By: David Smith and Ramanan Laxminarayan

David Smith, Ph.D., is an associate director of disease ecology at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute in Gainesville. The Emerging Pathogens Institute brings together scientists to develop control and treatment strategies for pathogens like MRSA. Ramanan Laxminarayan, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, an independent and nonpartisan Washington think tank whose Extending the Cure initiative develops policy solutions to extend antibiotic effectiveness.

MRSA killed Alonzo Smith, an 18-year-old football player from Liberty High School in Kissimmee last September. Smith follows a long line of football players who have been sickened after infection with MRSA, a highly resistant superbug.

In fact, the National Football League was so concerned about the spread of MRSA in locker rooms that it sent a team of infectious disease experts to inspect seven NFL facilities. Last month, the NFL released a report showing that the teams, including the Miami Dolphins, were doing a better job of preventing the spread of MRSA.

That’s the good news.

Now for the bad: Every year, this resistant bacterium kills an estimated 19,000 people in the United States, including those who are apparently healthy. This “superbug” also causes serious problems in hospitals and other facilities where it can burrow into a wound or along a catheter — and trigger life-threatening infections. In fact, MRSA infections in hospitals have more than tripled since 2000, and doctors fear that the bug is evolving to resist even more antibiotics.

But MRSA is not the only superbug. Rates of resistance to a class of organisms called gram-negatives have skyrocketed recently. For one such organism called Acinetobacter, rates of resistance to carbapenems, considered last-resort antibiotics, have jumped from 9 percent in 1995 to 40 percent in 2004, meaning these infections are often completely untreatable — most often resulting in a death.

Florida has already taken one big step toward combating superbugs by requiring hospitals to report infections, like those caused by MRSA. But the state is in a unique position to do more than simply report such infections.

Florida gets 76 million visitors a year. Pathogens like MRSA and antibiotic-resistant gram-negative bacteria can live on the skin or in the nose, without causing harm. So, without knowing it, some tourists come to Florida with more than their luggage, and others leave with more than a tan. When tourists get sick in Florida, they connect Florida’s hospitals to the rest of the country.

If the state adopted a rigorous strategy of identifying and flagging patients with this bug it could take a lead in a national fight to stop the spread of these infections.

The economic stimulus recently signed by President Barack Obama includes $150 million to jump-start a national plan to contain health care-associated infections. But federal stimulus money should not be used to pay hospitals for infection-control measures that should already be a part of their daily routine, such as using sterile supplies and encouraging hand washing.

The problem is that hospitals have no incentive to put strategies in place that could curb the spread of infections from one facility to another. When tourists bring their antibiotic-resistant bugs into the state, Florida’s hospitals have to deal with the problem, and that costs money. Florida’s hospitals don’t get extra funds to cover the cost of setting up a surveillance system that includes alerting other facilities when a patient with MRSA is slated for transfer. So no one pays Florida, or anyone else, to do the simple things that stop the problem from being passed on.

So what can be done? We have to ensure that funds for infection control are spent on activities that encourage regional coordination of infection control rather than for activities that benefit the hospital alone. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the State Health Department should provide hospitals with tools and incentives to work together so that infections wouldn’t just be transferred from one place to the next.

The rising tide of infections in hospitals is only one part of the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Superbugs like MRSA have emerged because of the overselling and overuse of antibiotics. Our national health leaders need to step out in front of this epidemic to implement a strategy that addresses all factors involved.

But Florida’s role in the fight against these superbugs is critical: If Florida reins in MRSA and other resistant infections, the impact would be felt far beyond the state line.

Open letter from Florida’s 11 university presidents.

For many parents and students, universities are at their best when they offer small classes, great professors and lots of choices.

Others define great universities as sources of new ideas, technologies and a skilled work force — all key in an economic downturn.

With regional campuses, research institutions and liberal arts colleges, Florida’s 11 public universities are diverse. But we believe that as a group, we should meet all expectations in the Sunshine State. That is why we urge Floridians to help alleviate a major shortfall in higher education dollars by supporting a bill that would give universities flexibility to raise their tuitions up to a cap.

Whether at the University of Florida in Gainesville (enrollment: 51,474) or New College of Florida in Sarasota (enrollment: 767), students hope to benefit from the same touchstones of a memorable college experience.

An intimate classroom environment. A teacher who knows and enthuses about her subject. An assortment of classes and degrees rich enough to make it tough to choose.

This was never easy to pull off during Florida’s years of rapid growth. But now, cultivating this environment has become nearly impossible. Two trends are to blame: Florida’s low tuition, and major budget cuts in the past two years.

Attending college in Florida has always been a bargain. Our public universities’ average tuition of about $3,800 is about half the nation’s average tuition and less than the typical annual cost of day care for one child. And many of our students don’t pay anywhere near $3,800. That’s because the Bright Futures Scholarship Program or other scholarships foot so much of their bills. In fact, when federal and state aid are factored in, students in Florida only pay 10 percent of the cost of earning their degrees.

There’s nothing wrong with being a bargain — as long as students can get a solid education.

The problem is, that can’t continue. Forced against the wall by the economic downturn, the state has slashed $285 million from higher education funding, leading to widespread layoffs, hiring freezes and cutbacks.

There are fewer classes, and more students packed into them. Lecterns stand unoccupied; star faculty departed for better jobs elsewhere. In libraries, students and scholars scour a shrinking collection of databases and journals. Several universities have frozen or cut freshman enrollment, squeezing already pinched access for high school students. All this in a period when applications typically rise, as unemployed workers seek to improve their marketability.

Although next year’s budget remains in flux, universities are anticipating harsh reductions. Elimination of entire departments – even whole colleges – is in the offing.

If these trends continue, they will erode the quality of a Florida degree. That will devalue graduates’ qualifications in the eyes of graduate schools – and employers.

But the threat goes beyond education. Florida faculty bring into the state an estimated $1.2 billion annually in federal and private research grants. That money does far more than pay for equipment, lab technicians or graduate students. It leads to innovations that become the seeds of startup companies and expansion of existing companies. That boosts high-skilled, high-paying jobs and helps Florida stay in front of industry trends — for example, green energy technology.

If this seems removed from the tuition authority bill making its way through the Legislature, it is not.

