In the Land of Good Living

by Kent Russell

  KENT

  (stifling laughter)

  NOAH (O.S.)

  How about that.

  GLENN (O.S.)

  I mean…but…surely. Surely you have to be skeptical of Trump’s picks to lead environmental posts?

  WANLESS

  OK. Here’s my sense. I think Hillary was a consummate liar. She would’ve said anything to get elected. I just hope that…Trump said he’s not a liar. And if he becomes a true denier…then he’s a liar. He has so many properties that are so vulnerable, though. I’ve looked at the elevations of all of them…

  HARD CUT

  —

  MILE 1002 — MIAMI BEACH

  IF THERE WERE NO FLORIDA,

  WE SHOULD HAVE TO INVENT IT

  We kicked sand along South Beach. Huge new condo buildings towered over us to our left. In the shadows behind them across Ocean Drive, older bungalows were shuttered, gutted, and getting ready to become condos themselves.

  Growing up, I rarely came to this place. Miami and Miami Beach are not the same thing, tourist misperceptions notwithstanding. Miami Beach is a separate city dredged out of the bay and removed from the landed part of the metropolis by a causeway. It’s as if Miami were holding Miami Beach at arm’s length. Proffering it.

  Miami Beach is for the uninitiated, for them to come and have their expectation of “Miami” confirmed without encountering the starker, obverse side. Every now and then my family would visit, go to Joe’s Stone Crab following a wedding or something. When I got old enough, my friends and I held prom after-parties in the sleazier boutique hotels. We’d pool our money, sleep thirty to a room, rent a carpet shampooer from Publix the next day. Generally, though, we didn’t hang around here any more than Caribbean islanders with nothing to hawk hang around the bright, kempt area cruise ships disgorge at.

  Carl Fisher would have approved. A Hoosier born in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Fisher made his name manufacturing auto parts and operating the world’s first car dealership. He also thought up the idea of the Indianapolis 500 and spearheaded the early push for national highways. Was one of the founders of the Dixie Highway Association, touting “your favorite route to and from Florida.” Fisher retired to Miami to live out his fortune, but like Henry Flagler before him, he grew restless here. He found himself drawn to a strip of mangroves just off the coast. There, a guy by the name of John Collins grew avocados but had a hard time transporting them to market. Fisher lent him money to build a bridge; Collins gave him two hundred acres of land in return. Fisher purchased another two hundred acres and declared his intention to build “the prettiest little city in the world right here.” The spittle of dreams was in his eyes. Friends feared for his sanity.

  He brought in men, machinery, two elephants even. Fisher’s work crews blasted, drained, filled in the mangrove swamp and adjacent barrier islands, which had hitherto been Miami’s buffer against hurricanes. Giant steam shovels dredged Biscayne Bay. They dumped shell and muck into new middens. The middens were graded level. Abracadabra! Tabula rasa ex nihilo!

  The ribbon was cut in 1915. Not long after, a Florida land boom hit—thanks in part to the Dixie Highway Fisher had lobbied for. With Barnumesque flair, he lured prospective buyers to Miami Beach with beauty pageants, polo and sport-fishing tournaments, and the blandishments of President-elect Warren G. Harding for some reason. Society people settled in and planned manors of their own. Fisher had built it, and the people were coming.

  Then the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 hit, killing the land boom and kicking off the Depression in Florida. Fisher lost practically everything in the crash. Penniless, he spent his last years wandering up and down the white sand beach he’d contrived.

  In the decades that followed, Miami Beach cycled through just as many downturns and reinventions as the mainland. Servicemen and -women filled the island in the forties. The fifties and sixties were a gilded age: The Beatles came to frolic, and the Fontainebleau served as a backdrop to Rat Pack movies. The seventies were less sunny; the original infrastructure was deteriorating at the same rate as the initial crop of Jewish retirees. The early eighties were terrifying—Miami’s cocaine-cowboy violence spilled across the causeway. Then came the Beach’s Birdcage-era gentrification in the late eighties and early nineties. Art Basel and its traveling circus of courtiers, millonarios, and charlatans trailed along after.

  The three of us filmed in hotel lobbies done up like white-marble movie palaces. We shot B-roll of curvilinear staircases and indoor/outdoor lounges abillow with white drapery. Glenn tried to capture the absolute tyranny of white. White buildings that looked like refrigerators, white buildings that looked like ice cube trays on edge. White shorts everywhere, poolside especially, where their wearers went shoulder to shoulder with white sculptures that were imitations of late Renaissance imitations of Greek and Roman statuary.

  We wrapped in front of a new white condo tower anchoring the just-invented “Faena District,” which will include a Rem Koolhaas–designed arts center as well as a high-end shopping mall meant to invoke a “modern-day souk.” On the ocean-facing side of the development stood a glass-encased woolly mammoth skeleton that had been coated in twenty-four-karat gold by the artist Damien Hirst. Title: Gone but Not Forgotten. Meanwhile, above us, propeller planes pulled banners for DJs performing at irony-free nightclubs which did not exist on the Beach prior to Miami Vice suggesting that such clubs should exist.

