By: Win Phillips
Win Phillips is the vice president for research at the University of Florida.

A timely reminder of the promise of public higher education has emerged in a most unlikely place: the plains of the far north.

From Florida to Arizona to California, dozens of cash-strapped states are making deep cuts to public universities. The rare exception is North Dakota. We’ve all seen the news about the flooding in Minot. Less well known is that this spring, North Dakota lawmakers approved an 8.2 percent budget increase for their university system for 2011-13, a boost that arrives on the heels of an increase of at least 18 percent in 2009-11. (Perhaps inspired by the state’s snowfalls, North Dakota budgets persist for two years.)

Other states are cutting programs, increasing class sizes, and laying off faculty and staff members. North Dakota, by contrast, has dedicated itself to a fortune-changing investment in higher education. North Dakotans already devoted a higher percentage of their state dollars to universities than most other states. Now, they are awarding professors annual raises, setting aside more money for financial aid, expanding courses, creating job-training programs and funding centers of excellence to pair university research with private industry. Last winter, policymakers even floated a proposal to allow residents age 55 or older to attend university classes for free.

To be sure, North Dakota has the wherewithal to make this outsized investment. Its oil industry is booming. The state’s unemployment rate is 3.3 percent, and it is reported to have a $1 billion surplus. Florida and most other states, mired in the aftermath of the financial crisis, are in no such enviable position.

Too, North Dakota has allowed only incremental tuition increases in recent years, contrasting with 15 percent annual increases in Florida and similarly large hikes elsewhere. Even so, North Dakota’s four-year universities still exceed tuition and fees at Florida’s four-year universities by a considerable margin. (The cost of attending the University of North Dakota, at $6,934 for North Dakota residents in the fall of 2010, was nearly $2,000 more than at the University of Florida, at $5,045 for Florida residents, according to the College Board.)

North Dakotans could have devoted more of their newfound oil wealth to road repairs and tax cuts. That they have also chosen to make sustained investments in higher education reflects an appreciation of the connection between excellent colleges and universities, economic growth and a high quality of life — a connection worth trumpeting in these pinched times elsewhere.

The state wants high-quality universities in part to entice newcomers while keeping more native young people from leaving. But economic development is the major focus of the North Dakota higher investment.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the North Dakota State College of Science has created new courses in applied technology and nanoscience. The University of North Dakota has enhanced programs in nursing, life sciences, engineering and environmental fields. Bismarck State College has bulked up programs that train students to work in fields related to energy — the state’s leading economic driver.

Florida’s 11 public universities and 28 Florida state colleges together have no shortage of their own inspired research efforts, relevant educational programs and job-training initiatives. To the contrary, Florida’s higher education system dwarfs North Dakota’s in every way, from enrollment to federally funded research to nationally ranked programs. Floridians deserve credit for investing their tax dollars over many decades to build such a system.

But even as Florida’s leaders insist they are committed to economic development and job growth, the Sunshine State is headed in the opposite direction of North Dakota.

Florida lawmakers cut public funding for its universities by 17 percent between 2007 and 2010. This year, the University of Florida alone lost $26 million in its base budget, and millions more for financial aid for students. The sum of four years of state budget cuts now approaches $200 million at UF. And although the state has allowed universities to raise tuition, Florida’s tuition remains among the lowest in the nation. At UF, tuition increases have replaced only about half of the university’s losses from the state budget cuts.

No one disputes the connection between universities and economic development — indeed, President Barack Obama last week announced a $500 million initiative to pair universities and manufacturing companies to create jobs. And Florida’s universities have been pivotal to the state’s agriculture, aerospace, technology, biomedical and many other industries.

But the state cannot continue to whittle away at higher education without both shrinking our educated work force, undermining research and reducing the flow of new technologies and spinoff companies. That would be loss for a state that, like North Dakota, could become a national energy leader — but in renewable energy rather than fossil fuel. And it would be a shame for Florida, which unlike North Dakota is a prominent national bellwether.

The sour economy has forced Florida policymakers to make tough choices in recent years. Whether or not the future brings better times, state leaders should look one direction for putting their resources to best use for our state’s economy and residents: north.

By: Diane H. Mazur
Diane H. Mazur, a professor of law at the University of Florida and a former Air Force officer, is the legal co-director of the Palm Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of “A More Perfect Military.”

EVERYONE knows that Ivy League universities banned the Reserve Officer Training Corps from their campuses during the Vietnam War. Forty years later, the bans continue, though the reason has shifted from war protest to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay men and women in the military.

That’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not true. Instead, the bans are a convenient fiction, one that lets the military (and to some extent, universities) off the hook when it comes to the growing distance between civil and military America.

In September, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a speech imploring universities to end their bans and let the military back on campus. Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts was more pointedly critical, asking how Harvard can support the Dream Act, which would open a path to legal status for undocumented students, yet close the door on “young people who want to serve their country.”

Some argue that there ought to be a law holding colleges accountable if they refuse to support the military.

It turns out there is such a law. The Solomon Amendment, passed in 1994, withdraws federal financing from any college with a “policy or practice” preventing the military from “maintaining, establishing or operating” R.O.T.C. on its campus. The law also takes financing away from colleges that bar military recruiting. The Defense Department hasn’t been shy about enforcing its right to recruit, going all the way to the Supreme Court and winning in Rumsfeld v. FAIR.

So if there are colleges that ban R.O.T.C., why aren’t they being punished?

The answer is that in all my research on the subject, I have found no universities that ban R.O.T.C., nor has the military initiated action against any institution for banning the program. We have grown accustomed to saying there are bans only because it fits with the assumption that certain colleges are unfriendly to the military.

It is true that many Ivy League colleges do not have R.O.T.C. detachments today. Forty years ago, the military started to close detachments in the Northeast and establish programs in the West and South.

This shift stems from a disagreement in the late 1960s between the Ivy League colleges and the military. Should R.O.T.C. have to comply with the host college’s rules for academic course content and professor qualifications? R.O.T.C. said no, colleges said yes, and the two had to agree to disagree. R.O.T.C. then walked away from Northeastern campuses.

While Harvard is often described as “expelling” R.O.T.C. in 1969, the story is more nuanced. After the military refused to meet Harvard’s standards on academic coursework, the faculty voted to relegate the program to an extracurricular activity, and the military decided to leave. But Harvard did not abolish the program, and it was only much later that people began to talk of a ban.

