The Swamp by Michael Grunwald
Author:Michael Grunwald
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2006-01-15T05:00:00+00:00
THE JETPORT’S BACKERS thought they had already won. They had built one runway, and another was under construction. They had lined up state permits and federal funding. So they didn’t bother to disguise their hostility to the Everglades, dismissing its endangered species as “yellow-bellied sapsuckers” and its defenders as “butterfly-chasers,” quipping that “alligators make nice shoes and pocketbooks,” describing Big Cypress as “typical south Florida real estate.” Florida’s transportation secretary said he would miss the gators no more than he missed the dinosaurs. One port official argued that “Hollandizing” the Everglades would be a good thing, since “the Dutch are some of the best-adjusted, most prosperous, happiest people today.” Another piously proclaimed that “we will do our best to meet our responsibilities, and the responsibilities of all men, to exercise dominion over the land, sea and air above us.” That kind of sentiment had once inspired pioneers to remake the continent, but in the era of Silent Spring it just sounded silly. The jetport men were oblivious to the revolution in their midst, and by the time they tried to mount a defense, their pronouncements that “no pollution is anticipated” and “the operations are not expected to create excessive noise” had no credibility.
After the Miami showdown, Reed told Kirk the jetport was another Democratic land swindle, and easily persuaded the governor to withdraw his support. Kirk had even less trouble persuading President Nixon’s interior secretary, Walter Hickel, a former Alaska developer and governor who wanted to burnish his green credentials after disparaging trees during his confirmation hearings. Hickel camped out in the Everglades with Kirk on his first official trip, and the two gregarious politicians bonded over booze and canoes, spending several hours imitating alligator mating calls. By the end of the trip, Hickel had agreed to make the Everglades his signature conservation issue.
Nixon’s transportation team supported the jetport, but Hickel was not much of a company man; Nixon would later fire him for publicly denouncing the Vietnam War. Now he began agitating for an environmental study of the jetport, and when Democratic senator Henry Jackson of Washington, a potential Nixon challenger, announced a public hearing on the issue, the White House ordered the study to steal Jackson’s thunder. Overseen in Washington by hydrologist Luna Leopold, the son of Wilderness Society founder Aldo Leopold, and coordinated in Florida by Art Marshall, the Interior Department’s study was released in September 1969. Its first sentence made the department’s position abundantly clear: “Development of the proposed jetport and its attendant facilities…will inexorably destroy the south Florida ecosystem and thus the Everglades National Park.”
While Kirk and Hickel led the inside war against the jetport, Browder led the outside war. He ginned up a flurry of publicity—including features in Look, Time, and NBC’s Today show, as well as an influential Life article by the mystery novelist John D. MacDonald, who warned that the jetport would “kill what is left of the Everglades, kill Everglades National Park [and] upset the water tables and the water supply in all south Florida.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell(3102)
A Forest Journey by John Perlin(2916)
The Plant Messiah by Carlos Magdalena(2747)
Babylon's Ark by Lawrence Anthony(2431)
The ESV Study Bible by Crossway Bibles(2413)
Energy Myths and Realities by Vaclav Smil(2380)
Fatal Storm by Rob Mundle(2082)
Abbey in America by Murray John A(2014)
Witness Tree by Lynda V. Mapes(1862)
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx(1715)
Client Earth by James Thornton(1698)
Shadows on the Gulf by Rowan Jacobsen(1690)
Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy(1656)
Cosmos by Carl Sagan(1641)
Water Rights and the Environment in the United States by John Burch(1607)
Ten Billion by Stephen Emmott(1576)
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets(1575)
The overachievers by Robbins Alexandra(1487)
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells;(1405)
