Silva: Earth Day is an opportunity to examine local policies
Letter to the editor
Tuesday is Earth Day 55. Young activists who organized the first Earth Day events around the country in 1970 were among millions of people concerned about alarming signs of environmental destruction, air and water pollution, deforestation, contamination of land, overdevelopment, urban sprawl, rapid population growth, nuclear radiation, and more. A growing environmental movement encouraged enactment of laws, policies, education, and growth management principles over the decades since. Some efforts have misfired, such as biomass and corn ethanol, but overall, many have spared the world worse conditions than could have plagued it by 2025.
Pioneering ecology researcher Howard T. Odum moved to Gainesville in 1970 and taught environmental engineering at the University of Florida, where he established the Center for Wetlands and continued to expand his internationally recognized work. Countless people here and everywhere of course have likewise devoted their energies and work to understanding and valuing the natural systems that sustain all life.
“Think globally, act locally” arose in the 1970s as a sort of motto for environmental, peace, and other activism. Alachua County, with a major university attracting people from all over the world, has had plenty of global thinking and local acting. This area has been spared the worst of the environmental destruction inflicted on other parts of the beautiful Sunshine State, and meeting by meeting, vote by vote, people still show up to try to ensure it can genuinely maintain its own motto, “Where nature and culture meet.”
That’s becoming less true with every sprawl development, oversized expensive building, needless demolition, green space lost, neighbor displaced, homegrown business closed, and further concentration of ownership. UF and the Alachua County School Board are pursuing massive demolitions of public buildings to pile onto mountains of polluted landfill debris. Gainesville city government is going that direction, as well, while ignoring demolitions in its Zero Waste and sustainability language. The city also has reportedly lost nine square miles of tree cover in 20 years and burns wood for electricity at great cost in fossil fuels to cut, transport, chip, and ignite.
Greenwashing and sloganeering by governments, corporations, and even some nonprofits have impeded real environmental protection and restoration. Broader actual public participation, not online surveys and pricey consultants, would bring more knowledge and experience to policy-making. And now, more than ever, lowering the heat of political discourse is crucial, locally and globally.
Tana Silva, Gainesville
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One of Odum’s contributions was the concept of net energy, i.e., measuring inputs against output in evaluating systems. His work evaluating cypress domes in terms of energy were his model and he was pessimistic about our ability to maintain modern energy usage once petroleum was used up. He was a world leader in this field.
You don’t see many of the dome houses…the ones I saw got moldy from the rain…I guess it’s not a good roof design..
Wrong kind of “dome”. Odum studied naturally occurring cypress domes which are those largely circular wetlands surrounded by cypress trees,
Not to be confused with your balding chrome dome either.
Wetland hysteria is valid where septic tanks are. But once converted to sewer line systems, it’s ok to build near water.
Zero waste and sustainability are UN language like how we got that lousy biomsss plant that bankrupted GRU trying to comply with Kyoto protocol.
Shifting all our manufacturing jobs overseas benefited the environment, but it devastated the middle class. Therefore, a balance must be struck between environmentalists and capitalist forces.
Unfortunately, the “Where nature and culture meet” crowd don’t understand that.
“Where nature and culture meet”?
That’s retarded.
“Keep Gainesville clean & green”
Makes more sense.
The city needs to do something about the panhandlers, their crime, & litter!
While we have higher environmental standards then Mexico and China, that is not why manufacturing declined here. The greater part of it was automation, which is not fully realized yet, and our inability to compete with labor rates in other countries (which also save money on environmental regs). None of that is a reason to sell our grandkids’ future on earth nor is it our way out of manufacturing decline. We have shifted to higher value exports and production up the chain to design. The jobs aren’t in Nebraska. Tourism is a bigger part of our economy than manufacturing now, and the Mango Mussolini is busy ruining that.
Think globally , act locally….
we were duped when they were going to save the planet 🌎 with the tree 🌲 burning biomass plant to stop global warming…. How’d that work out? $2 billion in debt and now we have a utility authority from the state to straighten out that mess…
… we’ve been drinking out of crappy paper straws here in GNV and Alachua county for the last 5 years to save the planet 🌎 from a staged photo of a plastic straw in a turtles’ 🐢 nose..
The China & Indian oceans 🌊 are not GNV and Alachua counties jurisdiction… GNV never had a plastic straws crisis!
Those countries need to clean up their mess and recycle ♻️ better, not dump their trash in their oceans.
the city’s jurisdiction is under CH27 of the municipal codes under “solid waste”… In other words, they need to be looking inside the restaurants dumpster to make sure items are recycled properly, not to deny you the proper tool to drink your beverage with… restaurants are inspected by the state, the state does not have a problem with plastic straws.
I’m going to boycott any restaurant that provides me a paper straw…you should too…
Go woke, go broke.
Diamond Rick: it’s getting expensive to eat out. I agree. I don’t enjoy my meal when they provide the paper straw. I spend my money in St. John’s county where they have plastic straws.
Springs county will have plastic straws.
Yeah, paper straws. How do you survive in this hell on earth?
The whole Earth Day and Zero Waste thing would work a lot better if the politicians stopped subsidizing inefficient and poor environmental choices and trying to ram them down everyones throat. Of course, the current batch of politicians, from local dog catcher to the top federal bunch are almost all dumber than a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.
Unfortunately, local voters are as self-conflicted as their elected leaders. If local elections had been held in the Fall general cycle instead of the Spring off-cycle the previous decades, we wouldn’t have made as many dumb decisions.
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” had a big impact. Before that, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and others promoted conservation. John Muir even came to Gainesville walking along the railroad tracks on Waldo Road now a bike trail. Thanks for every one.
Thank you, Tana. I hope City of Gainesville, the School Board, and UF will STOP demolitions by the boatload. We are losing SO many necessary materals!!! Stop sending buildings to the landfill!! Renovate and refurbish and restore buildings. It can and has been done many times. When these institutions say they are sustainable I laugh. They are NOT sustainable!