Fewer, less experienced faculty not only mean fewer classes and fewer degrees, they also mean fewer research dollars, fewer innovations, less economic activity. Student and entrepreneur, in other words, are in the cross hairs.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, and state Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, would allow universities to raise their per-credit tuition as much as 15 percent annually until it reaches the national average. The bill does not require a tuition hike. Instead, it gives each individual university the ability to price its tuition according to local market value. An amount equal to 30 percent of the added tuition would go to need-based financial aid.

Will the bill, which is supported by Gov. Charlie Crist and the Senate Higher Education Committee, solve all universities’ problems? Absolutely not.

But even if budget cuts are as severe as predicted, it will allow us to devote extra dollars to the areas each university feels are most important. As Florida struggles with the recession, that will enable universities to remain valuable partners in its recovery – as educators for Florida’s young people, and as innovators for its economy.

Signed by…

Florida A&M President James H. Ammons
Florida Atlantic University President Frank T. Brogan
Florida Gulf Coast University President Wilson G. Bradshaw
Florida International University President Modesto A. Maidique
Florida State University President T.K. Wetherell
New College of Florida President Gordon E. “Mike” Michalson, Jr
University of Central Florida President John C. Hitt
University of Florida President J. Bernard Machen
University of North Florida President John A. Delaney
University of South Florida President Judy L. Genshaft
University of West Florida President Judith A. Bense

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

These are challenging times for all, and higher education is no exception. Economic stimulus dollars may offer some hope, but the University of Florida and the state’s 10 other public universities face the real possibility of severe cutbacks.

There is, however, some important news for the state’s largest and most comprehensive research university.

Awards to UF for faculty member’s research projects were up 9 percent from July through December over the same period last year. UF scientists, engineers and scholars received nearly $250 million in contracts and grants for research the first half of this fiscal year — about $21 million more than the $229 million last year.

To be sure, the upswing may not continue. A downturn in the final total remains possible.

But at the halfway mark, the rise in research support seems to indicate something significant: UF faculty remain productive — impressively so — despite a perfect storm of a national economic downturn, frozen funding budgets at grant-making agencies, and the challenges of working at an institution under serious financial strain.

The numbers for research sponsorship are a welcome respite from the gloom and doom of most financial news these days.

At last year’s end, research funding for engineering was up 36 percent. The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, 14 percent. The College of Medicine, 16 percent. There were declines in a few areas, but the majority of colleges or other units saw at least a small bump in their awards.

Researchers brought in these contracts and grants during a period when headlines talked of hiring freezes, budget cuts and star faculty members fleeing to other institutions. Clearly there is a lag between application and award, but the university’s budget has been under threat for over a year.

What accounts for our faculty’s success in these first months of the fiscal year? It’s tough to generalize, but there are probably several explanations.

One is that UF faculty are increasingly competitive with their national and international peers. The big funding institutions are deluged with applications. Decisions are always complicated, but the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other prominent agencies certainly favor the top scientists in their fields. It’s worth noting, federal funding for UF research is up 16 percent this year.

But it’s also true that the numbers reflect UF’s continued growth as a nationally competitive research university.

We are establishing informal and formal partnerships with The Scripps Research Institute’s Scripps Florida, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and Moffitt Cancer Center.

We have greatly expanded our technology transfer and commercialization enterprise, with UF spinoffs for the first time cracking the $100 million mark in venture capital investment last year. And we have emphasized break-the-mold multidisciplinary efforts, such as the Emerging Pathogens Institute, the Florida Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Water Institute.

Together, our faculty’s excellence and our growth as a research institution seem to have formed a critical mass. This is clear not only from dollars going into research, but also the results. In recent weeks, UF-authored publications have continued to appear in such prominent journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

No one can say what the future holds, and there is certainly a chance that state budget problems will become severe enough to cast a shadow over our research enterprise. On the flip side, the $787 billion economic stimulus reportedly contains added research dollars for at least some federal agencies — dollars faculty will certainly seek.

UF President Bernie Machen recently suggested that UF should focus on its unique contributions to Florida — prominently including research. Clearly, our faculty are prepared to do more, and to reach higher. UF is already a leader in technology transfer and start-up companies. With that activity growing parallel to research growth, the result will benefit not only the university, but also the community, state and nation.

By: Francis E. “Jack” Putz
Francis E. “Jack” Putz is a professor of botany at the University of Florida.

It seems as though every time you turn around, another environmentalist is whining about yet another threat to life as we know it. Some seem far-fetched, while others appear inconsequential. I admit to being a whining environmentalist. The threat about which I am most distraught is of the second sort — unavoidable but unlikely to have much impact.

Laurel wilt, a disease fatal to trees in the laurel family including avocado, is caused by an introduced Asian fungus that is transmitted by an introduced Asian ambrosia beetle. Other than the avocado growers in South Florida who will watch the demise of their $30 million per year industry and the estimated 60,000 homeowners with avocado trees growing in their yards, few of the 35 million people living in the path of this killer will be much affected. After all, not everyone can recognize redbay or even sassafras trees, our two natives in most jeopardy.

That said, butterfly fanciers will be saddened by the scarcity of now-common but soon-to-be-rare spicebush swallowtails. And bird watchers might note further declines in populations of cedar waxwings and other fruit-eating species.

Laurel wilt seems unstoppable. It might have been contained in 2002 when it was first detected near the Savannah harbor in Georgia, but authorities decided to wait for more research and not to act. Even if they had tried to contain the infestation, with each tree releasing thousands of fungus-packing females smaller than a pinhead, they might have failed.

I suspect that the avocado growers who now face the demise of their industry wish that they had screamed louder when first warned of the threat. But now this pathogen has fully emerged, and all we can do is sit back and watch the trees die. Researchers can even estimate when and where redbay and sassafras trees are going to die.

I hesitate to draw more attention to laurel wilt. With economies tanking and wars erupting, people already have enough to worry about. Other than a few homeowners who will have to pay to have big bay trees removed, the direct financial costs of this tree disease will be slight outside of South Florida. So why bother providing yet another reason for depression?

My best excuse for writing about laurel wilt is to encourage readers to take a last (or first) look at the redbay and sassafras trees in their environs. Butterfly fanciers might want to photograph the laurel-feeding swallowtails while they still have a chance. Unfortunately, for Jacksonville-area residents, their chance has passed. Folks in Orlando, Gainesville and Tallahassee had better get out there this year if they want a last look. And South Floridians might want to take this opportunity to see some tree islands in the Everglades before they unravel when their redbays die.

