Life as we know it in the American SW is doomed


	Life as we know it in the American SW is doomed

Spiritualmonkey

8-19-2009 12:53 AM

388 views

tags:

water, agriculture, peak-oil, climate-change

Spiritualmonkey says:

I expect that a lot of the desert Southwest will, in historical time, dry up and blow away. But for the foreseeable future, people will live there. If nothing else, there will be a certain percentage of the population that's just too impoverished or too old, too house-poor or too stubborn to leave. It's not too early to start imagining how to reinvent the future they're inheriting.

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8-19-2009 1:52 AM

ellington

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/5be35de5-2083-4fda-8e20-3162569598c7/D474EF8F-7AE6-45E3-BE14-E60981290381/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.alternet.org/water/141887/goodbye_pools%2C_lawns_and_a_whole_lot_more%3A_why_life_in_the_southwest_as_we_know_it_will_be_history/?page=entire" href="http://www.alternet.org/water/141887/goodbye_pools%2C_lawns_and_a_whole_lot_more%3A_why_life_in_the_southwest_as_we_know_it_will_be_history/?page=entire" style="font-size: 11px;">www.alternet.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.alternet.org/water/141887/goodbye_pools%2C_lawns_and_a_whole_lot_more%3A_why_life_in_the_southwest_as_we_know_it_will_be_history/?page=entire"><P>There, in the deserts and mountains, we Americans have built huge cities, farms and ranches, and one of the world's leading tourism industries (think Vegas) predicated on the reliability of cheap, plentiful water. This was a mistake. Water in the very near future will be neither cheap nor plentiful, and much of the Southwest is destined for real trouble.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.alternet.org/water/141887/goodbye_pools%2C_lawns_and_a_whole_lot_more%3A_why_life_in_the_southwest_as_we_know_it_will_be_history/?page=entire"><P>I have not read a clearer explanation of how much trouble the Southwest is in for, or a better accounting of the flawed thinking that got us into this mess, than James Lawrence Powell's excellent <I><A href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520254775?ie=UTF8&tag=worldchangi0b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520254775" target="new" linkindex="22">Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West</A><IMG width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=worldchangi0b-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0520254775" /></I>. Powell lays out, with devastating precision and a wealth of facts, the reality that the Southwest as we've known it over the last 50 years is already done for.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.alternet.org/water/141887/goodbye_pools%2C_lawns_and_a_whole_lot_more%3A_why_life_in_the_southwest_as_we_know_it_will_be_history/?page=entire">The take away is that, unless profound changes are made, the desert Southwest will run out of water in the next couple decades.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/D474EF8F-7AE6-45E3-BE14-E60981290381/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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