Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
to note that air pollution continues to be a major
problem in Britain today. In a 2007 report the
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
(a body that has now been dissolved as part of the
UK government's austerity measures) estimated
that air pollution was a contributory factor in
24,000 deaths in the UK every year, and that air
pollution cost the UK somewhere in the region of
£9.1 billion a year, through healthcare costs and
work absences (Royal Commission on Environ-
mental Pollution, 2007: 35-40). A large part of the
contemporary air pollution problem in the UK is
related to the rise of the motorcar (see
Chapter 3)
.
Ironically, clearing the air of dark smoke and soot
has generated suitable conditions for the creation
of photochemical smogs in British cities (as the
sun's rays react with car exhaust fumes). Unlike the
technological transfer that followed the 1956 Clean
Air Act, it is clear that no viable alternative to the
internal combustion engine can be introduced in
order to render the contemporary automobile
obsolete. In many rapidly expanding cities of the
global south the situation is even worse. Here
we find rapid industrialization (similar to that
experienced by London in the nineteenth century)
being combined with rapid increases in the rates
of car ownership. It would appear that the ultimate
lesson of the London fog disaster is that while
governments, when suitably motivated, may be
effective at tackling environmental problems in the
short term, in the longer term economic change
and development will always generate new, often
more difficult environmental challenges.
city of Orlando with the Kissimmee River. This
river flows into Lake Okeechobee, and it is to the
south of this lake that the Everglades really begin.
The Everglades have formed over many thousands
of years as a result of the slow and steady overflow
of water from the southern shore of Okeechobee.
This overflow of water constitutes the hydrological
system upon which the Everglades are based. But
this is unlike any river you will have come across
before. This is a river system that is only a few
inches deep, but stretches to some 50-60 miles in
width. This river flows at imperceptibly slow
speeds (around 100 feet a day), but runs for about
100 miles until it reaches the Florida Bay. This
distinctive environmental system has given rise
to a complex and diverse ecological landscape.
The landscape to the south of Okeechobee is one
of swamps, sawgrass ridges, mangroves and tree
islands (see
Plate 7.5)
. This landscape is home to
a rich diversity of animal life ranging from
alligators to wading birds. A complex balance has
emerged in this environment between the water
level of the Everglades and the varied plants and
animals that have made their home in the area.
Small variations in the depth of the film of water
covering the Everglades can have severe conse-
quences for the ecological balance of the area (see
Box 7.4).
The Everglades provide an important case
study in state environmental relations, because
the US federal and the Florida state govern-
ments have played central roles in supporting
the economic exploitation of this region and in
championing its conservation. The story of the
duplicitous role of government authorities in
the Everglades begins in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. It was at this point in
time that the first attempts were made to start
to drain and reclaim significant portions of the
wetlands. Local politicians, who were influenced
by agro-industrial interests, supported these early
attempts at drainage. The agro-industrial sector
was keen to see the reclamation of the Everglades
as they recognized the potential of this area to
support sugar cane production (see Hollander,
7.5 RIVERS OF GRASS: THE US
STATE AND THE FLORIDA
EVERGLADES
The Everglades constitute a unique subtropical
ecosystem. Located at the southern tip of the state
of Florida (se
e Figure 7.1)
, the Everglades are at
one and the same time one of the most environ-
mentally important and severely threatened
ecosystems in North America. The ecosystem that
supports the Everglades starts to the south of the