Laurel wilt will not be the last of these introduced scourges to follow in the wake of chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease. While hesitating to point fingers at cash-strapped but foot-dragging bureaucrats, I still hope a lesson will be learned from the laurel-wilt experience. When the next biota-threatening exotic emerges, perhaps the reaction will be swift, and there will be one fewer loss to mourn.

By: Bernie Machen
Bernie Machen is the president of the University of Florida.

Last week’s headlines about the soaring costs of college may cause some to ask why Florida’s public universities and Gov. Charlie Crist support a plan to allow Florida universities to hike tuition 15 percent a year. Let me explain.

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education last Wednesday said that college tuition and fees have increased 439 percent since 1982 while median family income has increased only 147 percent over the same period. The report awarded every state in the country an ”F” for affordability of its public universities, except California, which got a C minus.

There is no question that the rising cost of higher education is a growing concern nationwide. But what the headlines and news articles missed is this: Attending college in Florida is dirt cheap compared with the rest of the nation.

Undergraduate tuition at Florida universities ranges from $3,400 to $4,000 a year. Florida ranked dead last among the 50 states in the latest College Board tuition survey. UF’s tuition of $3,800 is nearly half the national average of over $6,500. And even that $3,800 figure is high, since more than 90 percent of UF freshmen arrive with tuition already paid by the Bright Futures Scholarship Program.

It’s reasonable to ask, what’s so bad about being cheap?

No doubt, Florida’s low tuition makes UF and other state universities a terrific bargain. U.S. News and World Report in August ranked UF 17th in quality among public universities, just two notches below 15th-ranked Penn State (tuition: $11,000). Kiplinger’s Personal Finance routinely selects UF among its top annual ”best values.” But here’s the problem: The longer we charge bargain-basement tuition, the closer we get to handing out worthless diplomas.

Already, thanks in part to our low tuition and fees, UF has larger classes, fewer professors and a leaner selection of classes compared with other public universities of similar size and stature. Without adequate resources, it’s only a matter of time before these deficiencies weaken the educational experience at our universities, reducing the value of Florida degrees in the eyes of employers and graduate schools everywhere.

Yet that’s exactly where we seem to be headed. Not only is our tuition too low, but Florida’s universities have seen their budgets slashed in recent months. UF alone suffered well over $50 million in cuts in the last 12 months alone.

In the short term, hiking tuition 15 percent would help us offset some of these cuts.

Under the proposal the Florida Legislature may consider this spring, all state universities would use the added dollars to try to keep professors now being lured to other states, hire new faculty — and provide more financial aid. Universities could raise tuition as much as 15 percent annually until it reached the national average. Fully 30 percent of the additional funds would go to financial aid for families who need it.

In the longer term, that plan has the potential to help us maintain our quality education and competitive research programs. History shows both are important to prosperity, especially when it comes to pulling the economy out of a downturn.

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education is right to raise the issue of increasing higher education costs.

Keeping college affordable for families is important. That’s why, three years ago, UF created the Florida Opportunity Scholarship, which this year will not only pay full tuition, but also room and board for about 1,100 UF students whose families make less than $40,000 a year.

But we also have to be realistic about the price of quality.

Let your lawmakers know you support Crist’s proposal. Let’s make sure Florida is known not for a deep-discount college degree, but rather for a great higher education system.

By: Jack Putz
Francis E. ”Jack” Putz is a professor of botany at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

If you look out your window right now, chances are you’ll spot a Sabal palmetto, the scientific name of the cabbage palm, the state tree of Florida and South Carolina. Now imagine the landscape without these icons of the tropics.

Unfortunately, that possibility is very real. A bacterial disease that experts are calling ”Texas Phoenix Palm Decline” is chomping its way through cabbage palms out in the woods and in manicured landscapes in at least Hillsborough, Polk, Desoto, Pinellas, Sarasota and Manatee counties. If you want to see what this tiny monster can do, feast your eyes at the devastation along Interstate 75 around Tampa.

I’m too young to remember when the American chestnut succumbed to a Chinese fungus, but I do remember losing American elms to another exotic insect. Last year I saw the pitiful remains of what I remember as cool shady hemlock groves in Connecticut, prey to an introduced insect called the hemlock wooly adelgid. Right now in North Florida and South Georgia, you can see dead redbay trees, killed by an exotic fungus carried by an exotic ambrosia beetle.

I do not want cabbage palms to suffer the same fate.

The ”emerging pathogen” — a generic term for any introduced insect, fungus or other pest — wreaking havoc among cabbage palms in Central Florida is a fascinating creature. It is a phytoplasma related to the one that caused lethal yellowing of coconuts and other palms in South Florida. Because these phytoplasmas cannot yet be cultured, identification involves sequencing their DNA using polymerase chain reaction or PCR techniques, which is not cheap.

Given that it may take an infected palm a year or more to show symptoms and that few palms have been tested, it is hard to gauge the gravity of the problem, but hundreds of trees have already died.

Researchers from the University of Florida and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services are busily trying to discover the vector for this disease. They suspect an insect called a plant hopper, but are not sure which. But one indisputable vector is the trucks that carry diseased palms at 70 miles per hour north on I-75.

To avoid the grim scenario of cabbage palm annihilation, if the authorities discover an infected palm in a nursery, the site is quarantined for six weeks. Much harder to control are the palm diggers out in the woods, yanking palms and trucking them around the state and beyond.

We are not certain that our cabbage palms are in jeopardy, but this seems like a clear case in which the ”precautionary principle” should be invoked. If the threat is real, the cost of doing little or nothing is just too large to consider. Perhaps I am just another shrill environmentalist spouting gloom-and-doom, but it seems reasonable to wonder, what can be done? Short of quarantining the entire six-county area where the Texas Phoenix Palm Disease is already taking its toll, vigilance is our best defense.

If you are purchasing palms, be sure you know the source and avoid buying plants from infected areas. If the leaves of your palms turn yellow and then the spear leaf dies, call the FDACS Division of Plant Industry (352-372-3505) as quickly as possible. If the palm is determined to be infected, have it destroyed straightaway, lest it infect its neighbors.

By: Leonard Beeghley
Leonard Beeghley is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Florida.

