This week’s episode begins with Craig’s ongoing reporting of the environmental disaster at the Piney Point phosphate plant where hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater has been diverted into the Tampa Bay estuary to avoid a collapse of the gypsum stack there. Craig has reported on this coming apocalypse for decades, highlighting how the Florida Department of Environmental “Protection’s” history of favoring industry over the environment and its lack of serious regulation put us here. And this week’s guest is Florida’s state climatologist David Zierden. We talk about our state’s climate, how it’s changing, what can be done to protect the state from climate change, hurricanes and … machetes?
This week's episode begins with Craig's ongoing reporting of the environmental disaster at the Piney Point phosphate plant where hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater has been diverted into the Tampa Bay estuary to avoid a collapse of the gypsum stack there. Craig has reported on this coming apocalypse for decades, highlighting how the Florida Department of Environmental "Protection's" history of favoring industry over the environment and its lack of serious regulation put us here. And this week's guest is Florida's state climatologist David Zierden. We talk about our state's climate, how it's changing, what can be done to protect the state from climate change, hurricanes and ... machetes?
Craig Pittman is the award-winning author of Oh, Florida!: How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, The Scent of Scandal, Cat Tale, Manatee Insanity and The State You’re In, and co-author of Paving Paradise. Born in Pensacola, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him “the most destructive force on campus.” Since then he has covered a variety of newspaper beats and quite a few natural disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature.
