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How Dry We Are
A Question No One Wants to Raise About Drought
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
…“Resource wars” are things that happen elsewhere. We don’t usually think of our country as water poor or imagine that “resource wars” might be applied as a description to various state and local governments in the southwest, southeast, or upper Midwest now fighting tooth and nail for previously shared water. And yet, “war” may not be a bad metaphor for what’s on the horizon. According to the National Climate Data Center, federal officials have declared 43% of the contiguous U.S. to be in “moderate to extreme drought.” Already, Sonny Perdue of Georgia is embroiled in an ever more bitter conflict – a “water war,” as the headlines say – with the governors of Florida and Alabama, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, over the flow of water into and out of the Atlanta area.
He’s hardly alone. After all, the Southwest is in the grips of what, according to Davis, some climatologists are terming a “‘mega-drought,’ even the ‘worst in 500 years.’” More shockingly, he writes, such conditions may actually represent the region’s new “normal weather.” The upper Midwest is also in rainfall-shortage mode, with water levels at all the Great Lakes dropping unnervingly. The water level of Lake Superior, for instance, has fallen to the “lowest point on record for this time of year.” (Notice, by the way, how many “records” are being set nationally and globally in these drought years; how many places are already beginning to push beyond history, which means beyond any reference point we have.)
…if drought – or call it “desertification” – becomes more widespread, more common in heavily populated parts of the globe already bursting at the seams (and with more people arriving daily), if whole regions no longer have the necessary water, how many trails of tears, how many of those mass migrations or civilizational collapses are possible? How much burning and suffering and misery are we likely to experience? And what then?
These are questions I can’t answer; that the Bush administration is guaranteed to be desperately unwilling and unprepared to face; and that, as yet, the media has largely refused to consider in a serious way. And if the media can’t face this and begin to connect some dots, why shouldn’t Americans be in denial, too?
It’s not that no one is thinking about, or doing work on, drought. I know that scientists have been asking the “and then” questions (or perhaps far more relevant ones that I can’t even formulate); that somewhere people have been exploring, studying, writing about them. But how am I to find out?
Of course, all of us can wander the Internet…
(16 November 2007)
Also at Znet, at Common Dreams, at Mother Jones, and at Middle East Online.
Economist Cline says developing nations to suffer most from warming’s effects (video and transcript)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint, E&E TV
According to a new study released by the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute, world agriculture will face serious decline due to global warming if global emissions are not reduced soon.
During today’s OnPoint, William Cline, the author of the study, “Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country,” explains why he believes agriculture in developing nations will suffer the greatest effects due to global warming.
Cline makes international policy recommendations and also explains why he chose to make country-by-country projections in this analysis.
(12 November 2007)
North American flora can’t absorb continent’s greenhouse gas output
David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle
The outpouring of greenhouse gases from North America far outstrips the ability of the continent’s fields, forests and wetlands to absorb all the carbon in the atmosphere, and the United States alone remains the world’s largest emitter of climate-warming carbon dioxide, scientists reported Wednesday.
All told, the burning of fossil fuels by the United States, Canada and Mexico releases nearly 2 billion tons of carbon each year into the atmosphere, and the United States accounts for 85 percent of that total, says the report by the Climate Change Science Program, a research effort by government and private scientists sponsored by the Bush administration.
Until now, many scientists had thought the continent holds enough vegetation to absorb most of the carbon dioxide emissions, but the new report refutes that assumption and warns that the disparity is increasing.
The entire continent accounts for 27 percent of all the carbon dioxide emissions in the world, says the report, but China, where more and more coal-burning power plants go online every year, is already forecast to soon become the world’s worst emitter.
“This is the first systematic assessment of America’s contribution to the carbon budget in the context of global climate change, and it tells us what we really need to know,” said Christopher B. Field of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford.
(15 November 2007)
Climate summary fuels worry: news roundup
Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
With the pending release of a new global-warming report, environmentalists, politicians, and scientists wrangle in Spain for consensus.
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As a major part of the United Nations’ effort to study climate change and to do something about it, thousands of scientists have produced thousands of pages documenting the details and causes of global warming.
In Valencia, Spain, this week, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is trying to boil that information down to a 25-page document – a synthesis to guide government policymakers around the world. As the Associated Press reported: …
(15 November 2007)
A blog-like collection of news coverage on the current IPCC meeting. -BA
Governors Join in Creating Regional Pacts on Climate Change
John M. Broder, New York Times
Frustrated with the slow progress of legislation in Washington on energy and global warming, the nation’s governors have created regional agreements to cap greenhouse gases and are engaged in a concerted lobbying effort to prod Congress to act.
Beginning Monday, three Western governors will appear in a nationwide television advertising campaign sponsored by an environmental group trying to generate public and political support for climate change legislation now before the Senate.
The 30-second ad features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican of California; Jon Huntsman Jr., Republican of Utah; and Brian Schweitzer, Democrat of Montana, standing in casual clothes in scenic spots talking about the threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions. The nation’s governors are acting, but Congress is not, they say. “Now it’s their turn,” Mr. Schwarzenegger says.
(14 November 2007)
At the original article are photos of three U.S. governors, each pictured in outdoors clothing against a backdrop of trees, mountains or ocean. -BA