Americans go to the polls next week to select our next president. Interest is high in a contest featuring the first major party black presidential candidate, the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and the country bogged down in two far off wars.

Hence, turnout is likely to be high — at least by American standards.

In the last eleven presidential elections (1964-2004), turnout averaged 55%. This election may exceed the average and perhaps hit 60% or more.

This threshold, however, isn’t really very high — in fact, it’s abysmally low.

For some perspective, turnout in last summer’s French presidential elections was 85%. In Sweden in 2006 it was 82%. In Germany in 2005 it was 78%.

This disparity has important implications. In the U.S., the necessary plurality to select the president and other officials is typically only 28% of the electorate (just over half of 55%). Turnout in off-year elections is much lower, which means a minority of citizens selects many Senators, Governors, and other officials.

Low turnouts are why candidates “appeal to the base.” They determine not only the winners but the policies that follow. As the political scientist, V.O. Key explained more than half a century ago: The blunt truth is that politicians “are under no compulsion to pay heed to … citizens who do not vote.”

By contrast, victors in France, Sweden, and Germany must appeal to a wider range of interests and seek to represent all segments of society precisely because turnouts are high.

Although it is common to lament Americans’ lack of motivation, electoral turnouts are actually low for a more insidious reason: We make it hard to vote.

For example, next Tuesday is a work day for most people. The Tuesday after the first Monday in November was established as Election Day in 1848. It provided a convenient time for farmers to travel over dirt roads. A trip on Monday also did not disrupt the Sabbath. And farmers could balance the preceding month’s books on the first.

Today, however, many people are waylaid by the need to take kids to school, get to work, and other obligations. Although these difficulties are reduced by early voting, only thirty-two states now permit it. A better solution would be to hold elections on Sunday or make Election Day a national holiday. The latter strategy is used in France, Sweden and Germany.

Despite recent increases, our registration process also inhibits voting. In most states, registration has been closed for some time. This reduces turnout because people often don’t get involved until the last minute. As the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville noted more than a century and a half ago: “As the election draws near, intrigues grow more active and agitation is more lively and wider spread.”

Additionally, one-fourth of Americans moves every four years. As a result, at least some of those who live in the 43 states requiring individuals to register in advance will not be able to vote next week.

Although the National Voter Registration Act (the Motor Voter Law, passed in 1993), appears to make registration easier, problems of implementation have been widespread. Moreover, NVRA does not get at the fundamental problem of closed registration. Studies show that the registration requirement reduces turnout by 10% to 13%.

In France, Germany, Sweden, and other nations with high turnouts, registration is not just easier. The government is required to make sure all eligible citizens are registered.

Gerrymandering also reduces turnout. In 1812, Gov. Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts packed his opponents’ supporters into a few districts in order to assure his party’s dominance in the state legislature. One district vaguely resembled a salamander and the term “gerrymander” was born. Not only did the term stick, but the practice of elected officials determining electoral boundaries continues today.

As a result, incumbents choose who gets to vote for them, thus increasing their odds of reelection. When people know their vote for state and congressional representatives won’t count, some of them don’t show up. As long-time Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neal, famously declared: “All politics is local.” He meant that people are motivated to vote by the issues affecting them directly.

Other nations with winner-take-all systems, like ours, limit gerrymandering by using non-partisan commissions to set electoral boundaries. As a result, elections are more competitive, candidates (including incumbents) must appeal to a broader range of interests, and turnout increases.

In a democracy, elections function to prevent abuse of power as the citizens hold representatives accountable. But for a democracy to be authentic, the people must be able to express their wishes. Low turnouts mean we have the façade of freedom — elections, parties, legislatures, congress — but not the reality.

By: Bernie Machen and Patricia Telles-Irvin
Bernie Machen is president of the University of Florida and Patricia Telles-Irvin is vice president of student affairs.

As parents ferry boxes to residence halls and map-clutching students wander wide-eyed around the University of Florida, the start of fall semester always brings a contagious feeling of optimism and excitement.

But, for us, the new academic year also comes with a nagging feeling of dread that we will receive a call reporting the death of a student in an alcohol-fueled incident — a tragedy we have experienced more than once.

A group of 100 university presidents has proposed that lawmakers consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. We oppose this proposal. We do not believe that lowering the drinking age would help solve the largest public health and safety problem here and at other campuses: High-risk, or binge drinking. In fact, evidence tells us that lowering the drinking age would worsen binge drinking.

People often view college drinking as a harmless rite of passage. But the issue is not that students drink. It’s that they drink too much.

At least 40 percent of college students report binge drinking — having five or more drinks in one sitting — according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Excessive drinking contributed to more than 1,700 college student deaths and more than 500,000 student injuries in 2001, says the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Thousands of sexual assaults among college students are also tied to binge drinking.

Nationally, there is evidence the problem remains acute, or may even be worsening. The 100 presidents blame the current drinking age. Their statement reads, “A culture of dangerous, clandestine ‘binge-drinking’ — often conducted off-campus — has developed.”

Common sense says that most college students binge drink with their friends or at parties. What’s appealing about binge drinking is not its “clandestine” nature but that it’s socially desirable. Does anyone really think that if 18-year-olds could buy alcohol, the social passport conferred by heavy drinking would lose its cache?

The research also clearly supports the minimum drinking age of 21 as both discouraging binge drinking and reducing its danger.

Alexander Wagenaar is a professor of epidemiology at the UF College of Medicine who has studied this issue for 30 years, authored 160 papers and written a book on the topic. He conducted extensive studies of drinking among teenagers and young adults in states that raised their drinking age from 18 to 21 in the late 1970s and early ’80s, before President Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.

“The bottom line,” Wagenaar says, “is there’s no question that raising the age to 21 had a significant effect in reducing drinking among teenagers and, more important, reducing fatalities” tied to excessive drinking.

Then as now, most drinking fatalities are tied to drinking and driving. Wagenaar’s findings are mirrored in other work: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says driving deaths among 18- to 20-year-olds have dropped by 13 percent since the national drinking age was raised to 21.

Moreover, says Wagenaar, it’s a myth that youths in Europe, where countries tend to allow teenagers to buy alcohol, have fewer drinking problems. New Zealand lowered its drinking age to 19 a few years ago, he adds, and “their alcohol-related problems among teenagers rebounded 15 percent.”

The 100 presidents suggest that a law that is not working should be done away with. But we think the solution is to better support the law.

