Podcast: Play in new window | Download An all-time favorite movie line (The Missouri Breaks), uttered by Jack Nicholson leaning over Marlon Brando, who is starting up from sleep: “Do you know why you woke up? I just cut your throat.” That is the way Plainview, Texas, woke up the other day to some bitter truths, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘ drought ’
Water Scarcer, Tensions Higher in the Heartland
January 22, 2013
Podcast: Play in new window | Download According to government assessments released in the past week, both near- and long-term prospects are worsening for the drought-stricken Plains and Southwest states. As hope for relief fades, tensions are rising among towns, farms and states that are acting out the Tragedy of the Commons: as their water [...]
Corn Growers Suffer Quintuple Whammy
August 20, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download The failure of industrial agriculture is on display everywhere in America’s “breadbasket” — now we should probably call it the ethanol basket, or the high-fructose-corn-syrup basket — and the consequences are already spreading around the world. You thought it was just a drought? It would be bad enough [...]
Running Out of Water and Time
August 15, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download The train is coming at 80 miles per hour. Children are playing on the railroad tracks, oblivious. The train is closer now. The children are not aware of it. You can hear the train, people are yelling at you that it is coming, and you, my friend, stand [...]
From American Drought to “Global Catastrophe”
July 26, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Some poet invented the name “Arab Spring” as a label for the tsunami of public desperation that last year took down the governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Poets and Pollyannas saw the events as an upwelling of love for democracy. Realists related them to the spike in [...]
Mississippi Falling: How Far?
July 17, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download The Mississippi River is in some places running 53 feet below its level of last May. That’s not quite as alarming as it sounds because last May it was in an historic flood. But with little snow last winter in the mountains and no rain to speak of [...]
A New Tragedy of the Commons: Water Banks
August 1, 2011
Podcast: Play in new window | Download If you liked what investment bankers and hedge-fund managers did to our economy in recent years, you’re going to love what water banks are doing to our ecosystem. The same, time-tested methods are in play: unleash unrestrained greed on a commodity that everyone needs in order to make [...]
How the World Ends: Not a Bang, a Brown Lawn
July 29, 2011
Podcast: Play in new window | Download According to last Sunday’s Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram, “Lee Weaver knew he was facing a serious problem when he watched his lawn sprinkler dwindle to a meager squirt at his home south of Fort Worth.” This tells us pretty much all we need to know about Mr. Weaver, [...]
Fire and Rain: While Some States Drown, Others Parch
May 9, 2011
While the central and southern states are disappearing under floodwaters of historic immensity, a searing, lengthening drought is crisping the prospects of the American West and Southwest. Two recent major reports — one of them from the Department of the Interior — sounded strident alarm bells about the coming Big Thirst, while the loudest voices [...]
World, US Food Supplies Faltering, Prices Rising
April 7, 2011
If we were to forget all about climate change and peak oil, the two most real and present dangers to our future (of course it’s a silly thing to do in the face of the evidence, but do the exercise: pretend you’re an American politician), we would still be confronted by the third, and conceivably [...]
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