On occasion, some faculties have approved resolutions recommending that R.O.T.C. not be reinstated at their campuses. Those are not bans. On occasion, students have protested against R.O.T.C. Those also are not bans.

Secretary Gates is being disingenuous when he says he is disappointed that elite colleges no longer play an important role in attracting the best and the brightest to military service. Before he criticizes universities, he needs to ask why the military seemingly has no interest in being there.

The military may be more comfortable when it retreats to parts of the country with a disproportionate number of military installations — and where universities don’t ask a lot of questions. That sense of comfort, however, works against a military with a desperate need for a more diverse officer base and a wider variety of language and cultural skills.

For their part, colleges may also be more comfortable when they go along with the fiction of banning R.O.T.C., because then they don’t have to answer to people upset about “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Everyone buys into the myth, but at the expense of military readiness. The military needs to return to the colleges it walked away from, and everyone needs to stop pretending that R.O.T.C. programs ended because of a ban.

By: Daniel A. Smith
Daniel A. Smith is a University of Florida Research Foundation professor of political science and the director of the political campaigning program at UF.

Members of Congress are taking a hiatus from the summer heat in Washington, D.C., on recess until mid-September. But instead of addressing the concerns of voters, congressional members are busy attending pricey fundraisers and dialing-for-dollars in order to raise enough money for the November election.

Increasingly, our elected officials prioritize their own electoral self-preservation over the needs of the people they are supposed to represent. Voters have good reason to wonder if their elected officials are standing up for them — or their corporate and lobbyist donors — in Washington, D.C.

And that’s the problem with our current system. D.C. lobbyists, Wall Street fat cats and big corporations are spending millions of dollars to influence members of Congress, while the voices of everyday Americans are being drowned out.

It’s a vicious cycle: As long as special interests control elections, they will continue to exert undue influence over public policy, drowning out the voice of the average citizen. As the cost of running for office continues to skyrocket, this will only get worse.

It’s time to make politicians accountable to us instead of their big campaign donors. The most comprehensive solution to this problem is the Fair Elections Now Act (FENA) legislation. The act, HR 1826 and S 752, would enable congressional candidates to receive limited Fair Elections funds in exchange for rejecting large dollar contributions. With Fair Elections, candidates would have to rely solely on small contributions from within the state to fund their campaigns.

Modeled after successful Fair Elections-style systems already working in several states, the Fair Elections Now Act enjoys bipartisan support with a growing list of 185 co-sponsors in the House and 20 in the Senate.

In addition to Democratic Party Reps. Alan Grayson, Kendrick Meek, Ted Deutch, Alcee Hastings, and Suzanne Kosmas, dozens of Republicans, Blue Dogs, New Democrats, and Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucus members are all counted among its co-sponsors.

Not surprisingly, recent bipartisan polling shows that the public supports the Fair Elections Now Act by a 2-to-1 ratio — 62 percent to 31 percent.

One important reason is that it does not use taxpayer dollars and will not impact the federal deficit, as matching funds would come from government contractor fees and increased penalties for campaign violations.

The program is completely voluntary, and similar provisions have been upheld by the courts as constitutionally sound. The Fair Elections Now Act is backed by a coalition of more than 40 national organizations representing tens of millions of Americans.

HR 1826 may come up for a House floor vote after the recess. Similar programs in Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon have already ended the money chase for hundreds of public officials in those states. Passage of these common-sense reforms in Washington, D.C. would be a huge first step toward cleaning up Congress.

For too long corporate and special interest lobbyists have enjoyed the kind of access to lawmakers that constituents could only dream of, and we’ve all seen the results. Those with the money and connections get the sweetheart deals and earmarks while everyday Americans are left out of the process.

Last January’s Citizens United vs. FEC Supreme Court ruling, which permits corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaign advertising, should give even more impetus for citizens to reclaim their democracy.

We need a government that is of, by and for the people, not bought and paid for by special interests. We can achieve this with passage of the Fair Elections Now Act.

Democratic and Republican members of Congress should rally behind the support for this bipartisan, common-sense set of reforms.

Their support would enhance their message over the congressional break when they are assuring voters that they are working for their constituents, and not the special interests.

By Jack E. Davis
Jack Davis is a professor of history at the University of Florida and author of An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.

Somewhere beneath Gulf of Mexico waters lies the archive of Spanish West Florida. When Americans invaded Pensacola in 1818, Spanish officials fled for Cuba. Intercepted en route by pirates, they heaved the colony’s records overboard.

The watery resting palce is fitting. Much of the history of five U.S. states is entombed in the Gulf of Mexico. And every so often, a major event involving that extraordinary ocean basin reminds us that we are not the sole animating force in our history.

Nature is an equal, sometime greater, influence (something history books fail to teach), and from Texas to Florida, the Gulf is nature supreme.

Before the Houdini spin on disappearing oil leads us to minimize, even forget, the Deep Horizon tragedy, we should pause to understand that for the past 150 years our behavior has been on a collision course with the Gulf and its enriching presence. Whenever we have tried to get the upperhand on nature–believing we can rewrite its laws with the pen of scientific knowledge, engineering and technology–we have diminished the value of that presence and steered ourselves into disastrous waters.

The region’s earliest inhabitants chose a wiser course, forming a relationship with the Gulf that would serve well today. They accepted nature’s terms and reaped perennial benefits as a result. Vital Gulf estuaries allowed the Calusa of southwest Florida, for example, to flourish as a rare sedentary civilization of impressive size and complexity without the need of agriculture.

Yielding more than the combined fisheries of the U.S. East Coast, the Gulf’s cornucopia of marine life later spawned fishing communities from the Florida keys to southernmost Texas, the terra firma of a premier seafood industry. Tarpon off Fort Meyers lured Florida’s first rod-and-reel tourists, and Gulf sponges turned Tarpon Springs into a Greek-American city.

White sugar-sand beaches, a gift of nature duplicated to the same degree nowhere else in the U.S., produced a leisure economy on Gulf shores duplicated nowhere else.

Hurricanes have made, shaped and wiped out beaches. Drawn to the Gulf’s warm, shallow waters, they determined the outcome of international rivalries, the design of architecture and infrastructure and, to some extent, the location of the state capital on the red hills at Tallahassee.

Hurricanes stir little enthusiasm for accepting nature on its own terms. But we subvert nature’s beneficence when we destroy coastal wetlands that are valuable barriers against storms, and perpetuate our ignorance with the label “natural disaster” when we unwisely build in harm’s way. The fifty-mile-long Houston Ship Channel is a child of the devastating 1900 Galveston hurricane. It is also parent to offshore oil drilling and onshore refining, and an example of our imprudent diversion from nature’s harmonizing course.

