Climate & Environment

About 1,000 people have already registered for Miami’s March for Science.

At the beginning of North Miami Beach’s meeting last night about a plan to privatize its water system, City Manager Ana Garcia asked residents to trust the city based on the commission’s track record. That was an odd appeal, considering that Mayor George Vallejo is the subject of an…

Public utilities never quite work great. They function without (typically) poisoning people, but they’re almost always wrapped in red tape and slathered in layers of needless bureaucracy. But lately, right-leaning politicians have loved to harp that selling off publicly owned water, sewer, or power grids to private companies will somehow cut costs and public waste.

The history of Florida is the adjustment to intrusion. In the state’s short 172-year history, armed U.S. troops have chased native Seminoles out of the Everglades, pristine beaches once considered worthless land have become vacation hot spots, and cattle pastures have given way to Disney World food courts.

Ignore the fact that the FBI has probed the City of North Miami Beach’s proposal to hand the operation of its entire water system over to a private company, and brush aside that the third-ranked company bidding for the project, the French firm Veolia, has ties to lead crises in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Flint, Michigan.

Federal and state authorities probed North Miami Beach’s pending deal to potentially privatize its water system, North Miami Beach City Attorney Jose Smith said Thursday. “They found no wrongdoing,” he added.

Having a hand in catastrophic lead crises in multiple American cities should probably disqualify a company from ever controlling a public water utility. But that has not stopped North Miami Beach from negotiating to potentially hand its water services over to Veolia, a private company tied to the two largest drinking-water crises in America: the catastrophes in Flint, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

On February 24, Florida Power & Light — Miami’s electricity monopoly and the single biggest donor to politicians in Florida — lost a court battle with the Miami, South Miami, Pinecrest, and Miami-Dade governments over whether the company could string power lines from massive, 80-to-150-foot towers through South Miami-Dade County.

Because good climate-change news is about as common in Florida as a calm and pleasant rush-hour drive on I-95, let’s start there first: The vast majority of the Sunshine State now believes global warming is a real phenomenon supported by scientific evidence. That’s great! But this is Florida, so you know there’s a Lake Okeechobee-size “but” hanging at the end of that first sentence.

Sea-level rise has become such a problem in Miami-Dade that even Republican leaders admit the issue is real. “It’s not a theory,” county Mayor Carlos Gimenez said of global warming in January. “It’s a fact. We live it every day.” For once, we wish Gimenez had spent more time hanging out with his old golf buddy Donald Trump.

It’s no secret that it’s best not to live near one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund sites. They’re the most polluted places in America. But those sites also tend to be crammed near low-income communities and communities of color that don’t live there by choice.

Last month, a judge upheld Coral Gables’ ban on Styrofoam products, finding that a state law barring the city from enforcing the ordinance was unconstitutional. Now some city officials want to take on another notorious pollutant: plastic bags.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: The State of Florida is nearly ready to approve a major project from Florida Power & Light, but environmentalists are adamant that it could irreparably harm the Everglades. There are so many scandals swirling around FPL’s Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station…

In South Florida, the regulated monopoly of Florida Power & Light is the only game in town when it comes to keeping your lights on. That means that despite FPL’s history of jacking up rates, fighting to store radioactive waste beneath our aquifer, and spending $8 million on a deceitful anti-solar amendment, consumers basically have no other choice but to patronize the utility giant.

Into the quiet, a voice rang out amid the trees. “Everyone remain in prayer!” a man in a brown jacket instructed. “Keep your prayers focused! Keep your intentions pure!” Beneath the blue Suwannee County sky, someone tapped out a beat on a tribal drum. Two young women sat cross-legged behind…

The State of Florida is effectively run by shills for the oil, gas, and energy industries. Floridians know what that means: Every time well-meaning citizens or politicians try to lobby the state to pass energy or environmental regulations, the leather utility company boot stomps on Tallahassee’s neck. It’s not fun.

Miami Beach will soon chop down an estimated 815 trees in North Shore Open Space Park. On its face, this is very bad news: The park is the only public beachfront green space on the whole barrier island. Hundreds of residents have signed petitions urging the city to stop the plan.