Water

YERT travels to Nevada and talks about water, in one of the fastest growing states in the country. Where will the future first appear? Go to Place Your Bets.

What did Pogo say?

It took a while, but after several hundred years feudalism was called into question in Europe, and later the "divine right" of kings was tossed into the ashcan of history.

These beliefs did not go gently into the night. The defenders of the established order considered their critics quite mad, and most certainly dangerous.

As I watched the video I included with this article I thought that the critics would be considered quite mad as well especially, in this case, the critics happen to be some 500 indigenous people in the Amazon, who don't want their river and their way of life destroyed.

High gas prices may end up being the least of our problems. Some very nasty wars in the future could be fought, not over fossil fuels, but access to fresh water. The problem is not some comfortable abstraction, and there is no known substitute for water. Go to
Water.

Take the think outside the bottle pledge. Go to
Bottle

And one story from Chicago. Go to Kick the Bottle

The memory is still clear after all these years: The stench of urine around many of the churches in Quito, Ecuador was overwhelming in the early morning, especially if it was warm. The poor found shelter in and around the churches at night.

A few years ago I was hiking in Oregon with my son. We were going back down the mountain and were a couple of hours from the bottom, when we stopped at a mountain stream that overlooked an absolutely breathtaking view of this blooming, green meadow with two large elk in the distance.

We sat down by the stream, took off our boots and plunged our sore feet into the ice-cold mountain water. I don't think either one of us said anything for several minutes, until my son scooped up some water, took a sip and remarked that, "this is a gift."

Not a Drop to Drink: America's Water Crisis by Ken Midkiff is a book Americans ought to read as the political season picks up momentum.

It's unlikely that the subject will get any play by a mass media too busy watching the "up-down" of the presidential candidates, some of whom most likely have no clue whatsoever what this "water thing" is about.

This water thing, however, and part of our overall agricultural system is badly broken, horribly corrupt and leading this country toward a monumental disaster.

What is perhaps most frustrating and infuriating about this situation is that we can likely prevent a genuine national calamity from occurring, if enough Americans are made aware of what is going on.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I had a conversation with someone from Phoenix, Arizona. I asked this person what the city and the surrounding area were doing in terms of water conservation, because of the extreme drought conditions in the region. The short answer I got was "not much" considering the seriousness of the problem.

Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia initiated some public prayers on the steps of the state capital a couple of weeks ago because of the water crisis in his state.

I posted an article about Sonny back in October (The Future, Mr. Gittes: Part II). While the governor and many like him are way over their heads, we can all hope that his appeal to a "higher power" is answered because the drought in the entire region is serious.

The first time I looked down from the airplane at Phoenix, Arizona several years ago, I noticed a collection of blue dots covering the dry desert landscape. Later I learned they were swimming pools, considered an "absolute" necessity for the Phoenix residents. After all, it gets hot, don't you know. How do you like my lawn?

One of my favorite movies is Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson. It takes place in the 1930s, and ultimately the character Jake Gittes, played by Nicholson, uncovers a deadly conspiracy about land use and development, and about diverting water to Los Angeles.

It wasn't about oil in the 1920s when the Western states sat down and decided on a policy for the region. It was about water. Today we've got a problem in the West and it's not cattle rustlers. It is about water and maybe the canary in the coal mine is a visitor from Kansas City taking a seat at the roulette table in Vegas.