The future father of American environmentalism, John Muir, came to see the folly of our ways when in 1867 the Gulf beckoned him on a 1,000-mile walk from the Midwest. Contemplative time at Cedar Key instilled him with the faith that prefigured his cause: humans should regard themselves as no “more than a small part of the one great unit of creation.” Observing the cycle of life on another Gulf island a century later, Mississippi artist Walter Anderson concluded that “nature is not wasteful” but that “man is a wasteful fool.” He saw the sharp decline of the brown pelican population at the same time that he witnessed the erection of Gulf oil rigs.

John Muir’s insight, in other words, gained little currency. Overfishing has depleted the great cornucopia. Development and commerce have wiped out countless miles of marine habitat. Raw sewage from most coastal cities has at one time or another fouled shorelines. Industrial and agricultural run-off has created oxygen-depleted dead zones at the mouth of the Mississippi, Brazos, and Fenholloway rivers.

And oil has spilled. The Gulf region has suffered six spills since 2000, and more than twenty-seven thousand abandoned oil and gas wells, dating to the 1940s, puncture the basin’s floor, their seals subject to no regulated inspections.

Some will argue that oil is another offering of the Gulf and therefore should be taken. But its extraction feeds an indulgence beyond the offering and puts other natural endowments at risk. It also means that profit-driven corporations will dictate the history of Gulf coast, just as BP is doing now.

Nature’s patronage is a far better bargain. If we had accepted its regime rather than imposed upon it our own, our future would be secure, as had been our past, with sustainable gifts that have now been destroyed.

The Gulf will survive the latest abuse. But its enriching presence in the course of human lives will be lost if we don’t rethink our relationship with this wondrous body of water.

By: Mark T. Brown
Mark T. Brown is professor of Environmental Engineering Sciences and director of the Center for Environmental Policy at the University of Florida.

Much has been written about BP’s staggering liabilities for cleanup, compensation and fines for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

But few have noted that BP, like Exxon and other oil companies implicated in past spills, will likely pay nothing for perhaps the most important consequence of its mishap: Damage to hard-to-quantify but essential natural benefits provided free of charge by a healthy Gulf of Mexico.

What some call “environmental services” flow from nature to the economy, and ultimately to people. In the gulf, these services begin with the rich primary productivity of marine ecosystems and coastal marshes — the plankton, algae and sea grasses that support the shrimp and fish that are the primary diet for myriad marine animals, birds and land animals. Including us.

The gulf’s other environmental services range from the buffering of temperature and climate to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to water cleansed of pollution by wetlands. This storied body of water is also the source of many cultural services. For example, the comfort, spiritual solace or intellectual inspiration that draw so many visitors.

The various projected costs from the gulf spill have ignored these services because in a purely economic sense, there is no market for them, so they have no economic value. But ecologists have worked out a widely accepted method to reveal and translate their value — a method that suggests the real costs of the BP spill will be far higher than even the most jaw-dropping figures floated so far.

In 1989, at the invitation of Jacques and Jean-Michel Cousteau, I was a member of a team of scientists from the University of Florida, led by the renowned ecologist Howard T. Odum, that investigated the environmental costs and natural resource damages of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

We used the late Odum’s method of Emergy Synthesis — that’s “Emergy” with an “m” — a system of environmental accounting that can evaluate natural resources and ecosystems despite their lack of market, ultimately assigning them economic values. Emergy synthesis is a scientifically derived valuation method that is based on ecological principles and thermodynamics of living systems, rather than economic valuation based on willingness-to-pay.

Our best estimate for the Valdez loss: $1.2 billion. That figure accounted for all plant and animal organisms that were killed, estimates of the losses in primary production, and the longer-term impacts such as the depressed fish populations that would take years to recover.

Given all the complexities involved, the total loss of environmental services from the Deepwater Horizon leak are difficult to project, especially since even the amount of oil is disputed. But we can make some educated guesses.

On July 19, NPR reported that BP has said it has already spent over $4 billion dealing with the spill, which dwarfs the costs of the Valdez spill of $2.1 billion, even as the cleanup continues. If the average loss to environmental services approaches those of the Valdez spill, those losses could easily exceed $36 billion, since up till the July 15 capping of the well between 92 and 328 million gallons — depending on whose flow rate one uses — had discharged into the gulf. That amounts to between eight and 30 times the Valdez spill.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that BP will pay even a dime for these damages. Fishermen, hotel owners, local, state and federal governments and many other parties can all seek compensation from BP through the court system. But though our entire biosphere is an injured party, there is no legal plaintiff in what ecologist Garrett Harden popularized as the “tragedy of the commons” four decades ago.

That’s too bad. BP owes much to our commons, to all of us, in addition to the billions owed to those whose lives were lost and whose income was destroyed. We could use the payment for loss of environmental services for restoration of the gulf, for research on its creatures and ecosystems, and ultimately to reveal and protect the true service value — as opposed to only the consumer value — of our oceans.

By: Daniel A. Smith
Daniel Smith is an associate professor of political science and director of the political campaigning program at the University of Florida.

The employees and political action committees of securities and investment firms like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have given more than $577,000 to Florida members of Congress so far this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. While the boardrooms of these big banks might be thousands of miles away, their campaign checks are not.

And that’s the problem with our current system. Wall Street lobbyists and big corporations are spending millions of dollars to influence members of Congress, while the voices of everyday Americans are being drowned out. It’s a vicious cycle: as long as special interests control elections, they will continue to exert undue influence over public policy, drowning out the voice of the average citizen. As the cost of running for office continues to skyrocket, this will only get worse.

It’s time to make politicians accountable to us instead of their big campaign donors. The most comprehensive solution to this problem is the Fair Elections Now Act legislation. The act, HR 1826 & S. 752, would enable congressional candidates to receive limited Fair Elections funds in exchange for rejecting large dollar contributions. With Fair Elections, candidates would have to rely solely on small contributions from within the state to fund their campaigns.

Modeled after successful Fair Elections-style systems already working in several states, the Fair Elections Now Act enjoys bipartisan support with a growing list of 153 co-sponsors in the House and 20 in the Senate. Republicans, Blue Dogs, New Democrats, and Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucus members are all counted among its co-sponsors.

