Yesterday morning my wife and I along with our beautiful  Springer Spaniel were sitting at my favorite spot right along the Intracoastal Waterway having a cup of coffee. As I was sitting there my eyes began to burn, I knew right away what it was that was bothering me. It was something that is bothering a lot of Southwest Florida today. The Red Tide! Just out in the water there was a salvage crew working to refloat a boat that had sunk during the hurricane. I couldn’t imagine what it is like for those guys to be working in that environment every day. The hurricane was five months ago and I would estimate that the cleanup is less than fifty percent complete. We still have sunken boat that have to be refloated, lifted and disposed of. The fuel and oil from these vessels are still seeping into our waterways. In some ways it is an ecological disaster that is going to take a long time to fix its self. Once this stuff gets into our oceans and waterways there isn’t a fast way to filter this stuff out. It just takes time and Mother Nature. One thing for sure, now is not the time to go for a swim.

The Red Tide is a toxic  algae bloom that can occur naturally mostly during the summer in all of our coastal communities. The concern is that it is happening more often and the fact that not enough is being done to understand why it is happening more often. In some ways this is like the Climate Change debate.  Climate like the Red Tide is a natural occurrence and because of that the people will just scoff at the idea that man has done anything to affect the climate. The same goes with Red Tide. Because it is a natural occurrence there are people in positions of power here is Florida to use that as an excuse for doing nothing. They don’t want to look into the reasons that are making it happen more often. Red Tide does not only effect the heath of the people in the surrounding areas but it also reeks havoc on the marine ecosystem. The effect that it has on the ecosystem will also have an effect on the local economies of the area. Being able to predict when ecological disasters are going to happen in an area would give a community a chance to prepare for the health hazards but how will it help for what it does to the economy? It cost the local economies millions.

Why do people come to Southwest Florida? 1. The mild winters. 2. The beautiful beaches. 3. The recreation opportunities that the water brings. Climate change, which myself and many others believe in, has been a huge influence on the number of hurricanes. The strength of those hurricanes and the effect of the Red Tide and pollution will be just amplified because of Climate Change. I read an article by Kristen Cabrera for the Texas Standard that stated that the Gulf of Mexico was warming at an average of twice the normal average of all our warming global oceans. What is that going to mean? To me it means that things like the Red Tide are going to be happening more and more. I stated earlier that Red tide occurred mostly in the summer.  The first time I experienced Red Tide I was 17 years old visiting the Tampa Bay Area. This was in was the beginning of August 1971.  Well,  it is March 2^nd as I am writing this and summer is another three months away. I witnessed huge fish kills on Pine Island Sound off of Captiva Island in November of 2019. This is no longer a summer thing. I saw thousands and thousands of dead fish. Not just small fish but fish of all sizes. The Red tide has to be costing the State of Florida millions. I think that the warming Gulf and the pollution that has been dumped into the water is just  disaster not just waiting to happen but is already happening. Florida is being hit the worst and will continue to be hit worse than any other State in the Union.

We have also had three major hurricane in less than twenty years. I read a report by Kirby Wilson of the Tampa Bay Times that was written in 2019  according to Resilient Analytics and the Center for Climate Integrity that the State of Florida could be on the hook for building 76 billion dollars worth of sea walls by 2040 to mitigate the effects of climate change.   They went on to say this it was based on a conservative sea level rise due to Climate Change.  That was 2019 so I am sure that price tag has gone up. I do know that a Sea Wall is one of the solutions that they are talking about for the permanent repair of the Sanibel Causeway. When it comes to the more frequency and the strength of the major storms we are kind of in a pay me now or,  pay me later and we will be paying for a long time. Is it practical to build a sea wall around the entire state of Florida? Can we really save the Everglades? What type of preparations should the State of Florida be making because there is going to be future disasters that are going to be bigger than what has already happened. Yes, Ian was a bad storm. Some people have called it a once in a lifetime storm. I thought that was what Charlie was, a once in a lifetime storm. How many once in a lifetime storms are we going to have in one lifetime is the question that I have?

With all the problems that Florida is having now and will have in the future let’s look at what our Governor and the Republican Legislature are concentrating on. First there is the huge Disney problem because Disney dared to defy DeSantis with is campaign against diversity training and “Don’t Say Gay”. DeSantis is working hard against Disney, a very diverse company in a very diverse business that has brought billions into the State of Florida, and it ability to have the freedom to control the direction of their own company. Why? Well let’s just say that Disney does not have a problem with Gay people and our Governor and Republican led legislature does. I wonder what the State of Florida would be like without Disney, I bet the State would be a lot poorer, I would think. Does taking on Disney solve any of the real problems that are going to affect every Floridian’s pocket book. No, but it may make it worse. Then there is our Governor’s attack on Black History in general and AP studies on the College level. Will this help address any of the real problem that Floridians are going to face in the future that will cost us all billions of dollars. Here again nope. The dummying down of our education especially on the college level does no one any good and will drive great minds away from Florida and cause more resistance to the solutions which could help Florida take on its real problems. I wouldn’t want to be a Black student or Black student athlete attending a University here knowing that the State government thinks that your history and the understanding of your social problems have no educational value.

What are these issues? Why, they are just smoke screens that make it so the average Floridian doesn’t think about the real problems that will cost the State billions of dollar. None of these problem really affect the average Floridian. They only play to their bigotry and racism which unfortunately converts into votes. The very thing that most Floridians are voting for now are the very things that will not save them in the future. If the University of Miami is under water 30 years from now no one is going to give a rat’s ass if they taught Black History, Critical Race Theory or had AP studies.

Where is our Governor now? Why he is off signing books and trying to look tall in his high healed cowboy boots. He is more interested in running for President and getting people to vote for him than he is trying to tackle the real problems that will affect us more and more every year. Many people are homeless here and have lost everything. They are having a hard time and our State Government is nowhere to be seen. For many their lives will never be that same and our Governor is off writing and signing books and screwing up our educational system.