Clouds Over The Sunshine State
Correspondent Armen Keteyian has been following the latest news about climate change – and offers us this insight from Florida.
But given the news out of Washington, D.C., today residents of Everglades City, Flamingo, Fla., -- and all across the country, really -- may well have cause for long-term concern. It's not often a team of our nation's leading scientists gets up before Congress and accuses the very government that funds its research of censoring their reports on global warming. But accuse they did.
The outcry stemmed from the results of an anonymous survey in which hundreds of experts on climate change depicted a culture of fear and censorship when it comes to warnings about the effects of greenhouses gasses and carbon dioxide emissions. In response, a government spokesman denied White House officials had pressured the scientists to downplay the results of their research, and praised the President's commitment to energy initiatives designed to confront climate change.
From the legendary John D. MacDonald to the hilarious Carl Hiaason, writers with a love of the 'Glades and South Florida have long waged a literary war against developers, railing over environmental impact in the name of progress. The "Inconvenient Truth" outlined by the likes of Al Gore has only fueled a national debate, one, it appears, getting louder and more important by the day. I must say, folks at the Seafood Depot didn't seem much concerned today when we raised the subject of global warming, despite a raging pattern of weather lately that simply defies prediction.
"Mostly," said our waitress, "we worry about the tourists."
Mostly, I guess, I worry about my children and grandchildren's future. And places like Everglades City being swallowed by a rising, angry sea.