How Dry We Are
A Question No One Wants to Raise About Drought
By Tom Engelhardt
Georgia's on my mind. Atlanta, Georgia. It's a city in trouble in a
state in trouble in a region in trouble. Water trouble. Trouble big
enough that the state government's moving fast. Just this week, backed
up by a choir singing "Amazing Grace," accompanied by three protestant
ministers, and 20 demonstrators from the Atlanta Freethought Society,
Georgia's Baptist Governor Sonny Perdue led a crowd of hundreds in
prayers for rain. "We've come together here," he said, "simply for one
reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up
a storm." It seems, however, that the Almighty -- He "who can and will
make a difference" -- was otherwise occupied and the regional drought
continued to threaten Atlanta, a metropolis of 5 million people (and
growing fast), with the possibility that it might run out of water in as
little as 80 days or as much as a year, if the rains don't come.
Here's a little summary of the situation today:
Water rationing has hit the capital. Car washing and lawn watering are
prohibited within city limits. Harvests in the region have dropped by
15-30%. By the end of summer, local reservoirs and dams were holding 5%
of their capacity.
Oops, that's not Atlanta, or even the southeastern U.S. That's Ankara,
Turkey, hit by a fierce drought and high temperatures that also have had
southern and southwestern Europe in their grip.
Sorry, let's try that again. Imagine this scenario:
Over the last decade, 15-20% decreases in precipitation have been
recorded. These water losses have been accompanied by record
temperatures and increasing wildfires in areas where populations have
been growing rapidly. A fierce drought has settled in -- of the
hundred-year variety. Lawns can be watered but just for a few hours a
day (and only by bucket); four-minute showers are the max allowed. Car
washes are gone, though you can clean absolutely essential car windows
and mirrors by hand.
Sound familiar? As it happens, that's not the American southeast either;
that's a description of what's come to be called "The Big Dry" -- the
unprecedented drought that has swept huge parts of Australia, the worst
in at least a century on an already notoriously dry continent, but also
part of the world's breadbasket, where crops are now failing regularly
and farms closing down.
In fact, on my way along the parched path toward Atlanta, Georgia, I
found myself taking any number of drought-stricken detours. There's
Moldova. (If you're like me, odds are you don't even know where that
small, former Soviet republic falls on a map.) Like much of southern
Europe, it experienced baking temperatures this summer, exceptionally
low precipitation, sometimes far less than 50% of expected rainfall,
failing crops and farms, and spreading wildfires. (The same was true, to
one degree or another, of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, and --
with its 100-year record scorching of Biblical proportions -- Greece
which lost 10% of its forest cover in a month-long fiery apocalypse,
leaving "large tracts of countryside…. at risk of depopulation.")
Or how about Morocco, across the Mediterranean, which experienced 50%
less rainfall than normal? Or the Canary Islands, those Spanish vacation
spots in the Atlantic Ocean known to millions of visitors for their
year-around mild climate which, this summer, morphed into 104 degree
days, strong winds, and fierce wildfires. Eighty-six thousand acres were
burnt to a crisp, engulfing some of the islands in flames and smoke that
drove out thousands of tourists?
Or what about Mexico's Tehuacán Valley, where, thousands of years ago,
corn was first domesticated as an agricultural crop. Even today, asking
for "un Tehuacán" in a restaurant in Mexico still means getting the best
bottled mineral water in the country. Unfortunately, the area hasn't had
a good rain since 2003, and the ensuing drought conditions have made
subsistence farming next to impossible, sending desperate locals
northwards and across the border as illegal immigrants -- some into
southern California, itself just swept by monstrous Santa Ana-driven
wildfires, fanned by prolonged drought conditions and fed tinder by new
communities built deep into the wild lands where the fires gestate. And
Tehuacán is but one disaster zone in a growing Mexican catastrophe. As
Mike Davis has written, "Abandoned ranchitos and near-ghost towns
throughout Coahuila, Chihuahua and Sonora testify to the relentless
succession of dry years -- beginning in the 1980s but assuming truly
catastrophic intensity in the late 1990s -- that has pushed hundreds of
thousands of poor rural people toward the sweatshops of Ciudad Juárez
and the barrios of Los Angeles."
According to the How Dry I Am Chart of "livability expert" Bert
Sperling, four cities in Southern California, not parched Atlanta, top
the national drought ratings: Los Angeles, San Diego, Oxnard, and
Riverside. In addition, Pasadena has had the dubious honor, through
September, of experiencing its driest year in history.
full: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174863/as_the_world_burns