We have worked hard at the University of Florida on education and prevention efforts targeting binge drinking in the past four years. Among close to a dozen new initiatives, we have begun requiring all first-year students to complete an online alcohol education program; established a safety zone at a major athletic event in Jacksonville; launched a marketing effort playing up the repulsiveness of “sketchy drunk guys;” worked with the city officials on high-risk drinking issues, and restricted alcohol fliers.

These efforts are starting to pay off. The number of UF students who report engaging in high-risk drinking has declined nearly every semester since fall 2004. The referral number of alcohol-related incidents to the UF Office of Judicial Affairs has also declined since fall 2005, as have alcohol-related transports to the hospital.

That said, much more needs to be done. Wagenaar singles out drink specials at bars around college campuses, saying that happy hours and their ilk inevitably lead to excessive drinking. That seems to be the point: Drink specials advertised by Gainesville bars have included “DUI Wednesdays.” We would be very heartened to see new laws to curb drink specials.

Wagenaar also says that so-called “overservice” — when bars continue to serve patrons who are visibly intoxicated — must stop. Many states have laws against the practice, but Florida’s law is ambiguous, he says. That must change.

Binge drinking is a pervasive and dangerous problem at the nation’s universities. Reducing the drinking age to 18 might reduce its visibility by allowing college administrators to shift responsibility to law enforcement or social services, but it won’t do anything to solve the problem. For that, we need college leaders, state lawmakers and local officials to work together on discouraging students from binge drinking and reducing their opportunities to do so.

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

State policymakers at this week’s 2008 Climate Change summit in Miami will focus on renewable energy in Florida. The meeting is important and timely.

Gas, utility and food prices are spiking by the day. Concerns about global warming tied to the burning of fossil fuels continue to mount. As a result, the need for new, clean and domestic energy sources has become obvious to all Americans.

Gov. Charlie Crist’s announcement last week that he would support offshore oil exploration off Florida’s coast has grabbed the headlines. But whether drilling occurs or not, all evidence suggests the nation will still face shrinking energy supplies, skyrocketing transportation costs and the prospect of shortages. Many are looking to the federal government for solutions, but states and cities must do what they can to exploit renewable energies on their own turf.

This is especially true in Florida, which uses more energy than most other states — almost all of it produced using fossil fuels imported from elsewhere. In the short term, this makes us vulnerable to price swings or worse — for example, blackouts or gas lines. In the long term, our dependence on fossil fuels means we contribute to our own vulnerability to one of the best understood results of global warming: sea level rise.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, Florida has the climate, the political readiness and the expertise at its universities to make a turnaround.

Per capita, Florida ranks 13th in coal, eighth in natural gas and third in petroleum consumption nationwide, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Coal and natural gas powered plants each generate a third of Florida’s electricity. Both arrive almost exclusively from out of state.

Florida’s tradition of opposing offshore drilling appears headed for a major test. But for now, our only big in-state producer is the nuclear industry, which accounts for 15 percent of Florida’s electricity. To their credit, the state’s utilities have serious plans to expand or build new plants, boosting our energy independence.

As with nuclear energy, renewable energy offers hope of clean power that doesn’t contribute to global warming. But Florida is way behind.

The EIA ranks the state 15th in renewable energy generation. By contrast, California, New York and Texas rank 2nd, 4th and 8th, respectively. While Florida does not have ideal conditions for wind power, our climate and year-round growing season suggest abundant solar and biomass resources. Yet California, not Florida, leads the nation in both.

Conserve energy, too

How Florida wound up in this spot is a question worth asking. But a much more important issue for those at next week’s meeting is what to do now.

The basic approach should be to focus not only on nurturing new renewable energy sources, but also on conserving the energy we already use — tapping expertise at the state’s universities to make progress in both areas.

Academics are often accused of working with their sights set too far in the future. But our researchers can contribute much to solving the state’s energy problems today. More than 250 faculty members are conducting energy-related research at Florida’s public universities.

At our four largest research schools — the Universities of Florida, Central Florida, South Florida and Florida State University — faculty have received more than $188 million in grants for energy research over the past three years alone.

Importantly, Florida’s academic research is focused both on energy generation and energy conservation, making it highly relevant to the state’s future path. Florida policymakers seem to appreciate this. Lawmakers this year approved $50 million to create the UF-led Florida Energy Systems Consortium, which will bring together energy researchers at our universities for research, development and workforce training.

Providing adequate, clean energy to more than 18 million Floridians is a tough challenge. But Florida university research has been the heart of solutions to other major problems, from a front-line cancer drug developed at FSU to healthier and hardier crops pioneered at UF. We stand ready to make similar contributions to a brighter energy future for Florida.

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

With the economy faltering, state and federal cutbacks threaten to slow scientific progress. As many commentators have noted in recent months, that is not a welcome trend for a nation facing the leveled plane of a globalized economy.

But there is also reason for optimism.

The U.S. research and development system, one that relies heavily on the nation’s public and private universities, remains the envy of the world. And far from stagnating, the science and engineering occurring today at these universities is leaping forward, the result of changes at once cultural, technological and institutional. These changes haven’t received a lot of attention outside academe, but they are reshaping the definition of science in America, raising its potential for good even as its financial support dwindles.

One huge change has to do with how university scientists work.

Where researchers traditionally toiled away as individuals or in small groups of like-minded colleagues, they are increasingly attuned to the benefits of collaboration with those outside their narrow range of expertise. Universities, for their part, are steadily shaking off traditional reward systems that encouraged overspecialization, replacing them with promotion or tenure incentives for faculty who stretch beyond their fields.

Another change is technological. Thanks to increasing computing power, ambitious research no longer need require ultra-expensive laboratory or field equipment. For more and more researchers, simulation has become a cheaper, even a more powerful, option. There are even fields devoted entirely to computer-based research of the living or physical worlds. “Computational biology,” for example, relies on silicon over cells.

A third change: While still devoted to pure science, universities are ever-more focused on science that matters to people today. The result is, universities are as likely to market discoveries as to publish them, speeding their delivery to the public.

These changes may seem broad and conceptual, but they have a real and practical impact. This is clear from research at my own university, the University of Florida. Several notable new UF initiatives tell the story:

* The Emerging Pathogens Institute. This dedicated interdisciplinary institute pulls together scientists from no less than eight colleges to work together on confronting the pathogens that menace not just humans, but also animals and plants. Such a global focus would have been unheard of a few years ago, with most institutes focused either on biodefense or specific diseases such as malaria.