Not surprisingly, recent bipartisan polling shows that the public supports the Fair Elections Now Act by a 2-to-1 ratio — 62 percent to 31 percent. One important reason is that it does not use taxpayer dollars and will not impact the federal deficit, as matching funds would come from government contractor fees and increased penalties for campaign violations.

The program is completely voluntary, and similar provisions have been upheld by the courts as constitutionally sound. The Fair Elections Now Act is backed by a coalition of Florida organizations and more than 40 national organizations representing tens of millions of Americans.

HR 1826 may come up for a House floor vote within the next couple of weeks. Similar programs in Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon have already ended the money chase for hundreds of public officials in those states. Passage of these commonsense reforms in Washington, D.C., would be a huge first step toward cleaning up Congress.

Voters’ voices have been drowned out by corporate cash for too long. Last January’s Citizens United vs. FEC Supreme Court ruling, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaign advertising, should give even more impetus for citizens to reclaim their democracy.

By Win Phillips
Win Phillips is the vice president for research at the University of Florida.

The University of Florida’s new Innovation Hub will spur new startups, high-paying jobs and outside investment in our community.

Here’s something equally important: This week’s groundbreaking for UF’s second technology incubator heralds another addition to a city with solidifying sense of place.

A place with a thriving technology economy, but also a diversity of businesses, arts and nature, of day trips to local springs and an annual astronomy night that draws thousands.

A place that, if thoughtfully nurtured, can be distinctive enough to win over the scientists, investors and creative types who can also choose to settle in Boulder, Austin, Chapel Hill or anywhere else.

The launch of the Innovation Hub, GlaxoSmithKline’s purchase of NovaMin, the use of AxoGen’s nerve grafts in Afghanistan: The local technology community is nothing if not dynamic.

Florida’s unemployment rate tops 12 percent, but UF and growth in innovation has helped keep Alachua County’s rate among the lowest in the state, at just over 7 percent. UF start-up companies created 100 high-tech jobs in the first half of this fiscal year alone.

Just as refreshing are the creative people and fresh ideas that make up the tech community. The 20-something who started the paradigm-shattering music sharing site Grooveshark. The university engineer who figured out that miniaturized sharkskin could repel disease-causing bacteria in hospitals. The battery company executive whose startup was lauded by President Obama last year as just what the country needs to pull out of the recession.

Sam Tarantino, Tony Brennan, Deepika Singh; they are emblematic of the diversity and creativity of the local innovators behind dozens of startups and more mature companies here.

If the technology community were an island, cut off from the city and local culture, it could easily wither. But that is not at all how things are. The community of innovators is one of the many elements of today’s most vaunted progressive cities that seem to be coming together here.

As UF President Machen said at Monday’s groundbreaking, Gainesville is a “place where more and more people work at a start-up in the morning, enjoy a lunch made with locally grown produce, cool off at the springs on the weekends … and fuel it all with coffee roasted locally.”

Dozens of artists here have banded together in the group Florida’s Eden to protect our water and other natural amenities while supporting sustainable growth. Gainesville Regional Utilities is the first in the nation to implement a solar feed-in tariff. So many people bring visiting family members to Paynes Prairie’s La Chua Trail on holidays to gape at the lolling alligators, there is barely a place to park.

No other community has these things. Not to mention, of course, the Gators of the athletic variety.

Just a few years ago, promoters of economic development and environmental protection clashed frequently. To be sure, there are still sometimes divisions along these fault lines, but they are fading.

Partly this is a result of the sea change in favor of all things green. But the growth of the technology community is a gathering unifier.

As the Chamber of Commerce’s economic development plan Innovation Gainesville implicitly recognizes, everyone can support local entrepreneurs – especially when so many are trying to market a new green technology or product.

Just this month, Gainesville Sun readers learned about local startup Evolugate LLC and its plans to develop designer microbes that clean up oil spills.

The Innovation Hub will serve as a bridge to unite downtown and the university through the technology economy. As such, it is a valuable addition to the hubs of nature, arts, education and health care also coalescing in Gainesville. If we value and support this diverse, unique mix of people, causes, cultures and opportunities, the creative leaders who can live anywhere will increasingly choose to live right here.

By: Win Phillips
Win Phillips is the vice president for research at the University of Florida and chairman of the Gainesville-Alachua County Regional Airport Authority.

As the summer travel season begins in earnest, more and more travelers are choosing the Gainesville Regional Airport – a welcome trend not only for the airport but also for North Central Florida.

Passenger traffic at the airport soared in the first four months of this year compared to last year, with 99,706 passengers from January through April this year compared to 87,354 for the same period last year, a 14 percent increase. The percentage of seats filled, or “load factor,” was also up for both Delta and U.S. Airways, with Delta recording 91.5 percent seats filled this April, and U.S. Airways recording more than 85 percent seats filled. Both are highs for the year.

This uptick may reflect a trend seen at other airports nationwide as the economic recovery takes hold. But it also may signal that more residents of the Ocala-Gainesville-Lake City region are recognizing the often considerable advantages of flying from the Gainesville Regional Airport. That can only be a positive development not only for the airport, but also for local businesses and for the regional economy – especially if it continues over the long term.

The local airport has long faced stiff competition from its counterparts in Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa, with business and leisure travelers often viewing their decision on where to fly as a choice between less time in the car and cheaper, more direct flights.

To be sure, those circumstances sometimes apply. But it is also true that flights from the airport are often more competitively priced than perceived compared to equivalents at neighboring airports. The problem has sometimes been that travelers may simply assume the costs are disproportionate, without bothering to make the comparisons.

Meanwhile, the Gainesville Regional Airport offers advantages besides a far shorter trip in the car – advantages that too often go overlooked.

These include the lack of road tolls, far lower mileage on personal or work vehicles, and competitive parking rates. Another advantage is intangible but instantly appreciated by anyone who flies frequently: The parking lot at the local airport is less than a minute’s pleasant walk from the terminal, while most travelers at the Tampa and Orlando airports must endure lurching bus or tram trips to reach terminals.

To promote these and other benefits of using the local airport, the Gainesville-Alachua County Regional Airport Authority recently created a task force to meet with companies and organizations in the region. The purpose: to encourage endorsement of a “buy local” travel policy. The policy asks employees to check flight costs from the Gainesville Regional Airport as early as possible – and, reasonably, to include related costs like parking, mileage and tolls when making airfare comparisons with other airports.

