Letters to the Editor
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I agree with Bluefellow on this point...
who said "I'm just surprised at the levels of vitriol and schadenfreude in this "discussion".
Blaming Atlanta, threatening Canada and calling people assholes isn't going to solve this very real dilemma. Only good leadership based on sound science is going to get us through.
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@Alan Lloyd
Gonna get ugly, and in not too long a time.
Tragically true. Intimations of it began here at precisely 9:27 pm.
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Way ahead of you, Salon
Wow, my wife and I are really on the edge of a trend, because we've already planned to relocate from California to Madison, Wisconsin this year. Of course, our friends look at us like we just announced our intention to allow ourselves to be sodomized with a rake while Ann Coulter pees on our faces. "Bbbbut, the cold!" they gasp in horror. Yeah, the cold. Whatever.
I'm a native Californian and I think I can hack a real winter. It'll be a nice change, especially if, in return, I get 4 seasons, the ability to pay cash for a cool old house near the capitol and have no mortgage, friendly neighbors who actually stay in one place for more than a year, great schools, a truly progressive and eco-conscious culture, and of course, no more drought worries.
My wife's from Kansas City so she's used to winters. But even if global cooling were going on, we'd make the move. Sure, I'll miss the beach and looking at the ocean and walking the dog in shorts and a t-shirt in January. But I'll also get playing with my daughters in the snow, getting to know my neighbors because we have to entertain indoors five months of the year, and discovering the upper Midwest, where I'd never spent any time before our Madison scouting trips. It's called the unknown. Change is a good thing. It's exciting, and sun ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially when you realize that California really isn't a very friendly place.
But I will never, ever, ever wear a cheese head. Or root for the Brewers. Go Dodgers.
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Agreed
I lived in Florida several times, & South Carolina. I saw amazing water waste, & those are not even deserts. You make your choices when you move, and moving to a desert means living in desert-like conditions (I am reminded of the website f**kthesouth.com).
There should no more be a nation water redistribution policy to literally bail out the desert than there should be a national policy to bail out hedge funds & large banks for really greedy stupid bets on mortgages. Oh, wait. bushie gave them bailouts.
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Pammy61, what do you care?
If the neighbors talk about you? (And BTW, if you think the neighbors in whatever not-Ohio, not-Michigan state you're living in AREN'T talking about you--or each other--you don't know human nature very well, do you?)
I live in what my boyfriend calls a suburban boho neighborhood in Columbus, Oh (but it's really Columbus, north Clintonville area). It's walkable, housing is cheap (My mortgage for my little house is half what my friend in L.A. pays for her 500-square foot apartment) and I live 5 miles from work. I'm near a gym, a gourmet grocery store, a theater that shows GOOD movies, bookstores, thrift shops--nearly anything I want is within a 3-mile radius of me. And today the temperature is 65 degrees, and it's sunny.
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The numbers changed while no one was looking
Look the thing that drives expansion has always been cheap land. Once the prime real estate was all gone we started to settle in areas that we more difficult to inhabit. As technology has improved it has made it possible to live in ever more hostile environments. Millions now live in places where only hermits lived a hundred years ago. It’s about cost/benefit ratios and we have reached the point in some places in this country where the numbers bear reexamination. It’s not likely that San Diego or Phoenix, or any of a number of major cities in the more arid part of the country will go the way of the Anasazi. Hard choices are however going to have to be made. This is something that is not always easy because of all the competing interests, if such places are to continue to not just survive but thrive, but it will happen.
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You can't have it both ways
If there isn't some kind of national housing program that should have prevented all the self-centered baby boomers from moving out west into the freaking desert, then there should NOT be any kind of nation water policy to keep those people and their golf courses plump and moist.
You moved to the desert to escape the cold. Congratulations. Now you live in a desert. Not as much fun as you thought, eh?
The day that water is pumped out of the mid-west to water somebody's lawn in Arizona is the day that I decide the Michigan Militia is a good thing and start stockpiling weapons.
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That's fine
When we run out of oil we won't sell you our solar power either. I hope there's enough hydro for you to buy. Or coal. Whichever. It's odd that the Great Lakes wants to resurrect this notion that national natural resources belong to them alone. But I can work with that. All the seacoasts are ours and you now have to pay a special interstate tariff to trans ship goods from them. 10th Ammendment be damned I say. You did.
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Planned economy
Nulla,
We have wind and solar up here too. We have not tried to move to an area that nature has made a desert. Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, Los Angeles and even Atlanta are unsustainable.
But the baseline here, to avoid state wars, is we should have national planning in the economy and laws. That is what water resource depletion and global warming and peak oil are all saying.
So before we hand other states' water, we need city development restrictions in the south. We need laws passed to ban lawns. We need anything that leads to excess water use restricted, strangled, or outlawed. If the south and southwest do this, perhaps the north will sympathize. If the south and southwest decide that they just want water, without any changes, then you will have a problem, Houston.
Uncontrolled capitalist development is over.