In 2012, Miami Beach became one of the first cities in the nation to enact a partial ban on plastic straws. Since then, the so-called straw wars have heated up: Seattle, Malibu, Santa Barbara, and Oakland recently passed ordinances banning their use, and New York City is mulling a similar move. Meanwhile, businesses such as Starbucks and Royal Caribbean have announced plans to ditch the plastic tubes.
Maybe you think you can live just fine in the postapocalyptic future that Americans are creating by pumping carbon emissions into the air. You’re OK with the dead trees, the flooded city streets, the extinct alligators. You’ll be cool living life in your windowless bunker and traveling across town in a series of air-conditioned tunnels…
El Portal calls itself a modern-day Garden of Eden. The tiny village boasts a canopy of oak trees, a portion of the Little River frequented by manatees, and an official designation as a bird sanctuary. It’d be a fitting nickname, except for one thing: The rivers in Paradise probably weren’t…
This week, crews began work on an ambitious new beach renourishment project in Miami Beach, where Hurricane Irma washed away much of the shoreline. The $1.5 million emergency project, which involves trucking in 32,000 tons of sand from Central Florida, won’t be done until at least November. But…
Donna Kalil steers her forest-green 1998 Ford Expedition down a narrow path through the vast expanse of the Everglades. Leaning far outside the open window, she scans the tall grasses. On the roof, her best friend, Renee Yousefi, perches on a brightly lit platform modeled after a tuna tower and…
After the state of Florida expanded Interstate 95 in the ’90s, only a few feet separated America’s busiest highway from houses along NW Sixth Avenue in Miami-Dade County. Residents organized, and their protests seemed to work — in 2002, former Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler met with three of the homeowners, who…
Another day, another study warning Miamians they are living through the last few decades on Earth in which South Florida streets will remain dry most of the year. For all the bellyaching Miamians do about traffic, entrenched political corruption, or absurdly prohibitive housing prices, not a damn thing matters as…
Jason Gerrish gives no hint he feels any pressure. The March day is humid and slightly overcast, and more than 100 people are standing around in the woods of Moss Park in Orlando. Some in the crowd begin chanting, “Go, Jason, go,” and Gerrish’s anxious wife, Meadow, reminds him she’ll…
West of Miami is Big Cypress National Preserve, an expanse of prairie, bog, and hardwood forest that includes dwarf cypress trees. These rarely grow taller than 15 feet. They provide roosting sites for bluebirds, food for the cypress fox squirrel, and scratching posts for the Florida panther and black bear.
Every morning for the past 25 years, a flock of blue and gold macaws has flown into Daria Feinstein’s backyard in Coral Gables. They swoop between surrounding homes and over boats docked on the nearby canal to perch on Feinstein’s royal palms and poincianas or maybe have a bite to eat on the artificial nests she’s set up for them.
Sea turtle advocate Jennifer Rotker often walks the beach near her home in Surfside to pick up trash. Finding water bottles, soda caps, and abandoned cups are a regular occurrence, but one item that bugs her most is the plastic straw.
Six days before hurricane season even begins, we already have our first named storm of the year. And it will absolutely drench South Florida just in time for a three-day weekend. Subtropical Storm Alberto officially formed around 10 a.m. just off the Yucatán Peninsula in the northwestern Caribbean Sea, which means the system has picked up a noticeable rotation and kicked up winds topping 39 mph.
Arkup is a new design firm that specializes in solar-powered, sustainable, “luxury livable yachts,” or “arks.”
There’s already plenty of depression to go around in South Florida before this Memorial Day. Traffic is gonna be a ludicrous nightmare thanks to Miami Beach’s totally not-race-related crackdown on Urban Beach Week. The Marlins belong in the trash can, and the Dolphins will probably be even worse. And now, a tropical depression might just roll over the peninsula for the holiday weekend.
Logging into Twitter first thing in the morning in 2018 generally feels like diving headfirst into a flaming dumpster floating down a flooded roadway. Wage theft is legal now! Trump is treating the Constitution like a Russian prostitute! More than a week before hurricane season begins, a damn tropical storm might already be forming!
Hurricane Irma caused a ton of damage in Miami last year. But so did a bunch of unnamed rainstorms and weak tropical systems. Downtown Miami, Brickell, Miami Beach, and other parts of Miami-Dade County regularly flood these days during high tide, and larger-than-average rainstorms deluge the area. Many residents have questioned…
Look, we Miamians are spoiled. We know the rest of the world laughs at us when we complain about things like “cloud cover” and “four straight days of drizzle” because we never have to endure things like blizzards, earthquakes, severe droughts, or whatever sort of insane tarantula attacks we’re guessing occur in Australia all the time…
There’s no question the historic Miami-Dade County Courthouse, completed in 1928, is in bad shape. County commissioners have described the building as “hazardous” and “experiencing corrosion, rust, water intrusion, algae and mold penetration, termites, poor air quality, and potential asbestos exposure.” Yet voters have been clear they don’t want to pay to rebuild it.
The average Floridian would be forgiven for assuming that moneyed interests such as Big Sugar and power companies have a stranglehold on the state government. Just last year, lobbyists for Florida Power & Light (FPL) were caught literally writing the text of proposed laws.
If Miami is in a bad mood this morning, it’s understandable. This weekend was the rare two-day stretch of relentless gray clouds, driving rain, and flash floods with barely a second of sunshine. Now the city has woken up to a gloomy Monday of booming thunder and even more rain.
A new study from Florida International University warns that, despite strict environmental regulations protecting the unique trees, carbon emissions from cars, power companies, and other fossil-fuel-burning industries have succeeded in all but killing South Florida’s coastal mangrove population.
In the long, hot, powerless days after Hurricane Irma, Miamians grew all sorts of irate at Florida Power & Light, South Florida’s largest electricity company. After sweltering for more than a week without power, a group of sweaty Miami-area residents sued FPL last year over the widespread outages after the storm.