The task force’s efforts are important because the more business travelers use the airport regularly, the more its services stand to improve. Although Delta and US Airways serve Gainesville well, travelers would benefit from the addition of other carriers with more flights, more destinations and cheaper tickets. That can only happen if the airport demonstrates it can attract sufficient passenger numbers and loyalty.

A vibrant airport puts a community on the map and is essential to local growth, especially when it comes to attracting outside investment to our community.

As Brent Christensen, president and CEO of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce, has said, “The presence of a strong airport offering commercial service to major hubs is essential to successful economic development. In our experience, businesses expect consistent, on-time air connectivity when considering Gainesville/Alachua County.”

The recent increase in the number of passengers at the Gainesville Regional Airport is encouraging. Indeed, Delta’s current load factor, if sustained, may make it appropriate for the airline to add more seats.

Now, the challenge is to ensure this progress continues.

By stressing the advantages of the local airport with local businesses, the airport authority is targeting a major customer base. But whether traveling for pleasure or business, all North Central Florida residents would do well to consider “GNV” in their plans this summer. They stand to improve their trip – and contribute to the local economy in the bargain.

By: Dawn Jourdan
Dawn Jourdan is an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Florida.

A recurrent theme of the rhetoric in support of the Hometown Democracy amendment is that it empowers citizens by encouraging citizen participation. As an assistant professor of urban and regional planning, I have long been an advocate of finding new ways to give a voice to a diverse spectrum of people whose lives are touched by civic planning. I believe that comprehensive plans and land development decisions are only beneficial to the extent that they reflect the visions of the citizens of a community.

But the fact is, participation rates in planning processes are staggeringly low. The Hometown Democracy amendment is unlikely to change this. Ironically, the result will be poorer, less-informed planning decisions, not wiser ones.

In making this prediction, I do not seek to blame either cities or citizens. I believe that, for the most part, cities do their best to publicize opportunities for participation. Advertisements run in newspapers and on the local evening news programs. Ads are posted on city websites. Planners reach out to neighborhood groups, developers and other interested parties.

To be sure, the public comes out in full force on some occasions. For example, the city of Miami held well-attended public workshops for four years as it developed the Miami 21 growth plan. But this level of participation is the exception, not the rule. More often than not, when it comes to land use or development decisions, only a handful of citizens routinely show up for planning meetings.

There are a lot of reasons citizens do not participate. For one thing, most don’t have time. People work, take care of families, shuffle kids to and from afterschool activities, take care of their homes, watch a little television to decompress, and if possible, get a good night’s sleep. Realistically, this leaves very little time for most people to sit in meetings that often begin in the early evening and sometimes last late into the night.

The second problem is a lack of knowledge about what’s really going on in communities. The Hometown Democracy Amendment calls on people to be “super citizens.” If the amendment were to pass, each of us would be asked to accept or reject all proposed changes to local comprehensive plans.

Theoretically, I might enjoy the opportunity to be consulted in such a way. But, in reality, I have to confess that I am not sure that I can promise the commitment or the requisite knowledge that would be necessary to ensure a fair vote on proposed changes to the local comprehensive plan.

By contrast, I take seriously the election of local officials who represent the interests of the citizens in my community. I may not always agree with the decisions they make, but I am comfortable with the power that I have as a voter to vote those out of office who do not live up to promises or base decisions on sound reasoning.

I am also grateful that agencies like the state departments of Environmental Protection and Community Affairs, the Regional Planning Councils, Metropolitan Planning Organizations and Water Management Districts, among other legislatively created organizations, have the opportunity to review comprehensive plan amendments that may negatively affect residents in the city, region and state. The people who work for these agencies are experts in their fields and offer an important check on decisions made by local governments. And, if these agencies fail to provide that oversight, then one of the state’s many watchdog groups are likely to step in.

Further, as an advocate for citizen participation, I believe that both the state’s local government and growth management laws already provide the citizenry an ample opportunity to participate in local governance. The difference is, this opportunity comes on the front end of the process rather than at the conclusion.

If passed, the Hometown Democracy Amendment would reduce expectations that citizens proactively participate in local planning while increasing the odds they would only weigh in after the local government had rendered its final decision. That sort of ad hoc, last-minute engagement is no way to plan.

If Floridians are truly interested in the development activities that are altering the landscapes of the places they live, they should participate at every given juncture. People’s voices are most powerful when they join forces in local visioning processes so that they engage in a healthy dialogue, rather than an after-the-fact up or down vote on issues that are not black or white.

By Peggy L. Evanich and Rafael Guzman
Peggy L. Evanich is an aerospace engineer at the University of Florida. Rafael Guzman is professor and chairman of the UF Department of Astronomy.

Forty years ago late Tuesday night, the astronauts aboard a stricken Apollo 13 famously reported, “Houston, we have a problem.” • Though it is not a life-or-death situation, Florida’s space industry today faces a quandary that is every bit as much about survival.

The Constellation human flight program has been canceled and the space shuttle is due to be retired. Thousands of Space Coast workers could lose their jobs. With President Barack Obama set to visit NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, the fate of Florida’s decades-old space industry, once a great source of pride and innovation, looks uncertain.

Believing that failure was not an option, the Apollo flight director concentrated his engineers’ minds on the critical task at hand. And the astronauts, with full support at Mission Control, quickly worked out a creative solution that brought them safely home. In the same way, Florida today has a unique opportunity innovate its way out of the current crisis and not just survive, but thrive.

When it comes to space, we have always succeeded by thinking big — big rockets, a big shuttle program, big satellites. But our future rests in the small — specifically, small satellites.

Small satellites represent a transformational new technology that has great potential to increase Florida’s share of the global space market. Small satellites are 2-pound to several-hundred-pound spacecraft made possible by today’s miniaturized technologies.

Just as today’s memory sticks hold as much memory as the room-sized computers of yesterday, these tiny satellites are increasingly able to perform on the level of traditional large spacecraft. However, whereas traditional satellites cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars and can take 10 years to build, small satellites may cost as little as hundreds of thousands of dollars and require just a few months to build. In addition, a single launch vehicle can place a number of small satellites into orbit, further reducing the total cost.

The use of small satellites opens up new opportunities for scientific, commercial and military applications with flexibility unmatched by traditional spacecraft. The satellites are anticipated to play a major role in communications, missile launch warning systems and remote sensing within this decade.

Before small satellites can realize their full potential, several innovative technologies must be developed and fully tested. These include miniaturized orientation-control systems that would allow these satellites to point to a remote location, and small but powerful imaging devices to view the location. Most importantly, new technologies are required to enable the satellites to operate in “clusters.”

