On February 21, 2008, anchor Brian Williams at NBC reported that Georgia legislators wanted to extend that state’s northern border two miles north in order to annex the Tennessee River.  That would allow them to stick a big pipe into a new water source.

 

          As Goober of “Mayberry RFD” might say, “That’s like tryin’ to milk a cow while sittin’ on a stool six feet away. ‘Bout the only thing you gonna’ get is a tail swishin’ full of…well Sheriff Taylor, you know what I mean.”

 

          “Yeah, I know what ya’ mean Goob,” Andy said.

 

          Two thousand miles west of Georgia, Charles Gibson on a February 8, 2008 broadcast, said, “Scientists say Lake Mead, which provides water for millions in the west, expects to go dry by 2023.  It’s caused by drought, climate change and human population growth.”

 

          Colorado State University Professor Neil S. Grigg, on February 17, 2008, in the Denver Post, wrote, “Not a Drop to Spare.”  He reported, “Colorado’s water supplies are nearing their limits, and there is little hope for new sources.  What’s next?”

 

          To give you an idea of the depth of the West’s water crisis, Denver Post journalist John Ingold wrote, “Ship the Mississippi River to Colorado”, March 3, 2009.  Ingold interviewed Denver businessman Gary Hausler who wants to build a $22.5 billion pipeline to suck water from Old Man River over 1,000 miles from Denver and a mile up hill.  Hausler said, “It’s saner than any other idea the state’s come up with for meeting future water needs.”

 

          “Flat-out dumb, stupid, inane, insane and ridiculous beyond comprehension,” a reader responded.  “What happens when Colorado adds that next five million and then, 10 million and after that, 20 million and more like California?  What do these people use for brains…oatmeal?”

 

          None of media reported that Georgia’s current population of 8.2 million would double to 16.4 million in four decades.  Colorado expects to double from 4.6 to 9.8 million and beyond.  California expects to add 20 million in 30 years.  Never once did any of the experts pin the needle on the population donkey!  It makes you wonder; who made hyper-population a sacred, untouchable cow?  Why?  Who do they expect to benefit? 

 

 

          As this population overload advances, we face major water dilemmas.

 

          “While America remains in her ‘consensus trance’ brought on by decades of unlimited growth and resources, her citizens cannot imagine water shortages,” said James Howard Kunstler, author, The Long Emergency.  “The vast majority of the earth’s surface consists of water, yet only three percent of that is fresh water.”

 

          The World Bank famously declared, “The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over water.”   

 

          Kunstler continued, “The United Nations identified three hundred zones around the world that will be the sites of conflicts over water in the years ahead.  The great aquifers of North America, China and India are all depleting rapidly due to aggressive irrigation…the rapidly diminishing supplies of fresh water, especially in the heavily populated third world, also exacerbate sanitation catastrophes, and prepare the stage for epidemic disease.  More than two million people worldwide die every year from contaminated water.  In the Maquiladora zones of Mexico today, water is so scarce that babies and children drink Coca-Cola instead.”

 

          In a September 30, 2006 Rocky Mountain News report, Boulder, Colorado scientists predicted grim drought forecasts for the West.  To support their claim, they used eighteen of the world’s most powerful computer climate models.  Martin Hoerling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, “Climate change is moving us in the direction of a perpetual state that is of the Dust Bowl type.” 

          Scientists expect increased evaporation and drier soils leading to more severe and frequent droughts.  Hoerling said, “Droughts could be 25 percent worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl days.” 

 

          Who stands to suffer the greatest risk?  In 2009, citizens of Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California, downstream of the Colorado River, devour 13.5 million acre feet of the river.  That equals millions upon millions of people!  Bob Reynolds of NOAA said, “We’re going to have to adapt our survival strategies to coping with less water.”

 

          Associated Press writer James McPherson on July 30, 2006 wrote a piece for the Denver Post, “Without Rain, Dakotas Dry Up.”  He reported, “Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this summer will never end up as pasta or bread…what is left is hot winds blowing clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.”

 

          More than 60 percent of the United States suffered abnormally dry or drought conditions in the summer of 2006.  While I traveled 20,300 miles through 48 states in June, July and August of that year, I saw burned up corn and pigmy crops from lack of water.  The drought stretched from Georgia to Arizona and from Montana to Wisconsin.

 

          Will America experience commensurate rainfall to provide food and water for that added 100 million?   Will we be able to feed and water our 306 million already in the USA?  Can science produce miracle crops that grow without water? 

 

          Emphatic answer: no!

 

          According to Mike Matz, “Losing Spaces”, Denver Post, December 23, 2007, “American farmland and wetlands vanish at 6,000 acres per day, which equals 2.19 million acres annually for new malls, highways and housing.  Ground water stores cannot recharge.”

 

          Along with lack of water, we degrade water quality.  Californians buy more filtered water than anywhere else in America.  Why?  They can’t provide enough clean water to their 37.5 million residents.  What about polluted and ‘chemicalized’ water run-off?  We spray crops, inject insecticides and apply herbicides onto millions of acres of farmland.  It seeps into our groundwater and runs into our rivers.  The Mississippi River relentlessly spews millions of gallons of fertilizer and chemically poisoned water into the Gulf of Mexico that creates a 10,000 square mile dead zone where few fish or native marine life can survive.  Every river running out of the United States, and most industrialized nations, carries enormous amounts of poisons.  Acid rain from toxic air pollution falls with every rainstorm.

 

          With blinders securely in place, we pursue rampant population growth with no concern toward future generations.   Big surprise—people need water to survive.