Toledo area residents do not have safe drinking water. (photo: AP)
05 August 14
owhere
has the abandonment of reason and of science on the part of half of the
American political system had such serious consequences as it has had
on our attempts to craft national responses to our cascade of
interconnected environmental problems, most of which have some basis in
the Great Climate Change Hoax, which half of our political system
believe is a scam to suck up that sweet grant money or, as Paul Ryan so
brilliantly put it last week, to raise taxes. I don't know but, maybe,
if a half-million people still don't have potable drinking water
in a couple of weeks, we might take the whole thing a little more
seriously than we have, and we might conclude that the planet's getting
genuinely pissed at us all.Algae blooms in Lake Erie typically arrive in the summer and are fed by excess nutrients added to the lake - especially phosphorus. That phosphorus can come from fertilizer runoff from farms and lawns as well as from livestock pens or malfunctioning septic systems. A bout of strong sunshine this summer also appears to have helped the algae bloom grow.
We stopped this kind of thing back in the 1970's,
because that's when we passed the Clean Water Act, and had Earth Day,
and we and our Canadian friends were willing to spend $8 billion to save
Lake Erie. However, that was before Ronald Reagan was elected to save
us all from the dead hand in the jackboot of over-regulation, and to
demonstrate to us all that unleashing the power of American corporations
was the fast lane to glory. Under Bill Clinton, deregulation became
"regulatory reform," which meant finding ways to do the damage more
slowly. That was before science became a political drawback. Does the GCCH figure into this? Of course, it does.
As the scientists told Ecowatch in a 2013 report, the microcystis bacteria thrive in warm, nutrient-rich waters. The microcystis-laden algae also survive better in those warmer conditions than other, non-toxic algae does. They're the "cockroaches of the aquatic world," according to the report. It's not just higher temperatures that will increase the bacteria's presence, either. Ecowatch notes that as climate change fuels more heavy rainfall events, sewer systems are likely to be more quickly overwhelmed, leading to the release of bacteria- and pathogen-rich sewage into the lake.
I guarantee you that anyone who makes that argument --
that climate change is involved because it results in heavier rainfall
and, therefore, more sewer systems flooding into the lake, carrying
Christ alone knows what-all -- will find someone standing up and
telling them, "You're blaming climate change for everything," as though
there were nothing connected in the ecology of the planet at all. And
that is not even to mention the role played by the invasive zebra
mussels, that kill the animals that eat the algae. Every way you can
screw a planet, we have.
Anyway, this is the second time in a year in which
environmental damage has deprived an American city of its drinking water
for a substantial period of time; we recall that Huntington, West
Virginia was boiling and bottling thanks to the efforts of Freedom
Industries. We have had wars for gold. We have had wars for oil. We next
will have wars for water, provided, of course, that there's any left
that's fit to drink.
Comments
+6
#
2014-08-05 07:46
As a first small step
EVERYBODY quit fertilizing your lawns. You don't need to put all of the
stuff on your lawn. Get a mulching mower and just let the clippings
take care of business. Better yet get rid of that lawn and put in a
vegetable garden or something flowering to help the bee population out.
Those veggies from California may stop coming or be so expensive that
you can't afford them. The farmers will have to work on their end too.
+4
#
2014-08-05 07:50
You nailed it! The
biggest crisis and resulting economic opportunity being generated today
is fresh water--who owns it, who controls it, and how that control will
change our entire social paradigm.
Water and the environment are the enemies of the Repugs here in SW Florida. Massive amounts of fertilizer are poured on lawns and golf courses, then directly stream into the Gulf of Mexico via rainfall runoff. Yet "leaders" here voted against moving the fertilizer back from the shore 10 feet! Only 10 feet! Denied the science, and now the entire SW Florida coast festers in a stew of dangerous bacteria.
Not only anti public health and the environment, but also anti business: People throughout the nation are getting the word and avoiding the beaches here.
Spread the word. The waters are tainted and dangerous.
Water and the environment are the enemies of the Repugs here in SW Florida. Massive amounts of fertilizer are poured on lawns and golf courses, then directly stream into the Gulf of Mexico via rainfall runoff. Yet "leaders" here voted against moving the fertilizer back from the shore 10 feet! Only 10 feet! Denied the science, and now the entire SW Florida coast festers in a stew of dangerous bacteria.
Not only anti public health and the environment, but also anti business: People throughout the nation are getting the word and avoiding the beaches here.
Spread the word. The waters are tainted and dangerous.
+2
#
2014-08-05 08:31
Then we have
corporate scum Nestle (and Coke and Pepsi et al) taking over the water
supplies all over the world, including in one drought-ridden area of
California, where they happily suck up the water from underground and
sell it at an obscene profit in little plastic bottles.
Nestle's CEO goes so far as to state that water is not a human right and is "food that should be privatized."
Nestle's CEO goes so far as to state that water is not a human right and is "food that should be privatized."
