Obama’s trip to Everglades is no accident
Florida visit may enliven climate change debate
WASHINGTON— It may not be as obvious a climate symbol as the rapidly warming Arctic. But with U.S. President Barack Obama’s climate-focused visit on Earth Day, this Wednesday, Everglades National Park could take on new significance as a politically potent case study of how global warming directly affects people living in the United States.
The chief reason? In the Everglades, the fate of an ecosystem, and the fate of millions of people, are tightly wrapped together — and both are affected by rising seas.
Everglades National Park is an ecological icon because of its liminal nature — its more than 600,000 hectares lie perched between fresh and saltier water, between marsh and ocean. The unique region was famously dubbed a “river of grass” and supports vast biological diversity — mangrove forests, sawgrass prairie and much more.
Moreover, it does this even in the damaged and dramatically shrunken state in which humans have currently left it by diverting much of its historic waters.
But the Everglades is not just a place to see alligators, crocodiles and manatees. People rely on it too. The vast water system that feeds the Everglades also helps to fill and refill the Biscayne aquifer, a gigantic underground supply of freshwater upon which southeast Florida’s human residents rely.
“The Everglades as a natural system, and the coastal area as a human system, are really interdependent,” said Len Berry, former head of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University.
“Folks that live here don’t always realize it, but we are dependent on the Everglades as a retainer of water, and a filter of water. I can be an environmentalist and say we’ve got to save the Everglades; I can also be a practical developer and say we’ve got to save the Everglades, because it’s of practical use to us,” Berry said.
Some people in Florida are already experiencing the spoiling of water supplies with salt water — Hallandale Beach, for instance, had “abandoned six of its eight drinking water wells because saltwater has advanced underground across twothirds of the city,” the Miami Herald reported in 2011. With further saltwater intrusion, more Floridians could experience the same problem.
The dependence on the Everglades can only increase as Florida’s population booms — it just surpassed New York to become the third-largest state in the country by population, approaching 20 million people, with an additional five million or more expected by 2040.
Thus, by visiting the Everglades, Obama may be able to land a shrewd political strike and shift the climate debate more to a clear and present home front.
That’s particularly pertinent in an ever more important swing state that has produced two potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. When it comes to climate change and the Everglades, the issue is not so much rising temperatures as it is the way that rising seas will push into the ecosystem, imperiling unique wildlife and potentially spoiling freshwater supplies.
And we’re just at the beginning of this potential change. Sea level in the Florida area already rose nearly 23 centimetres during the 20th century, but projections for the 21st century are vastly higher — it could be as much as 200 centimetres, according to a 2014 study by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences on the progress of Everglades restoration.
Throw in warmer temperatures and a potential decline in rainfall, and you’ve got “insufficient freshwater to sustain the natural and built systems,” the report warns.