Action taken now will determine its survival.
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The Guardian is the lead partner in Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.