  “The restaurants, pools, cabanas,” Glenn said, wincing at the plane, whose engine noise was ruining his shot. “But especially these condos that get flipped…fucking…what? Three years after purchase? Before the boom goes bust? Everything here feels fuck-adjacent. You’re preparing to fuck, you’re taking an intermission from fucking. You are getting financially fucked.”

  “Or financially fucking another,” Noah added, wiping his sweat-wet brow. “Jesus hell. A week till Christmas?”

  The sun dominated the horizon like a searchlight. Tourists were cramming the beach beneath it, to be serviced by it. With the camera rolling again, I bent down to palm a handful of crystalline sand. I nodded thoughtfully while letting the broken crockery of once-living things run through my fingers.

  KENT

  You know, the only state that has more coastline than Florida is Alaska.

  I did not mention that half of Florida’s 1,350 miles of coastline are designated as “critically eroding” by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

  KENT

  This sand qualifies as “fine” sand, since each grain is smaller than the ball in a ballpoint pen.

  Why bother viewers with the truth of the matter: These grains were imported from a plant in Moore Haven, where engineers dredge sand from deepening ponds. Recently, Miami Beach paid about $12 million for their top-shelf product in order to patch three thousand feet of shore. This is a perennial undertaking, since the waves are forever sawing at the coastline, picking up sand and depositing it elsewhere. Miami Beach could dredge its sand from Biscayne Bay, like Fisher did when he sucked up 6 million cubic yards for his original version. Or like the city did four decades ago, when another 14 million cubic yards of sand—four times what was used to build the Great Pyramids—was dredged to rejuvenate the beach. But this Biscayne sand, it is…less than Instagrammable, let’s say. Bay-bottom muck hardly fits today’s preferred aesthetic.

  KENT

  Gorgeous. You just want to come down and make sand angels in it.

  —

  The city engineer in charge of implementing Miami Beach’s antisea-rise measures, BRUCE MOWRY, is a round and ruddy man who resembles nothing so much as an apple dressed up as a comptroller for Halloween. He is gesturing excitedly at a hulking pump house built into one of Miami Beach’s raised streets.

  MOWRY

  Right now a lot of people are spreading false informa
tion on social media about flood insurance and Miami Beach, saying they’re not getting covered because the raised streets mean that a shop at street level is classified as a basement now. Not true!

  Mowry straightens his red tie, waves the men onward to more construction sites.

  MOWRY (CONT’D)

  (over shoulder)

  This is a step forward, you see? Is it going to be enough? No, probably not. Are we making mistakes? Yes. But what we’re doing is taking a step forward.

  The three friends zig and zag through the traffic backed up around the sites.

  NOAH (O.S.)

  (to Mowry)

  (half out of breath)

  When you pump the floodwater back out, do you do anything about, like, the dog shit and oil it’s picked up? Do you treat it?

  MOWRY

  (shouting over jackhammer)

  That could be a problem. Sure! Could be! But consequences like that, we could worry about them and not do anything. Or we could take action. It takes thirty years to implement solutions, so we’d better start implementing them now! This is one of the few places in the country if not the world where we’re actually trying to be proactive about sea-level rise.

  Like a taxi driver attempting to confuse a fare, Mowry kept doubling us back to Sunset Harbour on the west side of the island. This is where the worst flooding occurs. Especially so when there is a full moon and a high tide—then, salt water spurts through sidewalk cracks. Storm drains transform into an irrigation system, sluicing brine across the narrow island. Pedestrians splash past garbage cans bobbing like buoys. Homeowners have to put up No Wake signs in their yards.

  MOWRY

  (over shoulder)

  You see, flooding had been accepted as a way of life to a point where people came in and said, Why are we continuing accepting this issue of our streets flooding? And so we had politicians listen—Philip Levine, that’s what he campaigned on—and they ran and got elected by these people.

  Miami Beach’s current mayor, Philip Levine, won office on the promise of combating sea-level rise; that much is true. How he’s gone about combating sea-level rise is…by embracing more and bigger development. But before you chortle despairingly, friend, remember that Florida’s government does not officially recognize climate change. Even if it wanted to take action, the state lacks the power to levy income taxes to pay for improvements. So cities like Miami Beach are on their own. And the only real way for the Beach to raise funds for defenses is through real estate taxes, hotel taxes. If Miami Beach wants more of those, it has to keep slapping together luxury resorts with the planned obsolescence built right into them. Each one increases the magnitude of risk, sure—but what other recourse does the city have? What was once a choice is that no longer. Miami Beach has to front like it is unconcerned with reality. If it stops fabricating itself—and its property values stop rising—and investors and tourists get spooked—it takes on more water. If it doesn’t continue to build itself up—it slips beneath the waves.

  Before we met with Mowry, Glenn had mentioned a newspaper story he’d read. In this story, it was reported that Mayor Levine had declared a state of emergency and waived competitive bidding requirements in order to sign an $11 million contract to build three storm pumps in this area, Sunset Harbour. This area where, coincidentally, Mayor Levine owns real estate.

  The three of us confabbed while walking, wondering if we should ask about it. Noah, canting the boom, said: “We’re gonna start exposéing now?”

