Team Everglades- In battles of the people vs. certain corporate interests, when we are up against endless spending on massive PR machines, high-paid lobbyists, and bought politicians, we rely on one of the most valuable weapons there is: independent journalism. In ProPublica and the Palm Beach Post's recent investigative report on sugarcane burning, we see journalism at its finest. By placing air quality sensors on Glades residents’ homes and tracking every burn during the latest harvest season, these reporters debunk sugar’s infamous claim that “air in the Glades is cleaner than urban areas.” Read the Report Every year during the nine month harvest season, the Glades are exposed to raining ash and polluted smoke from Big Sugar’s cheap but harmful practice of sugarcane burning. Fine particulate matter from the cane burns gets deep into the lungs and even into the bloodstream of residents, and has been linked to a multitude of health issues, from heart attacks to cancer. It is common sense that repeated exposure to smoke is not healthy. However, sugar has been able to dodge any meaningful regulation of their harmful practice using their usual tactics of well-funded disinformation campaigns, "capturing" the regulators, and skewing the data in their favor. In this investigation, reporters collected air pollution data directly from residents' homes, providing the much-needed numbers to back what we know with common sense — that sugarcane burning is linked to harmful air pollution.   The fight to force Big Sugar to modernize appears a lot more promising. You can help — send an email to Florida's Commissioner of Agriculture below. And, as always, stick with us! Email Commissioner of Agriculture

Team Everglades-  A tactic used by the sugar industry to keep their pollution and harmful practices unregulated to any practical extent is to “capture” the regulators. They do this by getting real cozy and friendly with those charged with regulating their activities, and then, eventually, they offer them a job. The regulators go to work for the very industry they were supposed to be regulating. In economics, this is called Regulatory Capture. The concept of Regulatory Capture is easy to understand once you know what to look for and can be dangerous to the public when executed.  It's not just the outsized campaign contributions injected into the world of politics by Big Sugar, they rely on these experts to prolong the bleeding of the public’s resources to ensure private gain for themselves. This is by no means exclusive to the sugar industry – scores of industries use this tactic. The tobacco industry famously manipulated science and prolonged debate for decades doing this. The oil and chemical industries are also notorious for this behavior. But in Florida, for our waterways and the Everglades, the deep pockets of Big Sugar ensure ample salaries and incentives to hire the top brass at these agencies when they’re ready to leave the public sector. Then, poof, the regulator has switched sides. Now, the charade continues allowing Big Sugar to introduce them to elected officials and the political process as “the experts.”