But forget all this quibbling. A new crisis looms:
Years from now — probably not many years — historians and everyone else will wonder how we wasted so much time talking trash with the country in such peril. How could we have so many [Democrat primary] debates and miss so many big issues?...
To appreciate the oversight, consider two words that never came up in any debate: food and water. It turns out we're running out of both. It's hard to imagine a worse crisis — OK, running out of air — but from the debates you wouldn't know there was a problem…
Sane people, those who acknowledge global warming, talk a lot about rising sea levels. They should focus more on falling water tables. It's the water we drink and it's happening now.
The Mississippi River Valley Aquifer, a vast underground reservoir, serves seven states. Water in its wells is falling about 2 feet a year, double the historical average. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts parts of it will go dry next year.
The Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer serves eight states that are often called America's breadbasket. We're emptying parts of it 100 times faster than it can refill. How long can it take to refill an aquifer? Much of the Ogallala's water was left there in the last Ice Age.
Water is the oil of the 21st century. If you think people got grumpy in Carter-era gas lines, wait till they start queuing up at the supermarket. Oil addiction has made America weaker and poorer. If the "breadbasket" moves north to a warmer, water-wealthy Canada, we'll endure a reversal of fortune such as none but our worst enemies ever predicted.
Fear and love, says Cardinal John Henry Newman, are the great motivators in human history. Fear and love, “from the moment you are born, until the moment you die.”
Some things, unlike aquifers, never change. The Republicans do not have a corner on the politics of fear.
See Politics of fear 1, 2, 3
1 comment:
When comparing my experiences traveling through the Midwest and the South and the people I've met from those areas with my experiences living in the clone cities of San Francisco and Seattle, I'm able to say that there is a very mean spirited strain at the core of modern liberalism. It wants to force people, silence people and enforce its vision on the world and can't tolerate any impediments to that vision.
Everyone's concerned about the mark we leave on the world, but I think alot of leftists have hooked onto environmentalism because a large part of its agenda includes punishing entrepreneurs. If the public decides that they're OK with subsidizing, raised taxes and maybe even rationing then the leftists are one step closer to their vision of society.
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