* The Florida Institute of Sustainable Energy — Energy Technology Incubator. With a biofuel pilot plant and a prototype development laboratory, this state Center of Excellence will grow promising energy technologies from the research to the prototype stage. In the past, it was rare for universities to focus resources on “scaling up” discoveries to test their merit as industrial products. The incubator shifts the paradigm.

* The UF Water Institute. The severe drought that plagued much of the Southeast last year made obvious the growing need to ensure adequate water supplies for people and nature alike. But while UF had many researchers working on many diverse water problems, nothing drew them together to work on common goals and solutions. The Water Institute does that, and it also brings industry public policy groups into the mix.

* UF’s growing ties with other leading research and medical institutions around the state, including Scripps Florida in Jupiter, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research near Orlando and Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Institutional egos aside, the fact is that the big questions in science and medicine are too complex for one institution to tackle alone, making linkages essential. If UF lacks an expert, piece of equipment or database, chances are it may be available elsewhere, and vice versa.

The current contraction is not the first “down” cycle in the U.S. economy in the past 70 years, and it won’t be the last. But beginning with the nation’s recovery from World War II, U.S. university research has always been at the heart of the nation’s economic strength. It was university research, after all, that sparked the information technology revolution. And university research has also been critical to the genesis of biotechnology and nanotechnology, both seen as key to a future of booming world population and increasing strain on natural resources.

If history is any guide, the sea change in university laboratories and research centers today will play a similarly positive role in the nation’s recovery from its current doldrums — and in maintaining our global status in the longer term.

By: Christine A. Klein
Christine A. Klein is a professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where she teaches water law and natural-resources law.

This week the governors of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia will discuss the allocation of the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers (ACF) among the three states.

As the Southeast struggles against an exceptional drought, Georgia has tried all the easy fixes. Last month, Gov. Sonny Perdue even led a prayer service on the steps of the state Capitol.

But before seeking divine intervention, remember this: God helps those who help themselves.

Looking forward, what can the states learn from the current crisis to help themselves in the future?

First, they can adopt detailed water plans.

As any canoeist knows, one carefully planned paddle stroke now will do more than 10 frantic strokes just before the canoe crashes into an obstacle. Planning is just as important for state water officials.

Georgia lacks a comprehensive, modern water code. It currently treats surface water and groundwater separately, an antiquated throwback to the days when groundwater was deemed mysterious and beyond regulation.

Existing Georgia law also contains a gaping loophole for farm use, which consumes the lion’s share of the state’s water. Virtually all farm use dating back to 1988 is exempt from permitting requirements. Even golf course irrigation systems may qualify as “farm use.”

More broadly, Georgia needs to adopt a statewide water plan. Although authorized since 2004, lawmakers have been dragging their feet. The current draft plan will not be fully operative until at least 2011, under the best of conditions. Meanwhile, the state population is projected to increase 32 percent from 2000-2015.

Second, the states must fairly share the waters of the ACF Basin.

For almost 20 years, Alabama, Florida and Georgia have been embroiled in an acrimonious dispute over basin waters.

Georgia has tried to take unfair advantage of its upstream location. It has pressured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to operate federal reservoirs for the primary benefit of Atlanta’s relentlessly growing population.

In contrast, for almost a century it has been absolutely routine legal practice for neighboring states to negotiate agreements for sharing interstate rivers. Importantly, there has been no special treatment for upstream or quickly-growing states such as Georgia.

Third, the states should avoid short-term fixes that may cause long-term damage to endangered species and aquatic ecosystems.

Contrary to some reports, the current dispute is not one of fish vs. people. True, Florida’s mussels, sturgeon, oysters and shrimp need water to survive. But until very recent emergency orders, Georgia’s people have dumped significant amounts of water onto their suburban lawns and golf courses. And Florida’s oysters have supported the livelihood of numerous fishing families.

The Bush administration appears to be buying the fish vs. people story line. Last month, U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne attempted to broker a deal among the three states. Subsequently, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a plan for “Exceptional Drought Operations.” Under that proposal upstream reservoirs would store more water, choking off flows into Florida by as much as 16 percent.

The White House gave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service only two weeks to review the proposal. In its biological opinion, the service concluded that the plan will likely result in the “take” (a euphemism for “killing”) of mussels that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Offering small comfort, the service did not predict the demise of the entire species.

The Bush administration has bought the fish vs. people story line before, and the results were ugly. But that’s another tale, involving the allocation of water in 2002 to farmers and ranchers rather than fish in the drought-stricken Klamath River Basin of California and Oregon. The result was, in the words of The Washington Post, “the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.”

Plan. Share. Respect the natural environment that sustains our rivers in the long term.

If the drought-stricken states take these measures to help themselves, then surely the rain gods will take note.

By: Jack E. Davis
Jack E. Davis, an associate professor of history at the University of Florida, is a specialist in American environmental history and author of the forthcoming book, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the Environmental Century.

When Dade County relocated its public library to a new building in 1985, the last several hundred books were moved by a human chain. The Everglades: River of Grass, the last of them all, was carried by a runner like a torch.

Last week marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ classic. When it appeared in 1947, it convinced the nation that a place historically dismissed as a vulgar unvarying wasteland was actually a life-giving river, one that originally flowed 120 untroubled miles on a three-month pilgrimage to deliver sustenance to rare plants and animals and to charge the all-important Biscayne Aquifer. Four weeks after the book’s publication, President Truman dedicated Everglades National Park. Ever since, America’s greatest wetland has been known as the River of Grass.

The book was similarly destined to stay indefinitely in print, a credit to Douglas’ eloquent and enduring warning against civilization’s headlong sprawl into a sensitive environment. She had not intended to write a call to arms, but in the 1960s, after the Army Corps of Engineers ”comprehensive” flood-control project emptied out nearly half the region’s water, activists embraced her book as the green bible of Everglades environmentalism. Comparisons with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac followed. The book convinced environmentalists to persuade Douglas, who as early as 1959 knew something was amiss with the Corp’s project, to become a full-fledged activist.

