Nov. 3: The Men (and Women) Who Ignore the Environment

By Sylvia Gurinsky

Money doesn't matter very much if there's no Planet Earth to spend it on.

Let that message be communicated to most members of the Miami-Dade County Commission and Republican members of the United States Congress, both of who don't seem to get it.

In Dade, the issue is the site in the Everglades once targeted for a jetport. The opposition was so fierce that it triggered the creation of the group Friends of the Everglades, and jetport plans were abandoned. That was four decades ago.

Now, despite the green movement, despite the realities of what pollution has been doing to this planet, county commissioners are looking at using the jetport site either for rock mining or oil drilling, as Curtis Morgan writes in The Miami Herald:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/5min/story/1313153.html

Guess they slept through the local history lesson generated by that semi-abandoned runway in the Everglades.

The county should either sell the land to the state for preservation or mitigate it. A quickie profit on oil or rock mining today will result in an environmental and financial loss too big to comprehend tomorrow.

Speaking of losing, only one Republican U.S. senator, George Voinovich of Ohio, was at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee meeting this morning about the greenhouse gas-curbing bill, as the Associated Press reports:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h5iS14YOIUrpdmPuNylwKcVpSnmAD9BO49003

As with members of the Miami-Dade Commission, the only green the congressional GOP seems to care about is money.

In so doing, Republicans holding high elected office have even ignored the wishes of many of their own conservative constituents, who see global warming and other environmental hazards as a serious problem.

Open your eyes and ears, senators.