“The U.S. Government Accountability Office warns that the combination of rain shortage, rising temperatures, urban sprawl, and population growth will cause at least 36 states to experience catastrophic water shortages within the next five years.”

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4430.2688.0.0

The time for projects which ‘really do no harm’ was months ago. Now, projects which ‘do no harm’ simply take attention away from projects which do some good. Nero playing the fiddle didn’t make Rome burn faster, but then again, it didn’t exactly help.

The plan co-ordinates management of the water supply system to minimize drought impacts, such as restrictions and other actions, which can affect water users and the environment.

In June 2007, the Victorian State Government announced $4.9 billion of projects to secure Melbourne and Victoria’s water supplies for the long term. These include:

* A 150 billion litre desalination plant to provide water for Melbourne, Geelong, Westernport and Wonthaggi;
* A major irrigation upgrade in the Food Bowl in Northern Victoria to deliver water savings to be shared equally between irrigators, the environment, and Melbourne; and
* A major expansion of the Victorian Water Grid with pipelines to connect Melbourne’s water system with the desalination plant and Northern irrigation upgrades, connect Geelong to Melbourne’s supplies, and connect Hamilton to the Grampians Wimmera Mallee System.

These projects will deliver a 50 per cent boost to Melbourne’s water supply within five years and allow water to be moved where it’s needed most.

They will increase Victoria’s total supply by 375 billion litres each year, with Melbourne receiving 75 billion litres in 2010 and a further 150 billion by the end of 2011.

The point is that they are at least being proactive and taking steps to deal with the problem head on. Something that I see very little indication of here.

Many (although admittedly not all) fourth and fifth graders are at the same time both bright enough to realize that there is something bad going on, and yet not quite smart enough to realize that they are being humored. There is no harm in offering young students a way to make them think that they are helping out, or to get them to think about conservation.

Given the ones who will take this seriously are the ones who probably have at least a basic understanding of what’s going on, and who might in the next decade be somewhere else that has a big drought going on, I figure what the heck.

It’s really doing no harm. Again, so long as this is just a thing to do for the kids, and not actually the sum of all the effort being made to find new ways to conserve.

This just isn’t an issue that needs to be such a rallying point.

Trucking in enough water to survive on for a few months and compensating farmers for a failed crop or two is much, much easier than trucking out a major metropolitan area for a few years.

“This will be Katrina II without the hurricane as it relates to dislocation of families and business.”

If faucets run dry, we will exactly have that situation of disclocated people leaving the state in search of everything from water/housing with running water to schools for kids (schools won’t be open). Disclocated businesses trying to find or chase their workforce and customers will leave since commerce won’t be possible or severely constrained. And, just as in Katrina, the govt will fail miserably and it will be everyone for themselves at this rate.

Think through the chain of possible events and you will see why I termed it as I did and how it could happen - but only if faucets truly run dry. Mass exodus from the area and potential chaos. If we plan for the worst, we should be OK with whatever happens.

The idea that the governor expects to gain political points by using elementary schools to do his pointless photo-ops, when he already shows such a lack of solutions, is an outrage to same.

Disaster relief and guidance (like: What you are to do if the rains don’t come) has been the first responsibility of government (ahead of even defence) since we first started farming. And if there’s any chance to wake up the nation, the failure to plan for disasters is one of the top issues we have. Atlanta today is, like I said, nothing compared to what Vegas or LA or Phoenix will go through if we don’t broaden our planning horizons beyond 2-4 years.

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Since the Katrina comparison (while wildly, insultingly different in intensity) has been brought up, I’ll lay it out like this:

If Governor Mary Landrieu had spent the fourth day after Katrina holding a pray-in on the steps of the Capitol for the floodwaters to drain into the ocean, knowing that Lake New Orleans would return to sealevel (still entirely unsatisfactory) within a week.

And then, five days in, offered $10k to the city as a prize if they created a contest for their third-graders to come up with a plan to rebuild the levees.

What would the expected reaction be?

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We have allowed a rotten mixture of ideologies to seep into our leadership - one which says that having a public official evangelizing in an emergency is entirely appropriate. One which says that government inherently can’t work - so why try any harder in public office than is necessary to enrich yourself and all of your friends. One which thinks that PR and campaign contributions are the only things necessary to keep you in power and doing so. One which says publicly that it’s immune to checks and balances, that the constitution is a just a piece of paper, and that they’re creating their own universe while the rest of us reality-based thinkers will be left to simply study their actions.

This is merely a continuation of the pattern.

We need to return to a government of rationality which believes in serving its citizens, in measures that actually work to solve crises (rather than merely being able to be described as “taking measures). We need to create a new political center out of an even mix of the positions of John Edwards, Al Gore, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul. Or rather, we need to get it recognised by the establishment as the political center, since it’s where surveys on isolated issues (rather than “do you consider yourself a conservative”) place the majority of the public right now, when Bill O’Reilly isn’t convincing them otherwise.

And we need to do it before a crisis emerges which threatens our existence - as peak oil combined with the effects of currency failure looks to be doing within a decade. Turn it in late and we get a failing grade: Mass fatalities. Or a totalitarian fascist government. Or both.

Besides, the people who need to learn about conservation are ADULTS.

As I said in the initial post, I don’t have a problem with Sonny doing this — educating the kids about water conservation is a GOOD thing. My only problem is that he’s spending time doing this but he’s not doing anything else.