"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
— Joni Mitchell
By Diane Roberts
Special to Tropic Press from Florida Phoenix
Conservatives used to want to conserve.
They wanted to conserve nature, wilderness, wildlife.
They wanted to conserve art, historical sites, historical buildings, history itself.
They valued American democracy, American traditions, and democratic institutions.
Now they just want to destroy.
The current administration leads this rage to destroy, tearing down the East Wing of the White House, threatening the Kennedy Center with demolition, attacking museums, national parks and monuments — Trump has decimated Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, removing 90% of land owned by the American people, opening it to mining and other commercial interests — and accelerating the climate crisis by repealing greenhouse gas standards and rolling back Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards.
The rule of law is under siege, with the administration ignoring court orders, flouting federal statutes, undermining the two other branches of government, and gleefully violating the Constitution.
Florida under Ron DeSantis is no different.
His administration refuses to protect historic buildings, natural treasures, and free thought, banning books, riding roughshod over civil rights, and doing their damnedest to impose right-wing juntas in our universities.
In 2024, the state bought The Gladstone, a Victorian house in Tallahassee.
Some of us were naive enough to hope they might restore the place or sell it to a group who could move it and save it.
The place was a fine example of the sharp-gabled, lacy woodwork style of the 1890s, the last of its kind along the capital’s main drag. It was pretty rickety, but not, according to historic preservationists, hopeless.
But the DeSantis administration bulldozed it, claiming that because the property abutted the Governor’s Mansion grounds, it was a “security risk” and must be destroyed to expand the mansion’s perimeter and put in an all-important parking lot.
You’d almost think the state looks at anything beautiful, anything special, anything that contributes to our quality of life, and looks for a way to ruin it.
‘Golden era’?
DeSantis once boasted his first term was “a golden era for conservation,” vowing to eradicate the blue-green algae choking the life out of our lakes and rivers and setting up an initiative to save our reefs.
The reefs are breeding grounds and nurseries for 500 marine species and may be a source for new medicines. They protect coastal communities from beach erosion and storm surges and generate billions in recreation dollars.
Our waterways are still slimed with toxic algae, and this year DeSantis cut all the funding from Florida’s Coral Reef Restoration and Recovery Initiative.
Why? Why not? The environment is clearly “woke.”
Remember when the governor insisted the now-closed Alligator Alcatraz would do no damage to the Everglades?
That would be funny (almost) if it weren’t so false.
The facility’s 200 diesel generators belched out benzene and formaldehyde day and night, violating the Clean Air Act; its bright stadium lights, disrupting panther habitat, messing with the birds and amphibians who live in the ’glades, could be seen 18 miles away; its overflowing fuel trucks and port-a-potties leaked filth into the aquifer on which South Florida depends for drinking water.
The injuries inflicted weren’t only environmental.
Detainees were forced to live in unspeakably dirty conditions, denied food and medical care, denied access to lawyers, and were often placed in 4-foot by 4-foot outdoor metal cages, described by detention center staff as “calming areas” where inmates could have some “alone time,” and by Amnesty International as “torture.”
You know things were bad there when even the Department of Homeland Security, not known for its adherence to human rights, found the facility in violation of every possible standard.
Ron DeSantis blew the whole thing off. He didn’t know; the state wasn’t responsible; and what’s the big deal? It’s not like detainees are real people.
ICE predations
Conservatives used to claim individual rights as an essential part of their philosophy. But here in Florida, rights only apply to state-approved citizens.
You can be locked up just because you don’t look sufficiently “American.”
Sometimes ICE rounds up undocumented people who have no right to be here.
Sometimes it detains people with pending citizenship applications or asylum claims, never mind they are in the country legally.
Sometimes it arrests American citizens.
This is hardly surprising in a country where ICE agents shoot protesters with impunity, where the highest court has gutted the Civil Rights Act, and the Trump administration threatens the coming elections.
What’s that old saying about the fish rotting from the head down?
