Earthside Comments: Despite all the warnings about climate change, suburban sprawl, illegal immigration, Peak Oil, impending resource scarcity and overpopulation -- we see very little substantive, concrete action being taken to mitigate for the inevitable negative impacts.
The continuing drought in the southeastern United States provides an example. Atlanta, Georgia is down to about a 90 day supply of water ... after that the people living in the nation's fifth fastest growing metropolitan area may have to stop flushing the toilets.
But, as the articles and links below demonstrate, while politicians and citizens may debate about slowing the population growth in and around Atlanta, nobody is doing anything ... but talking.
There is a lesson to be learned here, except that we doubt those in power will accept it: there are limits. And these leaders are not alone, many, many people simply do not want to consider that life in the future may have to be different than it is now. So many folks are insistent that there must be inexpensive food, water, gasoline, SUVs and credit cards tomorrow just as there was yesterday. Most people and politicians are in denial that too many people using too much of the Earth's resources is going to eventual mean scarcity -- period -- there is no getting around that absolute truth.
We can hope that in southeast U.S. winter brings plenty more rain to ease the immediate problem. But if that doesn't happen, we should all pay attention to see how government, business and residents react ... so that we can learn how to plan better for the day when something similar happens to us.
Link: Countdown Toward Nature's Tipping Point | Peter B. Young/The Daily News Tribune (Waltham, MA)
While much of MetroWest and the rest of America counted down toward the coming of the New Year and the dropping of that legendary ball in Times Square - "Nine, eight, seven, six!" - a different kind of countdown is taking place in the cities, towns and villages of the Southeast.
I'm referring to the number of days remaining in the water supplies of such splendid "New South" cities as Raleigh and Durham, NC, Columbia, SC, Atlanta, GA, Montgomery and Birmingham, AL, Knoxville, TN - and the list, of course, goes on.
Pick your turf down there, chances are the folks in that jurisdiction are struggling desperately in the midst of a historic drought. In Raleigh, the proud capital city of North Carolina, they talk about a drought so devastating that its equal has not been seen for more than 150 years. And of the 100 counties in North Carolina, the U.S. Drought Monitor lists 78 Tar Heel counties as suffering from "Exceptional Drought," the very worst category. The state's remaining 22 counties are about evenly divided between "Extreme Drought" and "Severe Drought."
(Let's just pass over for the moment any semantic arguments on these U.S. Government drought categories, in which "severe" somehow becomes the least serious. It is sufficient to note that most of the Old North State is covered by the most serious category, "exceptional.")
On our most recent visit to Raleigh, N.C., wherein reside our daughter, son-in-law and their two rambunctious toddlers, we made a point of going out to Falls Lake, the principal source of potable water for homes in the Raleigh area, now the undisputed "Ground Zero" for North Carolina's continuing drought. Islands of mud are now popping up through the surface of this fragile lake. We have also enjoyed on this trip our usual two-mile walks around the perimeter of similarly afflicted Shelley Lake.
Come to think of it, both these lakes and their shorelines were still, to outward appearances, healthy when we last visited here in July. We did not realize then that the balance had long since begun tipping towards drought. And that's just the point.
Nobody, least of all the meteorologists - can say with any degree of confidence when this particular drought began. It's not a discrete event like, say, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which began the great war in the Pacific in 1941. That attack took place on Sunday morning, at around 8 a.m., on December 7, 1941. ...
... Drought is far more subtle, far more insidious than that. It is a process which extends over months and years as the Earth finally heals its wounds deep in the ground where underground aquifers, streams and even rivers gently flow. To use a modern term, those underground conduits are the "infrastructure" that Mother Nature provides to make sure that most landscapes get the water they need.
As is always the case, nature's own "infrastructure" for distribution of water is a remarkable wonder to behold. But what happens to that particular "infrastructure" when a fast-growing population begins to exert its pressures, when developers start exchanging forests for gated communities, when ordinary folks suddenly become "consumers" and demand the so-called "good life" they can see in all directions?
What happens is that various natural and man-made infrastructures over the course of two or three generations become stressed, until the tipping point is reached. Can anyone doubt that Americans have long since gotten past President Teddy Roosevelt's injunction that we must all be "stewards" of the environment? Responsible stewardship is what we owe to our neighbors and to our children.
Can anyone doubt that the Chinese, still growing explosively, are also heading towards a tipping point that will rival any of ours? Their tipping point will most likely be a pollution crisis that will astonish us all, at least as much as their spectacular economic growth in recent decades.
Yes, yes, North and South Carolina both got some nice, solid rain last week, for which folks are properly and understandably grateful. More rain is expected this New Year's weekend. All well and good, and all thanks go to the Republican governor of Georgia, Sonny Purdue, who recently summoned his people to public prayer, so that their pleas for rain might be heard, shall we say, at the highest level.