That is because the true power of small satellites resides in their ability to work as a team, each performing one or more functions, together equaling or exceeding the capability of a traditional large satellite. Clusters of small satellites will also greatly reduce mission risk. When one small satellite fails, the remaining satellites in the cluster can continue operating. The failed small satellite can also be replaced at much lower cost and far more quickly than an entire large satellite.

Although California and Virginia are eyeing the potential of this technology, neither state has sought aggressively to become ground zero for small satellite development and manufacture. Florida is ideally suited to take over this market.

First, several universities and research centers throughout the state are already leading the research and development of the technologies required to validate the key role of small satellites in the future of space missions.

Second, the Space Coast has the most talented and highly trained space work force in the United States — an absolute essential for the large-scale manufacture and commercialization of hundreds of small satellites per year — and the premier facilities in the country to launch spacecraft.

Third, the current crisis has greatly motivated the state government and space agencies to work aggressively to expand Florida’s global space market share and increase the number of space-related jobs throughout the state.

Obama has a lot of ground to cover Thursday. But he has already encouraged new ideas by assigning $1.2 billion in this year’s federal budget “for transformative research in exploration technology that will involve NASA, private industry, and academia, sparking spin-off technologies and potentially entire new industries.”

Small satellites fit the bill. To win the small satellite race, it is essential that universities, industry and government agencies align with a common goal: to make Florida the global leader in the development, manufacture and launch of this transformational new technology.

By: Jack Davis
Jack E. Davis is associate professor of history and Waldo W. Neikirk 2009-10 Term Professor at the University of Florida. He is the author of An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s proposed land deal with the U.S. Sugar Corp. has the familiar anatomy of history repeating itself, in perverse reversal.

A hundred years ago, Gov. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, donning an ego to match his ancestral name, bullied opponents to push ahead with his plan to drain the Everglades. To pay for it, he sold a half-million acres of state-owned Everglades land at fire-sale prices to a wealthy speculator, who subdivided the land and resold it at a 1,200 percent markup.

A Washington newspaper called the deal “one of the biggest land swindles in history,” eerily anticipating criticism of the U.S. Sugar purchase, which includes original land Broward sold to the speculator. Like the Crist plan, Broward’s plan was twisted up with ego, greed and politics. Like Crist, Broward was a governor who wanted to be a U.S. senator (he failed in two bids).

But the more important historical redundancy is this: No politician, from Broward to Crist, whether pursuing drainage or restoration, has stepped outside anthropomorphic boundaries to comprehend the Everglades on its own terms, to leave nature to determine the conditions that allow the River of Grass to flourish.

Nothing more than lousy consequences has come from trying to re-engineer America’s greatest wetland.

Meddling led to a tragic outcome when the state encouraged thousands to settle below a feebly constructed containment dike along the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee, in the natural flow-way to the lower Glades. A hurricane in 1928 breached the dike, and some 2,000 people drowned.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a “comprehensive” flood-control project in 1948, creating a slow-motion environmental disaster. Extended out two decades, the project bulldozed the natural ecosystem of the Everglades into a fossil-fuel-powered artificial one and opened land for the expansion of sugar growing.

Engineered nature remained the ruling principle when the Clinton-Gore administration introduced the new era of restoration. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan of 2000 relied on secret meetings, unproven science and the Corps of Engineers’ mechanistic dominion. The plan let agriculture stay put in the natural flow-way.

This last flaw is what Crist wishes to correct, and this is a commendable goal.

Yet Crist is charging ahead with a plan that restores past practices, not natural flow. Like those before, his is a complex scheme of engineering that depends on mechanical devices and continued intervention, so embedded in our sense of human superiority is our desire to control nature.

Only the wise trust the wisdom of nature. Leaving it to govern may seem a foolish Thoreauvian romanticism, but consider these facts.

Nature has a remarkable facility for rebounding from hurricanes, fires or earthquakes. Within a few years of scalding life from its sides, Mount St. Helens was turning green again. Nature has demonstrated similar wherewithal to overcome human impingement. Scientists are constantly impressed by the speed with which a damaged ecosystem begins to thrive when insulting sources have been removed.

Closer to the subject, the floral and faunal response after the state reopened impounded oxbows of the former Kissimmee River and left things alone was equivalent to springtime rejuvenation.

Scientists, and especially engineers, are incapable of restoring the Everglades. For one, remaking an ecology cannot be done with pumps and dikes and manufactured conservation areas, contrivances that the Crist plan retains.

For another, ecosystems are in constant flux, and flux is central to a system’s good health. What the Everglades was before Broward is not what it would be today, in the absence of civilization’s historic meddling or not. The methods scientists have thus far imagined for restoration are no less artificial than methods imagined by politicians.

Only nature can restore the Everglades.

So let Crist buy his land, but do not let him muck it up with the expensive technologies of engineered restoration. Buy more land instead, and more land until every restraint against natural restoration has been removed. Then step back and allow the Everglades to find its flow again.

This strategy may sound impossible; in truth, if restoration is the real goal, nothing else is possible.

By: Bron Taylor
Bron Taylor, a professor at the University of Florida, is author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.

Avatar had audiences rooting for nature, against the destruction of marauding tanks — but the Oscar went to the film that offered a soldier’s-eye view.
The competition for Best Picture is over. But the war of the worlds, and worldviews, in Avatar and The Hurt Locker, continues.

In The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow provided a terrifying depiction of efforts by US soldiers to survive while fighting insurgents and disarming bombs in Iraq. Their battle was both against an evil enemy and to retain their sanity and humanity.

As is typical in Hollywood war films, The Hurt Locker carried a subtle anti-war message compatible with patriotic sensibilities. Underscoring her own patriotism, when accepting the best picture and best director awards, Bigelow dedicated them to the “women and men in the military who risk their lives daily to keep us safe.” With these words and in the film, Bigelow reminds us that war is hell, while reassuring us of our good intentions.

For all the terror it depicted, the message was predictable and safe.

A Modern Form of Nature Religion

In Avatar, director James Cameron told the emotionally wrenching tale of the Na’vi, the aboriginal inhabitants of a distant world, defending themselves against an invading human army. The film was obviously a metaphor for the long war between large-scale civilizations and the small foraging societies that they supplant.

Because most of Earth’s people are citizens of such civilizations, Avatar’s message was anything but safe.

Why, then, has Avatar so clearly won the global battle for hearts and minds, becoming the most profitable motion picture of all time?

