The City of South Miami Wants to Split Florida in Two

The City of South Miami wants to secede from
Florida. No, not by itself: In a
resolution passed earlier this month, the mayor and city
commission proposed that 24 counties leave the state together,
setting up a new state that they’d call South Florida and forcing
the rest of us to confront the thought of a world with two Floridas
in it.

Like many of the country’s secessionist movements, which pop up
periodically in regions ranging from eastern
Washington to
western Maryland, from northern
California to New
York City, the Miami revolt reflects a cultural divide. North
Florida is more southern than South Florida—yes, I know how weird
that sentence sounds—and that sometimes manifests itself in ways
more consequential than whether there are any good Cuban
restaurants in town. Right now, the resolution complains, “in order
to address the concerns of South Florida, it is necessary to travel
to Tallahassee in North Florida. Often South Florida issues do not
receive the support of Tallahassee. This is despite the fact that
South Florida generates more than 69% of the state’s revenue and
contains 67% of the state’s population.” Similar sentiments
inspired a pair of split-the-state resolutions a few years ago in
the towns of
North Lauderdale and Margate.

But there’s another factor this time: fear of climate change.
The built-up coastal communities on the southern tip of the state
are worried about rising sea levels, and they don’t think they’re
getting the support they need from the legislature. Here’s a
section from the South Miami resolution:

Whereas, climate change is a
scientific reality resulting in global warming and rising sea
level; and

Whereas, it is estimated that there will be a 3 to
6 foot sea level rise by the end of this century. In addition,
South Florida has very porous rock and, as the level of the sea
rises, the pressure will cause water to rise up through the ground
and flood the inland areas; and

Whereas, South Florida’s situation is very
precarious and in need of immediate attention. Many of the issues
facing South Florida are not political, but are now significant
safety issues…

We’re used to hearing global warming invoked to justify
centralization, not decentralization. Occasionally someone like
Elinor Ostrom will break with
that consensus, but that’s rare. The general assumption is that
the way to deal with climate change is to try to prevent it at
the source, and that the way to prevent it is to create a globally
binding agreement. World leaders haven’t
had much luck with that plan so far, and I doubt that’s going
to change anytime soon.

And so we’re hearing more about adaptation as
well as prevention. But adaptation is a decentralized process, not
a centralized one, with adjustments made by ports, private
companies, city and county governments, and other entities directly
affected by changing conditions. That doesn’t mean the feds are
left out—they’re getting hit up for subsidies and other sorts of
help—but the decisions are being made at relatively local levels,
and not always in the public sector. Those decisions don’t
always even require people to agree about what causes warming or
whether it’s happening at all. When my wife covers the effects of
rising sea levels on the Eastern Shore or the
islands of the Chesapeake Bay, the locals will often tell her
they think the streets are being flooded because of erosion or poor
drainage rather than climate change. But that doesn’t mean they
don’t want to do anything about it.

This is the other side of climate politics: a messy and largely
local trial-and-error process being carried out far from the
international summits that seize the headlines. That, plus the
occasional flare-up into something strange, like a secessionist
movement in the Miami suburbs. Save your Spanish doubloons, boys,
South Florida will rise again!