The Florida Everglades. Photo courtesy of Kim Seng via Creative Commons’ flickr.
Cristina Garcia/Contributing Writer
When you think about environmental activism on-campus, you may expect to hear from the University Organic Farmers Market or the FIU Garden Club. Now the English Department is adding its voice to the cause.
Patricia Warman-Cano, English professor and instructor of Writing as Social Action, a class that started a project to save the Everglades, has organized the event “6 ft. Under” on Nov. 22 — in conjunction with the FIU Nature Preserve — to raise awareness about rising sea levels, the loss of the Everglades and their effect on South Florida.
Amelia Caceres, a senior English major in the class, said she was among those students that asked “so what?” when approached by environmentalists, but the class agrees there is a reason to care.
“The reason I learned to be compassionate was because [the environment] makes the economy work,” Caceres said. “And we need a working economy.”
The Everglades houses 34 percent of Florida’s endangered animals, provides the state with a third of its clean water, a filtration system, a buffer against natural disasters.
“It also supports outdoor recreation, agriculture and tourism industries in Florida — all billion dollar industries,” Yemilen Bravo, a senior English major in the class, said.
The class project started out as a project to save the Everglades, yet as their research deepened, the class realized that ultimately the Everglades would vanish.
According to Bravo, as salt water intrudes into the Everglades, it starts to die.
“Every plant, except mangroves, will die; crocodiles and alligators can live in it, but other animals like manatees need to drink freshwater. We can’t save the Everglades no matter what we do,” Bravo said.
What does that mean for Floridians?
A University case study highlighted South Florida’s population as one of the fastest growing human populations in the United States — approximately 900 new tenants enter Florida daily and about 39 million vacationers annually.
The average person uses approximately 124 gallons of water per day. A publication by the University of Florida said that while the state is “rich in water resources,” intensive use of water places it under a lot of stress.
“At this rate, we’re going to have to invest in desalination. Orlando and Tampa have had to invest in it already. This will lead to a need to raise water taxes,” Bravo said. “But it is prohibitively expensive”
According to Bravo, the rising sea levels are a product of global warming, a naturally occurring phenomenon. The only unnatural thing about global warming is the accelerated rate at which it is happening — a product of humans’ ecological footprints.
“There are two sides on the issue. One side says we should protect [the environment] for children and freshwater,” Bravo said. “The other side says we need to find alternatives to fund to help us be more sustainable, to lower emissions and for more time to prepare.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council describes global warming as “the single biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis of our time.” According to the Council, global warming refers to the increasing temperatures of Earth’s atmosphere stemming from an atmosphere full of “heat-trapping carbon dioxide;” which lead to a wide-scale impact on climate.
As depicted by the Council’s “Extreme Weather Map 2012,” Florida did not pass last year unscathed, as evidenced by record-breaking heat, rain and a total of 62 large wildfires. Nationally, the United States saw “the worst drought in 50 years,” Hurricane Sandy and wildfires that burned approximately 9 million acres across the U.S.
“In the next 100 years, the most optimistic predictions say the sea levels will rise 6 feet. Six feet and Miami is underwater — exponentially worse than when a hurricane happens,” Bravo said.
The aforementioned case study explains that the warming of the planet causes ocean surface water to expand, in addition to melting glaciers and ice sheets. Currently, South Florida’s sea level has risen over 10 inches since the 1840s and is still rising. Today, scientists have measured the rate at which the sea level rises to be about 8-16 inches every 100 years, a rate 6-10 times faster than the average rate for the past 3,000 years.
“We keep looking for solutions that create more problems,” Caceres said. “We keep spending a ton of money that we could use to create a sustainable city that could survive the century.”
The student-organized event taking place at Parkview Plaza, near the entrance of the Nature Preserve, is intended to educate viewers on the class’ findings and their proposals for steps to be taken for a more sustainable city.
The event, starting at 2 p.m. and lasting until 4:30 p.m., will provide students with a chance to participate in a scavenger hunt, with clues stemming from their research and tips.
Unlike other doomsayers, Warman-Cano’s class has taken a proactive approach by educating the community and getting them involved.
“This event is centered on awareness, but we will definitely be talking about how we can become better consumers and work for a more sustainable and better society,” Caceres said.
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