From Project 2025 to Florida state parks, our top 5 editorials of 2024 showed a pattern | Opinion
There are no surprises on the list of the Miami Herald Editorial Board’s five most-read pieces of 2024. If these metrics are any indication of what readers care about, then the environment and the impacts of climate change are among their top priorities.
Here’s a look at what caught readers’ eyes this year.
1. State parks
In August, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration learned a lesson that even his staunchest allies will rise up when the topic is Florida’s beloved state parks, some of the last vestiges of the state’s natural lands.
A proposal to build golf courses, lodging and more amenities across nine state parks was so hated by people across the political spectrum that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection eventually withdrew it. Oleta River State Park in Miami-Dade would have gotten four pickleball courts and 10 new lodging cabins. At Jonathan Dickinson State Park, north of Jupiter, three golf courses were planned, drawing the most outrage.
As we wrote back then, “Florida learned that only with the public’s involvement can Florida’s environmental lands and parks fend off any efforts to steer them away from their mission.”
Well done, Floridians.
2. Flooding
“A Miami underwater is becoming a reality we’ll have to accept,” the Editorial Board wrote in June after torrential rain flooded streets in Miami-Dade and Broward counties and shut down part of Interstate 95. The year before, Fort Lauderdale had seen historic rainfall that shut down its airport.
And these events weren’t even caused by a hurricane. The impacts of climate change and sea-level rise are not an abstraction, and flooding is an occurrence we will have to adapt to. The state has funded flood resilience projects but the long-term answer is addressing climate change.
3. Blatant racism
“Racism reared its ugly head publicly” inside the Florida Capitol, we wrote in February.
During a Senate committee hearing on a bill that would have prevented local governments from removing Confederate monuments, bigotry was on display during public comments. A supporter of the bill said the removal of such monuments “is part of the cultural war being waged against white society.”
Democrats walked out of the room in protest and Republicans, too, were floored, with one of them saying, “The comments that I heard today... they were bigoted, they were racist.” Nevertheless, all the Republicans on the committee voted to advance the legislation.
Fortunately, the bill eventually died. Let this be a lesson to lawmakers that when racists come out in full support of their bill, a little self-reflection comes handy.
4. Immigration
President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations overshadowed another point of his proposed immigration policies that would have broad implications in South Florida, the Board wrote in November.
During his first term, Trump tried and failed to end Temporary Protected Status, a program that protects some immigrants from deportation for a limited time because of emergency conditions in their home countries, such as Venezuela and Haiti. After he spread debunked conspiracy theories about Haitians in Ohio eating pets, Trump vowed again to revoke TPS for Haitians in October.
Almost a third of about 863,880 TPS recipients live in Florida. Sending people back to countries in turmoil would put their lives at risk and impact economies in places like Miami. Trump’s hardline immigration stance ignores that TPS holders are our neighbors and workers in important local industries.
5. No to Project 2025
In September, as Hurricane Helene was brewing, Project 2025, a policy blueprint of a Republican White House under Trump, was released. The report proposed to dismantle the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, make the National Hurricane Center subject to ideological scrutiny and commercialize the National Weather Service.
NOAA and the Weather Service play a critical role in public safety, especially during hurricane season in Florida. Floridians rely on unbiased forecasts from weather pros, minus political agendas, to make life-or-death decisions. Project 2025 threatens to compromise scientific objectivity with political interests.
The 2024 hurricane season is over but we still “want — no, we need — forecasts that are free of hype, a profit motive and the taint of politics.”
Click here to send the letter.
This story was originally published December 26, 2024 at 9:19 AM.