Friday, November 16, 2007
Whatcha gonna do when the well runs dry?
There's an old saying, "Thousands live without love, none without water." Tom Englehardt's article about drought & water resources, As the World Burns, is a long, depressing read. But he gets at basic if catastrophic facts. Entire civilizations have vanished because they lacked water. When there is no water, people move or die. There is social upheaval. This is as applicable to Atlanta, Los Angeles, & Phoenix as it was to the cities & cultures of precolumbian Mexico, Saharan Africa, & the ancient Mideast.
Water resources have to be planned decades in advance. By the time a regional climate shift happens, it's too late to do anything. If the drought in the southeast doesn't break within the next year (few months), breaking with above average rainfall, what is a city like Atlanta to do? What does it take to refill the lakes & reservoirs? Putting aside global warming, if the southwest is in a cyclical 50 or 100 year downward trend, there's no multibillion dollar public works solution that can be applied in time, which would be have to be within the next decade. There will be no water, above or below ground. There's nowhere to get it from. There will be more & worse fires. & every fire makes the environment that much drier.
A relatively brief drought - about 8 years - in the United States in the 1930s, combined with poor farming & grazing practices to create the "Dust Bowl." It was an ecological & human disaster from Texas to Canada. It caused a mass migration out of the plains states. Imagine if this had continued for 20 or 30 years; it would have hobbled America's effort in World War Two and our post-war recovery & boom.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Water resources have to be planned decades in advance. By the time a regional climate shift happens, it's too late to do anything. If the drought in the southeast doesn't break within the next year (few months), breaking with above average rainfall, what is a city like Atlanta to do? What does it take to refill the lakes & reservoirs? Putting aside global warming, if the southwest is in a cyclical 50 or 100 year downward trend, there's no multibillion dollar public works solution that can be applied in time, which would be have to be within the next decade. There will be no water, above or below ground. There's nowhere to get it from. There will be more & worse fires. & every fire makes the environment that much drier.
A relatively brief drought - about 8 years - in the United States in the 1930s, combined with poor farming & grazing practices to create the "Dust Bowl." It was an ecological & human disaster from Texas to Canada. It caused a mass migration out of the plains states. Imagine if this had continued for 20 or 30 years; it would have hobbled America's effort in World War Two and our post-war recovery & boom.
