We Are Destroying Our Own Backyard
“There must be progress, certainly. But we must ask ourselves what kind of progress we want, and what price we want to pay for it. If, in the name of progress, we want to destroy everything beautiful in our world, and contaminate the air we breathe, and the water we drink, then we are in trouble,” said Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who was a heroine of the environmentalist movement and is revered in South Florida as “The Mother of the Everglades.”
But her voice has been drowned out by the sounds of construction and expansion inching closer into the place she guarded so fiercely until the day she died.
The charge toward climate change conservation was at its peak during the Obama Administration. The United Nations came together for the Paris Accords, a multinational agreement to reduce the damage that had built over the years from man-made destruction.
But now, with the actions of the Trump Administration, all the progress has been halted by leaving the Paris Accords and assigning an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator that gutted the agency and let loose the reigns for the fuel industry to tear into unchecked regulations.
I suppose it is up to the students to save themselves from the problems caused by generations prior. But what will future generations say of what we did now to protect our world?
In our own backyard, we see a disregard for nature as we inch forward into the Everglades through construction and farming.
Miami-Dade County reviews its development every seven years. The Comprehensive Development Master Plan (CDMP) is reviewed and updated through a process known as The Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR). In general, the cycle has arrived under strained political tension.
The debate, this time around, lies in whether or not to expand the Urban Development Boundary. The UDB is an invisible line running along the south and western areas of the county buffered by agricultural lands. The agricultural area separates densely packed urban development from the Everglades—the main source of water for 8 million Floridians.
There is cause for concern due to support for an extension of the Dolphin Expressway through the UDB that would ease traffic concerns, but would also be tempting for even more development surrounding the Kendall area.
According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, urban development, industry and agriculture pressures have destroyed more than half of the original Everglades. Ever-increasing population and industry growth in South Florida has resulted in large metropolitan areas and rising pressures on surrounding natural environments.
The Everglades has always been under threat by human consumption and encroachment. The battle between the conservation of the Everglades and human development is a microcosm of what is currently taking place on an international scale. The result of how this situation is handled here will have an immense impact on what is done globally.
