Al Gore beat down and proved wrong the most powerful special interests in the world. He had started almost a quixotic battle - taking on an adversary with infinite money, a colossal megaphone - and one who felt unconstrained by facts, or science or fair play. But through the careful assembly of a single argument premised on facts and science, and imbedded with principles and morality - Al Gore convinced a nation and a world of a truth it had sought to conveniently ignore.

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The event was on the banks of the beautiful Wekiva River so we took some canoes and kayaks and travelled down the scenic Wekiva picking up trash with Steve Barnes who is as knowledgeable about the River as anyone. While we found some loose garbage, I'm happy to say it was pristine and clean.
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Spent Saturday morning in Orlando at the Arboretum at University of Central Florida with students and friends. The weather was perfect as we dug trenches and moved compost so we could energize the soil and plant flowers and shrubs that will improve the look of one of Florida's terrific higher education institutions.
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While many of these measures may provide some short term ability to navigate our budget crisis, we need to be mindful not to create longer term problems from which we can't recede. You can't tear down oil rigs and you pay for a cheap education forever.
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In my prior legislative experience it had seemed that the idea, too often, was less important than where it came from. But by putting our heads together in a bipartisan effort, we crafted a single measure that will be closing a tax loophole to promote tax fairness, and in the same stroke restore Florida Forever and an affordable housing program.
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Leave it to the Bush Administration to find craven opportunity in every national crisis. Americans are being crushed by oppressive gasoline prices and the Administration's answer is to tell us that the best way to reduce gas prices is to give oil companies more acreage for drilling. Really? In fact, they tell us, the drilling should be offshore. Really?
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Today's Time Magazine essay by Michael Grunwald (below) paints a very painful (but pretty accurate) picture of the challenges facing our state. He touches most of the major trendlines that are contributing to our decline — and takes some pretty fair shots at the groups responsible for the dysfunction.

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Stopped by the Governor's "Serve to Preserve" summit today. It was a pretty impressive gathering of folks concerned about climate change. Years ago an event like this would have been attended by only the environmental community. The participants included nearly every sector of commerce. It's pretty evident that while government will clearly have a significant role in climate change policy, it will be the private sector that delivers the critical ingenuity to make any policy meaningful. The Governor began the day by signing the Energy Bill passed by the legislature this last session.
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Today, Gov. Crist and U.S. Sugar announced a tenative deal that will have Florida taxpayers buying 187,000 of acres currently part of US Sugar's operations. Here is my comment:

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John McCain's energy policy is bad news for Florida and the country. John McCain and the Republican Party are exploiting a real crisis to advance a priority of the oil industry. Rather than take consumer friendly approaches that examine the excess profits by the oil corporations they are presenting a faux solution that has perilous underbelly.

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