The answer is, I believe, that the heart of the film lies not in its criticism but its expression of our natural love of nature. The film evoked our longing for connection and belonging to the sources of our existence.

Cameron understood this, as seen in a recent interview, attributing the success of Avatar to the ways it is connecting the audience to nature and the environmental cause.

Additionally, the film was appealing because it offered a meaningful worldview and a reverence for life ethic compatible with modern scientific sensibilities. This was nowhere more apparent than in the delight expressed by the scientist, Dr. Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), as she explored Pandora’s living systems. The evocative power of the film was thus rooted in nothing less that the way in which it expressed and promoted a modern form of nature religion.

With nature religion, all life is sacred, related as kin, and mutually dependent. The term ‘sacred’ generally refers to the places and forces that precipitate healing, rebirth, and transformation. The word is also used to refer to the source of life, so with nature religion, the universe, biosphere, and habitat are sacred. These things constitute a new Holy Trinity in contemporary nature religion because life is absolutely dependent on them.

Nature religion is, of course, commonly associated with Native Americans and other indigenous people, as it was in Avatar. But the film suggests that all open-hearted humans can come to such spirituality, just as did several of the invaders. These humans learned to perceive the magic and intrinsic value of nature, converted to Na’vi ways, and fought to defend life itself. Some, like Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), were even reborn in Na’vi bodies, able to breathe the air of their new home

Emotional Treason?

As Cameron put the conversion motif, the film urges people to look at themselves from “nature’s point of view.” He then noted that the biggest cheer consistently erupts from the audience when the reptilian hammerheads rout the destructive human invaders. Cameron expressed delight that, by the end of the movie, everyone is “rooting for nature.”

This is a remarkable achievement since most in his audience belong to the very civilizations which, for millennia, have labored to bend nature to their will, while eliminating, often violently, the small-scale societies that are inconveniently in the way.

When we root for nature in the film, at least subconsciously, most of us are committing emotional treason against our own civilizations.

This unlikely event is possible because feelings of belonging and connection to nature are part of our emotional repertoire. We evolved here and find biologically intact ecosystems beautiful because, when we are drawn to and protect such places, we flourish.

This affinity for nature may exaplain the global appeal of Avatar but not why it ran second in the Oscar competition. Ironically, in the battle between these cinematic epics, The Hurt Locker was portrayed as countercultural, when it actually pandered to patriotic convention. Meanwhile, Avatar was cast as technologically radical while few commented on its radical critique of a militarized technological civilization, or on its countercultural religious vision. These are things some Academy voters, little doubt, found too radical to support.

Avatar, nevertheless, spoke the deeper truths. It reminded us about true belonging and how we should live. It evoked in us what we know deep in our genome, that our wellbeing, and the wellbeing of all life, is mutually dependent. It urged us to recognize that all life is sacred and worthy of reverent defense.

Not everyone who enjoyed Avatar will grasp and act on the message. But we ignore its message to our impoverishment and peril.

By: Jon Mills
Jon L. Mills is dean emeritus, professor and director of the Center for Governmental Responsibility at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. He is the author of Privacy: The Lost Right, published by Oxford University Press.

Recently, several employees of a Florida hospital came under investigation for allegedly snapping and possibly e-mailing pictures of the ravaged body of Stephen Schafer, the Stuart kiteboard surfer who was fatally attacked by sharks on Feb. 3.

If they did, they may be in huge trouble.

That’s because, late last month, a California appeals court — quietly and with little fanfare — set the stage for far more severe consequences for overtly intrusive Internet postings.

That case involved nine gruesome images of 18-year-old Nicole Catsouras, who died instantly on Halloween Day in 2006 when she crashed her father’s Porsche into an Orange County, Calif., toll booth at 100 miles per hour. In the images, Nicole’s mangled, nearly decapitated body is still belted into the crumpled wreckage. We can barely imagine the depth of grief Nicole’s death caused her parents. To protect them from further emotional trauma, the coroner did not allow them to view her remains.

Imagine their agony when they saw all the details anyway — after photos of the crash scene began circulating on the Internet.

Nicole’s parents were outraged to learn that California Highway Patrol Officers Thomas O’Donnell and Aaron Reich copied the images of their daughter’s body from CHP’s computer file of the investigation and e-mailed them to their families and friends “for shock value.” More than 2,500 Web sites posted the gruesome images, and Nicole’s parents were subjected to a storm of abusive e-mails and text messages containing the crash-scene images.

The Catsouras family sued the California Highway Patrol and the individual officers, saying the CHP’s e-mailing of the photos violated their privacy. Though the Superior Court of Orange County judge called O’Donnell and Reich’s conduct “totally reprehensible,” the court dismissed the lawsuit on grounds that privacy laws protect only the living and Nicole’s right to privacy ended with her life.

The Jan. 29 California Court of Appeal ruling set that dismissal on its ear.

The appeals court stated, “As cases from other jurisdictions make plain, family members have a common law privacy right in the death images of a decedent, subject to certain limitations.”

Additionally, the court reversed the lower court’s dismissal of the Catsouras’ claim of negligence, concluding “the CHP and its officers owed plaintiffs a duty of care not to place decedent’s death images on the Internet for the purposes of vulgar spectacle.”

The reversal opinion is significant in part because it is one of the first to make possible major financial liability for publication of photos on the Internet. The Catsouras family can proceed with its action against CHP Officers O’Donnell and Reich, potentially holding them personally and financially liable for their misdeeds.

But the court also paved new ground in recognizing that the issue is not about freedom of speech. There is no First Amendment protection to distribute photos like these, so devastating to loved ones, when taken by government employees for the purposes of an investigation — people who have a legal duty to keep them confidential.

This ruling is similar to that of a Florida court ruling in the early 1990s, before the prevalence of the Internet, which prevented public distribution of the crime scene and autopsy photos of five students murdered by serial killer Danny Rolling. I served as counsel for the students’ families, who were determined to protect the privacy of their loved ones, despite intense pressure from the media. Thankfully, the court recognized the right of parents to protect against intrusion based on release of children’s photos. The Catsouras ruling updates this wise decision for the Internet age.

Today’s toxic mix of easy access to digital photos, easy global distribution via the Internet and the ability to distribute anonymously is a perfect storm for horrible intrusions.

It is not yet publicly known whether the Florida hospital employees distributed images of the shark attack victim, but the California appeals court has taken a good first step toward holding future Internet violators accountable for their actions.