At age 79, she scaled back writing projects, organized Friends of the Everglades and leapt into the national consciousness as the most vivid spokesperson for Everglades ”repair.” She continued to head her organization until age 100, gave her last news conference at 104 and died at 108. She was the holder of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and namesake of a national wilderness area (a distinction belonging to only 15 individuals).

If Douglas were alive today and asked to issue a report card on America’s stewardship of the Everglades, the grades would be disappointing. She would praise the state for allocating $2 billion over the past seven years for restoration, much of it going toward the purchase of sensitive land and the partial restoration of the Kissimmee River. But she would penalize the Legislature for postponing pollution limits to the benefit of the sugar industry. Various agencies would earn good marks for giving battle against the diaspora of invasive plants, but to aficionados who release exotic reptiles upon the beleaguered wetlands and to growth merchants who inch development’s rim deeper into it, she would react with schoolmarm reproach.

She would place primary fault for a poor overall grade with the executive branch of the federal government. With President Bush’s recent veto of long-delayed restoration funding — which Congress voted to override — and his Interior Department’s removal of the Everglades from the U.N.’s list of endangered World Heritage sites, one can imagine her retrieving words she intoned against President Reagan’s indifference in the 1980s. He “set us back 50 years . . . I don’t think he gives a damn about the environment.”

But one should be clear: Bush has resisted funding a project she would dislike herself, one with a familiar and ominous boast in its name: ”comprehensive.” Passed by Congress to bipartisan fanfare 20 months after her death, the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan drew a strong rebuke from Friends of the Everglades and the Sierra Club. Both declared it a massive water-management project that awards resource priorities to agriculture and bloated municipalities over the Everglades ecosystem. Restoration thus far has largely centered around the expansion of water-conservation areas, or so-called filtering swamps, and to date they have spurred the growth of native vegetation and the return of animal life.

Douglas, however, never liked conservation areas because they represent a commercial resource for agriculture and developers and they allow bureaucrats to shift water about the Everglades at will. When flooded to keep farms dry and to store water for later use, the conservation areas potentially destroy habitat, alter the breeding capacity of fickle wading birds and drown animals. The plan also allows the perpetuation of the Everglades Agricultural Area, a colossal obstruction in the ecosystem’s natural water flow. The Everglades could not be the River of Grass, she would argue (and did), as long as the hindrance of farming remained. Finally, leaving the Corps — destroyers not restorers — to implement the plan would provoke from her apocalyptic comparisons to the fox’s charge of the hen house.

Sustenance for aquifer

For Douglas, repair — fixing the Kissimmee River, removing the levees, moving out agriculture and the Corps — meant not only the renewed vigor of the River of Grass but plentiful sustenance for the Biscayne Aquifer, the principal drinking-water source for the region’s people.

Douglas was an environmentalist because she was a humanitarian. She valued plants and animals no more nor less than humans. Protecting one over the other was at odds with the great web of life itself. Protecting the whole was the right thing to do. Douglas did a lot of right things in her life, but none so abiding as to write a book 60 years ago that bears lessons for today.

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

Buried in a recent National Science Foundation report is an eye-opening piece of news: The University of Florida has jumped 10 spots among top academic research institutions in research and development spending.

Continue to 2nd paragraph UF, which spent $565 million on R&D last fiscal year, currently ranks 17th among the nation’s major universities - up from 27th just two years ago. UF now outranks the University of California at Berkeley, which spent $546 million, and has edged closer to such well-known institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which spent $601 million, and Duke University, with $657 million, according to the report by the NSF’s Division of Science Resources Statistics.

UF’s success is hardly a surprise: Our research enterprise has grown consistently for many years. But our rise comes at a time when federal support for research, the nation’s largest single source of research dollars, is hitting the brakes. Federal spending on academic research rose just 2.9 percent last year, yet federal dollars flowing to UF increased 11 percent.

We are bucking the trend, and not just for federal support. According to NSF, state and local research and development expenditures didn’t even outpace inflation. Yet UF’s state funding soared from $48.6 million two years ago to $93.4 million last year, an amazing 92 percent increase.

The good news is tied to three major developments.

One, our excellent faculty increasingly win not only large grants from government and private research institutions, but also prestigious ones.

Last year, UF faculty members for the first time scored two grants from one of the nation’s best known medical research institutions’ the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. And we became the only university in Florida to land two new state Centers of Excellence; the Florida Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Center for Bio-Nano Sensors.

Second, our research infrastructure - our labs, clean rooms and technological equipment - is reaching a new level of competitiveness with our peers. Although scientists began moving in as long as 18 months ago, we officially opened the largest research building on this campus, the 280,000-square-foot Cancer and Genetics Research Complex, about a year ago. Its opening comes on the heels of other recently completed state-of-the-art research facilities, including the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity.

Indeed, UF is undergoing something of a building renaissance. President Machen has emphasized an interdisciplinary building program, and we now have more than $750 million in facilities planned and funded. Major current research building projects include the Biomedical Sciences Building and the Nanoscale Research Facility. When these and other projects are complete, we will have added more than a half million square feet of research space to our campus.

Third, our technology transfer and commercialization efforts have scored. In the increasingly synergistic world of public-private research and development, being good at moving research from the lab to the marketplace is important.

In May, Business Week compared UF to MIT and the California Institute of Technology, noting that Florida’s license income jumped from $11 million 10 years ago to $40.3 million today. The Milken Institute has ranked UF fifth nationwide on its University Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index. And our biotechnology incubator was named second this year in the technology category by the National Business Incubation Association.

Much has been made of Florida’s current budget woes. But support for our research endeavors continues to grow, and UF’s technology commercialization business is flourishing, even in this challenging budgetary environment.

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

Absent from last week’s headlines about Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto of a 5 percent tuition hike for universities was an important piece of good news: The governor let stand $20 million for a new biofuel pilot plant to be built by the University of Florida.

The fact that Gov. Crist chose to exclude the plant from his record $459 million in line-item vetoes says a lot about the plant’s promise for Florida and the nation. And the plant itself - a near-industrial-scale realization of a concept pioneered by a UF scientist - provides a strong example of the breadth and depth of UF’s research in energy, surely one of the most important issues of our time.

The pilot plant is designed to fine tune the process of making ethanol not from corn, but rather from what today are often regarded as waste biological materials, including sugar cane waste, orange pulp and seeds and yard trimmings. It will bring one step closer to fruition technology developed by UF’s Lonnie Ingram, a distinguished professor of microbiology who earlier this year shared a table with President Bush at a Washington D.C. meeting on alternative energy.

