When Ian Passed Through

Somehow, despite the oppressive heat, the inhospitable conditions, the sandy soil supported only by porous limestone, and the exotic and extremely dangerous wildlife (including, I believe, two-headed snakes), Florida went from being a sleepy winter-vacation backwater at the end of World War II to the nation's third most populous state today.  As Florida real estate developers there sold Americans on the dream of endless summers, people moved down there so fast, there was barely enough time to build housing, build businesses, and expand public-safety services.  The result was a tacky landscape of plastic-jive tract housing, oversized shopping centers, and an amusement parks the size of San Francisco.  All of this was made possible by cheap oil, air conditioning, generous federal money to set up a space center to launch rockets for exploring the moon instead of fighting poverty in our cities.  And somehow, the builders of the horror show that was modern Florida never thought of what would happen if all of this climate-change-inducing behavior caused a hurricane - one of those unfortunate extremities of nature Florida is infamous for - that was so off the charts it could devastate the entire state.  A state of 22,000,000 people who declared their values by sending Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to Washington and sending Ron DeSantis to Tallahassee.  

Then along came Hurricane Ian.

I hope this storm serves a wakeup call for America.  It shows what happens when humans disregard what they're doing to their environment and the limitations of where we should establish human habitats.  Florida was never meant to absorb so many people with so many artificial means of making mass settlement there possible.  It's just as ridiculous to overbuild in an ecologically sensitive area in a subtropical climate susceptible to major tropical cyclones as it is to build anything in the middle of the desert.  (And yet Las Vegas still exists.)

Everyone from Governor DeSantis to President Biden is talking about rebuilding Florida. Don't even bother.  Florida transplants had best prepare to return to their home states, where the weather is more stable and where the climate is more manageable.  Fort Myers, Tampa and Saint Petersburg will be considerably depopulated and become the small towns they used to be before the mass exodus to the so-called Sunshine State.  Nature should be allowed to take back Disney World, and its various amusements and attractions should be left to crumble like ancient Roman ruins.  Interstate 4 and the Bee Line Expressway should be converted into hiking and cycling trails.  Anyone still living in Florida when the last remnants of overpopulation are shoveled and bulldozed away - the citrus farmers, the park rangers in the Everglades, old-timer beachcombers - should take care of the land and the water and restore North America's most ecologically sensitive peninsula to good health.  

Playtime is over.