Dredge we must
The putrefaction from Washington has run downhill to Florida, where the Army Corps of Engineers wants to dredge the Apalachicola River.
Again.
In case you need reminding, this would be the same Corps responsible for the levees that collapsed in Hurricane Katrina, exacerbating death and destruction in New Orleans, and those disastrous discharges from Lake Okeechobee, polluting the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries and killing Everglades flora and fauna.
The Corps is, of course, ultimately ruled by the geniuses at the Pentagon.
The Apalachicola River is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, supporting hundreds of rare species of birds, fish, amphibians, and plants found almost nowhere else.
Nevertheless, the Corps is hell-bent on scraping out a navigational channel that its own reports show isn’t economically significant.
They’ll dig out the river bottom, endangered mollusks be damned, stacking the spoils in sand mounds which, in turn, choke the sloughs feeding the river, starving the floodplain forest and screwing up the delicate balance of salt and fresh water.
Thanks to DeSantis and the Legislature, local governments can no longer manage growth or protect water quality or sensitive lands or levy impact fees on developers to help with the cost of expanded infrastructure.
In 2025, the governor signed a law giving developers carte blanche.
Bulldoze those trees? Pollute that lake? Progress!
Citizens of Seminole and Orange County voted to preserve “rural boundaries,” designed to slow out-of-control growth and preserve habitat and forests. Florida legislators objected, squawking about “private property rights.”
If a developer objects to local tree ordinances or wetlands protections or impact fees or restrictions on the ungodly sprawl crawling across the state like kudzu on steroids, he is likely to prevail over the people who actually live in the place.
By now, you know the Trump administration and its DeSantis Mini-Me government want to tear down, chop down, and befoul. It seems to be in their DNA.
But some Democrats have caught the destruction disease as well.
Here in Tallahassee, run almost entirely by Democrats, the city allows — even encourages — what they call “growth” and many of those of us who live here call “unsustainable sprawl.”
When some rapacious developer cuts a bunch of old trees — the kind that take a century or more to mature — without permission, he gets a slap on the wrist from city or county government, maybe a small fine.
The rapacious developer shrugs: It’s the cost of doing business.
‘Paused’
Welaunee, 6,600 acres in northeast Leon County, is slated to become one of those “master-planned communities” of the sort defacing Florida south of the Suwannee River.
The development has been “paused,” supposedly so citizens can express concerns and ask questions, but if anyone thinks it can be stopped altogether, well, they don’t realize Florida’s most important relationship is not with democracy or nature, it’s with money.
The company wants to build 6,591 houses and create 425,000 square feet of “retail space” (probably called “shoppes”) and multi-lane roads.
One section has already been completed, a “community” called Canopy — though it has no canopy, barely any trees — largely rows of beige houses that could be anywhere: the Atlanta suburbs, the outskirts of Orlando, the gated cookie-cutter villages along I-75.
If Canopy is anything to go by, Welaunee will be an abomination.
The wetlands, the cherished green spaces, the old-growth oaks, the lakes and streams, the wildlife habitat, the peace and quiet, the beauty we should cherish — and conserve — all gone.
It will be a miracle if in 10 years the whole state isn’t one big expanse of concrete and asphalt, an endless subdivision punctuated here and there by data centers, Wawas, and strip malls.
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. This story is republished with their permission. To support Florida Phoenix, click here:
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J.C. Bruce
Wow - that was the most depressing post ever!! If everyone in this state read that they would be appalled and rush to vote in major changes to our state representation!!
It's almost impossible for citizens to win against development. CFZ is barrelling forward with their extension that goes through The Wildlife Corridor. to the new proposed city southeast of Orlando and west of Melbourne. I sat through a canned media presentation with no questions allowed. They said you could submit questions via email, and I did, and surprise, no one has responded. They were so proud because they were building 3 bridges so wildlife could cross, and then the other shoe dropped; people could hike there. Ridiculous. No matter how hard you try, you can't stop rampant development in Florida. Build it and they will come. That's Florida's real motto.