But does this mean the drought is finally over? No, not at all. Because that underground "infrastructure" for water distribution has been seriously damaged in many American jurisdictions. Now, the term of art is that nature's underground infrastructure needs to be "recharged," like the kegs at a Frat House beer party.
The recent rain in the Raleigh area extended that city's threatened water supply from 91 to 95 days. When the days dwindle down, the estimates on the number of remaining days are always hedged with the stipulation that such estimates assume the same rate of water consumption and conservation efforts going forward. Any change in consumption and/or conservation patterns will be reflected sooner, rather than later in the governmental estimates.
Meanwhile, over in neighboring Durham, the situation is even more critical. Reported the Raleigh, NC News & Observer on Dec. 28: "Durham this week has 36 days of water left in its main supply, down from the 39 days it had as of Dec. 16. Losing just three days in a 10-day span - a slower than normal decline - is a small victory."
And the Raleigh City Council is expected next week to approve "Stage 2" water conservation rules, which are already being widely criticized as inadequate for the accelerating crisis. Asked about the nature of Stage 3 restrictions, a Raleigh city official acknowledged that he really couldn't say what the Stage 3 rules might be like, "because we've never been there before."
So here we sit in front of the big flat-screen TV waiting for the ball to drop. "Five, four, three, two, one, HAPPY NEW YEAR!"
Most of us are aware that a drought has produced a water shortage for metro Atlanta. Aside from prayer and cutbacks in water use, little has been done for long-term control of water use.
Will the current drought end? How long before we have another one? Droughts have persisted on the West Coast (see Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam) and in Australia for more than five years.
It has been stated that more than 800,000 people have moved into metro Atlanta since the year 2000. That accounts for many extra toilet flushes, showers, clothes washes, car washes, dish washes and cups of coffee.
Since there is a finite amount of water being collected in Lake Lanier (even in good years), there is a predictable limit to the number of people Atlanta can support.
One remedy is for our politicians to curtail or prevent further building of homes or office towers. Can you imagine the screams of anguish from developers, carpenters, real estate agents and building supply firms? The current problems with lagging home sales and failed mortgages have already raised a few screams. Will our leaders and politicians have the courage?
R.T. JACKSON, Atlanta
Link: EDITORIAL: State Must Get Smarter About Development | Athens Banner
As the curtain was coming down on 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau released some data that put a stunning set of figures on what most Georgians have experienced in countless anecdotal ways, from having more company on the roads to seeing more and more houses rising from the red clay of former farmland.
According to the Census Bureau, Georgia was the fifth-fastest growing state in the nation for the year ending July 1, 2007, adding more than 200,000 people. In somewhat more concrete terms, the 202,670 people added to the state's population are roughly the equivalent of two communities the size of Athens-Clarke County - when the thousands of University of Georgia students are in town.
Of that total, 125,000 people came to the state from elsewhere in the United States or from abroad; the balance of the increase was due to the fact that births outpaced deaths in the state for the year. Overall, the new residents represent a 2.2 percent increase in the state's population, which now stands at approximately 9.5 million, making Georgia the ninth most populous of the 50 states.
The reason for the increase, which has been a trend for Georgia for many years, is elegantly simple. As Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business noted last week for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "People come here for jobs and to get educated and to retire." The latest population numbers, Humphreys told the Atlanta newspaper, show "the fundamental strength that Georgia has as an economic engine."
There are, however, at least a couple of very real questions as to whether the state can, or even should, sustain the kind of population growth in which more than two Sanford Stadium-sized crowds come into the state during the course of 12 months.
The first question, brought home by the continuing drought, is whether this state can count on having enough water - a resource that is fundamental to residential development and much of industrial and commercial development - available in years to come. The drought has suggested, in metropolitan Atlanta as well as in this part of Northeast Georgia, that public water suppliers may be approaching the practical limits of their ability to provide a reliable supply of that basic resource.
When they convene next week in Atlanta, state lawmakers will consider a statewide water management plan. But even with such a plan in place, local governments will, in the future, still have to confront the question of whether their local water supplies can support the kind of business and industrial development that is needed to sustain a growing population. At the very least, those local governments likely will have to start making conservation a more integral part of local water management initiatives.
Another question with a direct bearing on whether the state can sustain the kind of population growth it has experienced during the past several years is how its officials propose to deal with transportation issues. Specifically, the question is whether the state will continue to believe that it can pave its way out of congestion, or whether it might be time to make meaningful investments in public transit alternatives such as buses and trains.
In recent years, the term "smart growth" - shorthand for planning and development strategies that seek to be sensitive to environmental and other quality-of-life issues in developing livable communities - has moved into the vernacular, sometimes to be derided by advocates of a less thoughtful approach to development.
But in recent months, as the perfect storm of population growth, traffic gridlock and water-supply issues has gathered across much of Georgia, it has become apparent that this state simply must get smarter about handling its development, or it will risk not having any development to handle.
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