Ingram’s basic innovation was to genetically engineer two common bacteria to create a new organism that converts cellulose into energy.

Unlike corn, that cellulose is available in numerous agricultural byproducts as well as from natural sources. In theory, what’s now often thrown away could instead power Floridians’ cars and buses.

Of course, it’s not that easy. Since he received the landmark 5 millionth patent designation for the technology in 1991, Ingram has been chipping away at refining the process to make it inexpensive and quick enough to be commercially viable. That’s where the new plant, to be located in the sugar-growing region near Lake Okeechobee, comes in. Its goal is test new processes and techniques to accelerate commercialization.

For Florida, the potential is huge. Because of its year-round growing season, the Sunshine State is the nation’s leading producer of the biomass Ingram’s process would tap. Ingram estimates that the state’s lawns, orange groves, sugar cane farmers and forests produce as much as 124 million tons of it per year.

That’s enough, in theory, to make 10 billion gallons of ethanol - more than double the 4.8 billion gallons now made mostly from corn nationwide. And that ethanol would be made without the significant expenditures on fertilizer, herbicides and diesel fuel devoted to growing corn.

Florida’s electricity consumption is expected to grow 30 percent in the next 10 years alone. So Gov. Crist’s approval of the plant could make a huge difference down the road for Floridians. But that’s only half the story.

The other half is this: This revolutionary ethanol process, while certainly the most prominent, is just one of several developments being pioneered by UF energy researchers that could help address the energy crunch. These include research on:

Fuel cells: UF researchers have made significant progress toward low temperature solid oxide fuel cells. These cells can convert available fuels into hydrogen, which would make it easier to transition to hydrogen-based transportation system.

Solar cells: UF engineers and chemists are developing a new generation of cheaper, lighter and more versatile solar cells based on a new breed of exceptionally thin and cheap organic solar cells.

Nuclear energy: UF engineers are working on several new technologies related to the next generation of nuclear plants. Unlike coal plants, nuclear plants do not release greenhouse gases, making nuclear technology an increasingly attractive alternative when it comes to producing large amounts of power.

The $20 million for the biofuel plant is only the latest indicator of Florida’s support for these and other energy related projects at UF. Last year, for example, Florida lawmakers approved $4.5 million for the Florida Institute for Sustainable Energy Energy Technology Incubator. The incubator is intended to help UF scientists and engineers “scale up” energy-related technologies, such as fuel cells and solar cells, to prove their capabilities in the marketplace.

That’s important, because technology commercialization is something we have proven we know how to do. Business Week readers learned as much earlier this month, when that magazine’s May 21 issue featured a story about UF’s success in this area.

The story, headlined “MIT, Cal Tech - And The Gators? How the University of Florida moved to the major league of technology startups,” noted that Florida’s license income jumped from $11 million 10 years ago to $40.3 million today. And it pointed out that the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator is fully occupied with a dozen clients.

Those clients include two energy companies currently. That number is likely to grow as our energy research expands. Through such startups and other avenues of commercialization, we think we can contribute a lot to solving Florida’s energy challenges.

By: Francis E. “Jack” Putz
Francis E. “Jack” Putz is a professor of botany at the University of Florida.

Environmentalists whine a lot. I whine mostly about biodiversity loss, global warming and mismanagement of ecosystems. As an environmental scientist, I whine with copious data, stultifying statistics and assumed authority. Even friends get tired of my harping and ask for solutions, not more details about the problems.

Admitting that no environmental solutions are perfect and few are truly novel, I can offer one that seems both good and new. Adoption of this cost-effective solution would reduce the risk and severity of wildfires while enhancing biodiversity protection and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

In a recent study published in Restoration Ecology, Brian Condon and I showed that these goals can be approached by restoring the natural structure of pine savannas and woodlands of the Southeast. Given that only 2 percent of these once extensive and hyper-diverse ecosystems still exist, anything we can do to save what remains is worth considering.

The linkage between biodiversity, climate change and wildfire control emerges from the fact that most of our region historically supported open-canopied pine savannas, not forests. Most of the extraordinary biodiversity in these savannas is lost when broadleaved trees are allowed to invade and close the canopy.

Hardwoods invade when fires are suppressed. Shade from these fire-sensitive invaders kills the hundreds of species of understory herbs that historically fueled the low intensity fires that burned through every year or two. Hardwood domination also leads to the demise of gopher tortoises, fox squirrels, red cockaded woodpeckers, and many more species of concern.

After dense forests are allowed to replace open savannas and woodlands, the fires that are inevitably ignited burn hot - very hot. Decades of fire suppression results in dangerous accumulations of fuel, fires that are too intense to stop, and lots of losses, financial and otherwise.

What Brian and I found was that, by selling the invasive hardwoods to the highest bidders, the costs of pine savanna restoration are greatly reduced or even made profitable. Unfortunately, the hardwood market isn’t so good, so most of the invasive hardwood biomass in the 13 restoration projects we studied was sold for fuel chips. The fuel chips are burned in place of fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Generating electricity by burning wood instead of coal or petroleum products still puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but tree carbon is new carbon, not the stuff that accumulated for hundreds of millions of years. Also, chipping of invasive trees requires no mountains to be leveled or wars to be fought. Better to reduce our energy use, but if we want power, better biomass than fossil carbon, negawatts instead of megawatts.

The amount of biomass available for electricity generation varies with the extent of hardwood invasion. In our study sites, the average acre supplied about 20 tons of fuel. Diesel fuel is burned in harvesting and transporting hardwood fuel chips, but the carbon benefit-to-cost ratio is about 100-to-1.

Compare this with the 2-to-1 or even 1-to-1 ratio for corn ethanol, and it’s clear why we are so excited about the prospects of restoring our way to carbon neutrality.

Clearing out invasive hardwoods does not immediately result in savanna restoration, but it is the first big step in the right direction. Given that we’ve already lost 98 percent of the natural pine savannas of the Southeast, taking this step is really important for all the biodiversity we have lost, from fox squirrels and gopher tortoises to squirrel bananas and gopher apples.

Thinning stands will not stop wildfires, but it will certainly make the fires that occur easier to stop. And using invasive hardwoods for fuel won’t stop global warming and the attendant sea level rise, but it will help.