We can only hope the California Supreme Court will uphold this ruling, and that other courts will support its principles.

By Bron Taylor
Bron Taylor, a professor at the University of Florida, is author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.

One hundred-fifty years ago, on Nov. 24, 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, shattering traditional explanations for the diversity of life on Earth. Scientific understanding will never be the same. Neither will religion.

Religious conservatives often reject evolution, religious liberals incorporate it, and secularists embrace it. But there is a little-recognized, rapidly growing fourth reaction to the Darwinian revolution. It is emerging from those engaged in what we might call nature spirituality, or nature religion.

Devotees of this religion are consecrating evolution, understanding it as a newfound and compelling sacred story. They find meaning and ethical guidance in the evolutionary-ecological worldview — without appealing to divine beings.

This religious naturalism is inspired by iconic figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Jane Goodall and many others. It can be seen in the rise of the sustainability movement, the popularity of ecotourism, the mainstreaming of vegetarianism.

We celebrate it with its own holidays, such as Earth Day, and pilgrimage en masse to its cathedrals, our national parks.

It is on full view even in unexpected settings. At Disney’s Wild Kingdom theme park, the interconnectedness of life is symbolized by a massive tree of life at the park’s center and explained at a conservationist interpretive center.

Earth-venerating pageantry has become commonplace at the world’s most important international events. It was present, for example, in the Mother Earth spirituality expressed in the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah — as well as during the United Nations World Summit on Sustainability in Johannesburg the same year. There, human emergence from Africa was repeatedly invoked to point up our common humanity and connection to all life through the evolutionary process.

Religious naturalism is further expressed in the documentaries produced on Animal Planet and in movies like Happy Feet, the Lion King and Carl Sagan’s Contact. We even see it in corporate advertising — as when Sanyo announced its “think Gaia” corporate philosophy and a corresponding intention to work toward a world in which all life would flourish.

Religious naturalism is characterized by ecological understandings of the interdependence, and mutual dependence, of all life. Its understanding that all life is related, and sacred, is grounded in the Darwinian view that we share a common ancestor and came to be through a similar struggle for existence. When empathy and logic are fused to this understanding, ethical obligations toward all species follow.

Although nascent and fragile, such evolutionary nature spirituality may eventually inspire a planetary, civil Earth religion.

In this religion nature, not nation, is sacred. Uniquely, this spirituality can be grafted onto long-standing religious traditions while providing meaning and ethical guidance for those skeptical of conventional religious beliefs. It can enhance the ability of individuals, regardless of whether they consider themselves religious, to understand all life as worthy of reverent care. Unlike religious nationalism, it is unlikely to mutate into virulent strains that exploit those beyond its borders, for it includes all life, and the biosphere itself, within the community of moral concern.

If the early roots of the word religion have to do with being connected to something greater than ourselves, we can accurately say that 150 years ago, Darwin contributed decisively to the most radical religious reformation of all time.

After eloquently discussing the way nature’s laws have shaped life on Earth, with his concluding words in On the Origin of Species, Darwin conveyed the sentiment shared by many today:

“There is grandeur in this view of life. … Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Darwin was far from the first to express awe and wonder at Earth’s processes. Yet through his long and close observation of nature he arrived at such sentiments personally — and kindled a sensory, and sensible, nature religion.

With its spirituality of belonging to the biosphere and kinship feelings toward other living things, such nature spirituality provides an emotional landscape upon which we can construct ways of being compatible with the flourishing of life on Earth.

Darwin knew his theory would erode conventional religious faith. Ironically, he may have launched a faith we, and all our relations, can live with for millennia to come.

By: Michael Allan Wolf
Michael Allan Wolf, the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, is a lifelong Yankees fan and the author of “The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler.”

Referees and umpires are sometimes accused of trying to correct bad calls during games with “make-up calls” in favor of the wronged team or player.

U.S. Supreme Court observers have long speculated over instances in which judicial umpires, like their counterparts in sport, appear to have attempted to compensate for an unpopular decision with one more to the liking of public critics.

Could the court’s wildly unpopular decision in Kelo v. City of New London prompt the justices to render a more private-property friendly decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a Florida case being argued this week?

In the new case, the Florida Supreme Court in September of 2008 upheld the state’s Beach and Shore Restoration Act, despite the charge that the statute unconstitutionally violated the private property rights of beachfront owners. The case came out of a 2005 beach restoration project in Walton County.

In a somewhat convoluted opinion, the court majority seemed to manipulate existing principles and rules of property law so that the statute would pass judicial muster. The landowners and their legal allies have alleged to the nation’s highest tribunal that, by changing its interpretation of the law, the state court had “taken” private property in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Only four years — and scores of recriminations — ago, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Kelo, which upheld the use of eminent domain to take private property as part of a comprehensive economic redevelopment project in a distressed New England city. None of the members of the court — not the five in the majority nor their four dissenting colleagues — could have anticipated the sudden and sustained backlash.

Beginning with the release of the court’s opinion, news and political Web sites, newspaper headlines and editorials, and radio and television screeds condemned what was perceived as judicial disrespect for the sanctified rights of property owners.

To those who believed the media hype, the decision somehow set in motion an out-of-control government bulldozer that threatened every home in America. Most court observers were surprised, too, not only by the media reaction, but by the backlash in roughly 40 states in which lawmakers and voters imposed new restrictions on the use of eminent domain.

At first glance, some of the justices, four years after the boos and catcalls, might see Stop the Beach as a chance to send a message to the public that they really do care deeply about private property rights and in the process correct the “bad call” in Kelo.

That would be a mistake.

With apologies to bookies and oddsmakers, the decision at hand is much more complicated than sports, and the stakes much higher. If the high court accepts the constitutional argument of the landowners — that the state Supreme Court “took” their property simply by rendering a judicial opinion — the ramifications could be profound.

The justices face the risk of diminishing state sovereignty, reducing the independence of state judges, and jeopardizing the legality of a wide range of judge-made property principles. These principles have long been used by state courts to enhance the public’s right to recreate on the beach and to protect sensitive bodies of water from environmental harm.

If the U.S. Supreme Court accepts this new, expansive takings theory, not only is public access to beaches at stake, but also states and localities will be much more hesitant to devise and implement strategies designed to contend with the new realities of rising seas and super-sized coastal storms.

A judicial misstep in Stop the Beach might result in another uproar and yet another make-up call in the future. It’s too bad courts don’t have instant replay.