Texas Governor Rick Perry believes we should pray for the end of the Drought of 2011. We would say “Couldn’t hurt anything,” except that in order to get to his Day of Prayer event, the simpleminded, unscientific, superstitious fools who will be doing this praying will be driving predominantly low mpg pickup trucks and SUVs, so, in fact, in can and will do harm.
For the record, cause and effect are far too complicated a set of notions to say that our current drought is “caused by” global warming and anthropogenic climate change. But get real; we all know it is consistent with global warming and anthropogenic climate change, and that increasing droughts of increasing severity are part of the forecast model. A few short decades from now, a year with as much rain as we have had this year will not be described as “dry” but rather as “exceptionally wet.”
For a sense of perspective, we’ve lifted the attached pictures of the Aral Sea from Wikipedia – check there if you want to see licensing info, etc. In 1989, two years before Mr. and Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance met each other, people living on the shores of the Aral Sea were, by and large, from small fishing villages, and were living much as their parents, their grand parents, and great-, great-grandparents had lived, in generations stretching back beyond the times of the Czars and the Khans and who knows what other unnamed rulers in prehistory.
Now? Good luck finding any fish other than, perhaps, a few petrified examples in the dry, cracked salt flats which used to be deep under water. The Aral Sea used to be slightly bigger than Lake Michigan – imagine, though, if Lake Michigan were to shrink by 90% in just 20 years. Apart from the Port of Chicago being shut down, it is difficult to imagine the sea of troubles such a change would make; Illinois, though, would look less like the Midwest, and more like the Middle East.
It isn’t really all that difficult to conceptualize such a scale of change actually happening – probably not in the Great Lakes, at least not any time soon, but in a variety of other watersheds around the country, where self-inflicted stupidity has closed-minded political fools praying for deus ex machina.
Here in Texas, the northern half of the state is hydrated either directly or indirectly by pumping from the Ogallala Aquifer, which is being depleted at an unsustainable rate. This underground water reserve stretches from the High Plains in Texas all the way up to the Dakotas. The nation’s corn belt swells precisely because farmers take water that they cannot replace out of holes in the ground. And the Ogallala Aquifer going dry is not a question of “if” but a question of “when”.
This is almost exactly the formula followed in Central Asia, where Russia and surrounding states took too much water from the Aral Sea over decades of exploitation in the name of economic growth, until the logic of hydrological extraction tipped towards desertification.
“But Myrtle,” you’re saying, “What choices do we have? We have to feed people something, and they have to drink water from somewhere.”
Too true. However, if you’ve been paying attention for any amount of time at all, you can probably already guess Myrtle’s answer. Feed people from their own back yards, front yards, porches, kitchen windows, rooftops, etc. And provide them water from their own cisterns – and while you’re at it, provide them the water which would otherwise have gone to grow your indefensible grass lawns, which (being the nice people you are) you dug up and replaced so very long ago with more sustainable and less water-insatiable edible landscaping.
Depending on where you live, the coming age of water scarcity will take varying spans of time to truly come home to roost, but rest assured, this is an issue which will ultimately affect everyone now drawing breath in one way or another. Some areas will likely not see overall scarcity – New England, for example, is likely to be wetter, according to many climatologists, over the next century.
However, changing global patterns will even affect those whose water supply is increased rather than decreased. Why? Changing sea levels will mean that water tables will see rising salinity boundaries – New York City is a good example of a community currently drawing water from wells which may not have more than 50 years at most of viability left in them (some estimates are much shorter and gloomier, depending on polar ice melting and sea level rise).
All of which means potable water will be the real gold standard of the coming century. The ability to collect water from what rain does fall (when it finally falls!), and then make it as productive as possible while it is under our stewardship, will be the real test of character for our species as we head into the next phase of the anthropocene.
So Governor, pray if you’d like, but it’d be more productive if you’d grab a shovel and some PVC pipe. Judging from your collected speeches, you’re pretty handy with a shovel.
Happy farming!
For the record, cause and effect are far too complicated a set of notions to say that our current drought is “caused by” global warming and anthropogenic climate change. But get real; we all know it is consistent with global warming and anthropogenic climate change, and that increasing droughts of increasing severity are part of the forecast model. A few short decades from now, a year with as much rain as we have had this year will not be described as “dry” but rather as “exceptionally wet.”
Now? Good luck finding any fish other than, perhaps, a few petrified examples in the dry, cracked salt flats which used to be deep under water. The Aral Sea used to be slightly bigger than Lake Michigan – imagine, though, if Lake Michigan were to shrink by 90% in just 20 years. Apart from the Port of Chicago being shut down, it is difficult to imagine the sea of troubles such a change would make; Illinois, though, would look less like the Midwest, and more like the Middle East.
It isn’t really all that difficult to conceptualize such a scale of change actually happening – probably not in the Great Lakes, at least not any time soon, but in a variety of other watersheds around the country, where self-inflicted stupidity has closed-minded political fools praying for deus ex machina.
Here in Texas, the northern half of the state is hydrated either directly or indirectly by pumping from the Ogallala Aquifer, which is being depleted at an unsustainable rate. This underground water reserve stretches from the High Plains in Texas all the way up to the Dakotas. The nation’s corn belt swells precisely because farmers take water that they cannot replace out of holes in the ground. And the Ogallala Aquifer going dry is not a question of “if” but a question of “when”.
This is almost exactly the formula followed in Central Asia, where Russia and surrounding states took too much water from the Aral Sea over decades of exploitation in the name of economic growth, until the logic of hydrological extraction tipped towards desertification.
“But Myrtle,” you’re saying, “What choices do we have? We have to feed people something, and they have to drink water from somewhere.”
Too true. However, if you’ve been paying attention for any amount of time at all, you can probably already guess Myrtle’s answer. Feed people from their own back yards, front yards, porches, kitchen windows, rooftops, etc. And provide them water from their own cisterns – and while you’re at it, provide them the water which would otherwise have gone to grow your indefensible grass lawns, which (being the nice people you are) you dug up and replaced so very long ago with more sustainable and less water-insatiable edible landscaping.
However, changing global patterns will even affect those whose water supply is increased rather than decreased. Why? Changing sea levels will mean that water tables will see rising salinity boundaries – New York City is a good example of a community currently drawing water from wells which may not have more than 50 years at most of viability left in them (some estimates are much shorter and gloomier, depending on polar ice melting and sea level rise).
All of which means potable water will be the real gold standard of the coming century. The ability to collect water from what rain does fall (when it finally falls!), and then make it as productive as possible while it is under our stewardship, will be the real test of character for our species as we head into the next phase of the anthropocene.
So Governor, pray if you’d like, but it’d be more productive if you’d grab a shovel and some PVC pipe. Judging from your collected speeches, you’re pretty handy with a shovel.
Happy farming!
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