  I said, “Well, maybe at least we should—”

  KENT

  (to Mowry)

  The idea that you have to keep spinning the ball on your finger, you have to do enough to keep the real estate and tourism viable so that you can continue to generate cash for a potential solution, as well as all the stopgaps you have in place—of course, not a lot of communities can do this. Very, very few, in fact. A place like Pinecrest saw that it’d cost them $40 million to fight sea-level rise, and they really can’t afford that. They don’t have the tax base. You do because…you don’t mention the risks to investors? Or they don’t care about them?

  Mowry stopped. He waved the camera down. He said, “Uhh, if I answered that question, I probably wouldn’t be the city engineer for Miami Beach!” He laughed. We laughed.

  MOWRY

  We need to always make sure that when visitors and investors come they feel welcome, they feel like they’re at a place they want to be. That’s what we’re working for. To maintain that culture, that environment. We’re implementing $500 million in elevating 30 percent of streets, heightening seawalls, installing pump stations, improving drains and sewers. We’re working for iterative-type solutions.

  Mowry ended our tour at a small bayside park where his men were raising the seawall and replanting mangroves. He thought Glenn might like to get shots of the birds and the fish tentatively inhabiting the root system.

  MOWRY

  (gesturing at Miami across water behind him)

  Iterative-type solutions! Nothing is impossible. It may just take a little longer to implement a solution. The City of Miami Beach will be here in a hundred years because it wants to be here. Sea-level rise won’t kill a city if it wants to live.

  Glenn tried to make something of this visual anticlimax. A smell like soiled diapers was emanating from the drains the workmen were installing new grates over. Noah did the googling. Tonight was a full moon.

  MOWRY (CONT’D)

  The key question here, gentlemen, that we’re talking about here, is that we’re in a life of change. We’re not like you build it now and a hundred years from now it’ll be exactly the same. What we’re saying is you’ll continue to have to adapt, change. Look at this. This is what this country is built on. The solutions we’re implementing today are solutions to be built on. Many people think we’re wasting a lot of money putting in pumps for a city they believe we should just abandon and retreat from. The word “retreat” is not in our vocabulary, gentlemen!

  Mowry continued like this for some time, waxing hydrological about other “iterative solutions.” A resin that could be injected into the limestone, sealing the interstices? Why not! Waterproof shields underneath new buildings, similar to the tarps under our tents? Who could rule it out! Ever the optimist, Mowry was certain that technological mastery was not merely a guiding principle but our one convincing model of truth.

  He closed by repeating a line I’d heard him give other audiences.

  MOWRY

  If we can put a man on the moon, then we can figure out a way to keep Miami Beach dry. You know, I came up through school that we didn’t even have calculators. Isn’t it crazy? If you would have told me we’d have iPhones, iPads, I wouldn’t have believed you. Can you imagine what iterative solutions we’ll have in thirty or forty years?

  And the obligation of stewardship? I wondered. Thoughtfulness as to the impact of our actions upon the future, based upon our knowledge of the past?

  God, could you imagine if I’d actually asked that? The uncomprehending look on Mowry’s face? Or even the disgust? I think I would prefer disgust. Since what I’d probably get instead is a whole lot of cant and synergy-speak about how stewardship really means full trust in the market. It means making sure we don’t set up any hurdles or red tape which might hinder tomorrowland imagineers when they’re dealing iteratively with the costs and consequences of our self-interest today.

  Future generations: Go easy on us. Forgive us our sins. You will not be ruled by desire, as we were, but by circumstance—particularly the circumstances resulting from scarcity, devastation, and chaos. When or if you find these postcards amid the quagmire we’ve bequeathed, please try to sympathize. Had you been lucky enough to live here and now, you might have made the same mistakes. You, too, might have rejected out of hand the truth that hu
man appetite is insatiable and the world limited. You, too, might have known how good it feels, living wastefully at your leisure. Understand, please—we weren’t monsters. We were all too human.

  And we who must die demand a miracle. We beseech our god of progress: Send unto your people the environmental messiah! For us and for our salvation, may he come down from somewhere, soon, and deliver us from ourselves.

  MOWRY

  How was that?

  KENT (O.S.)

  Perfecto, Bruce.

  —

  MILE 1015 — COCONUT GROVE

  FAKING IT TILL WE’VE MADE IT

  I had one last stop to make. Prodigal son that I am, I needed to return to my father’s address.

  After our meeting with Mowry, we left Miami Beach and headed for Coconut Grove, one of Miami’s constituent neighborhoods that happens to be older than the city itself. The Grove, as its name suggests, is an exceptionally vegetal place. Whatever the Spaniards were trying to connote when they dubbed this state La Florida—those connotations reside in Coconut Grove. Here you have thick, high canopies crosshatched with sunlight; swaying palms nearer at hand; hanging vines everywhere. Tunnels of verdancy, really, and all of them connected. Along with fragrant hibiscus, inkwell water, peacocks sashaying across driveways. It is a garden, truly. As we walked through it, our steps released rasps of decomposition—a few degrees past the death smell; more akin to the pleasing hint of indole that perfumers add to their bouquets—from the dried leaves and crushed berries underfoot.