Cathedrals in sea decline: Reef should show how creation is knit together

I am asked, often, “I know what you are opposed to, but what are you for?”

How is this for an answer? I am for a sustainable creation. I am for Jerusalem.

Oh, I know: Who is against Jerusalem? Who is for chaos?

Yet the question moves with the questioner, toward a familiar direction: compromise, the magnetic north of politics.

In 15 years of watching Florida’s environment — and intensely now, global warming and climate change — even when land purchases, global assurances and hard lines drawn on a map are held as signs of progress, compromise is no match to the threats.

For a new state capital

Church is a good place for Sunday worship, but to contemplate the miracle of Creation, sometimes all you need to do is take a good walk.

The point of a good walk is obvious to anyone who has taken one. You start in one place and end up in another, even though you return where you started.

Which brings me to Tallahassee, a state capital so full of lobbyists you can’t do business without one handing you a towel when you finish.

Seeing red in the Legislature

The Florida Legislature has a lot in common with red tides. It is easier to see when sunshine makes the toxins light up.

Today the Legislature is aiming to pass a bill to make it much more difficult for citizens to change the Florida Constitution by petition drive.

Oceans infested by worms of misdirection

The heart of the preliminary recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, appointed by President Bush, is that oceans should be adaptively managed to protect ecosystems of great commercial, recreational and wilderness value.

The language mirrors the original intent of Everglades restoration. Congress needs to understand what has happened in the few short years since it authorized measures to restore the Everglades or risk an outcome to our oceans that our nation cannot afford.

So long, thanks for the fish

Time flies. It has been 35 years since the Stratton Commission reported to Congress on the state of our oceans. From its conclusions grew measures like the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act, intended to protect our marine environment and species of immense commercial, recreational, and wilderness value.

In 2000, Congress authorized the Oceans Act, and, as a result President Bush appointed the U.S. Commission for Ocean Policy to provide the first federal update in decades. The commission’s preliminary report is now in the hands of the nation’s governors and soon will be delivered to Congress.