Most people can tolerate a drought - even Californians, captivated by the sight of their burning homes and resolving to build again, hopefully in time for next year’s inferno.
You hear the same question in the aftermath of every natural disaster: Why tempt fate by living in a place that could easily be destroyed by fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, blizzards, earthquakes or - pick a catastrophe of your choice. Why indeed?
Maybe we have no choice. Maybe we are programmed to seek a lemmming-like self destruction as a way of culling the herd: subconscious population control.
Why the disaster in the first place? That’s easy. Maybe its a deliberate act of God - an explanation as good as any other. Payback time for the massacre of a million plus Iraqis . Mother Nature delivering a little shock and awe to complacent, indifferent Americans.
Mother Nature has another little surprise in store for us - another drought in another state - this one compounded by federal regulations guaranteed to make conditions even worse.
Lake Lanier, a 38,000 acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million Georgians with water is expected to run dry in less than 3 months. Smaller reservoirs are being depleted even faster.
Georgia is caught in the middle of a Southeast experiencing one of the worst droughts in history.
As usual in similar disaster situations, apparently no one saw it coming - until too late. Hypothetical preparations now assume a belated urgency.
Suggested quick fixes include building more reservoirs, piping in water from neighboring states, desalinating Atlantic Ocean saltwater, draining lakes (that may never refill ), extreme conservation measures and increased use of treated waste water to replenish the water system.
Governor Sonny Perdue favors the water conservation approach and also reducing the flow of water out of federally controlled lakes. The Army Corps of Engineers releases more than a billion gallons of water every day from Lake Lanier.
Why? For the benefit of a coal-fired power plant downstream in Florida. And to protect, under the Endangered Species Act, two species of mussels in a Florida river. Mussels!
Who are these mussel eaters? How big is their lobby? What is the extent of their Republican party campaign contributions? What’s next? Alabama oysters? Louisiana crawfish? What kinds of creatures and their politically connected advocates will lay claim to the drinking water of thirsty Georgians?
Governor Perdue, feeling more than a little endangered himself, decided to take action. He declared a state of emergency on Saturday, October 20, and made an urgent request for President Bush to declare a major disaster area.
White House press secretary Dana Perino sprang into action. She advised the agitated governor that his request would be taken under advisement. Probably not the response the governor expected.
He asked the president for permission to suspend federal regulations requiring the draining of Georgia’s reservoirs to protect Floridian mussels downstream. President Bush, of course, is unavailable, currently engaged in a photo op in California with Governor Schwarzenegger, trying to assure people that help is on the way. President Bush apparently learned his lesson. He actually made an appearance on the ground this time, rather than waving to disaster victims from an airplane flyover.
Unwilling to wait forever for his request to make its way out of secretary Perino’s to-do box, Governor Persue asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to cut back on the water it drains from Georgia’s reservoirs.
Georgia lawmakers point out that complying with the Endangered Species Act allows neighboring states to exploit the law to take water from Georgia’s lakes and reservoirs.
Georgians are being asked to take shorter showers and to limit outdoor watering to 3 days per week. Governor Perdue said the state hasn’t yet formed a contingency plan for when the reservoirs run dry, other than to conserve water and hope for the best. It is also hoped that someone in Washington will realize that Georgians are somewhat higher on the food chain than mussels and therefore deserve superior rights to the greedy shellfish.
While Georgia drafts more water restriction proposals, the crisis continues. 90 days is not a long time. When the water runs out, you’ll see a real crisis. Millions of Georgians with no water to drink. Unable to wash or use any sanitary facilities. Unable to fight the drought-driven fires that will surely envelop them.
They’re in for a little taste of the “democracy” we brought to Iraq: only an hour or two of electricity a day - in blistering 115 to 125 degree heat. Limited or no sanitation facilities. No water! Or limited water supplies unsafe to drink due to malfunctioning sewage treatment plants. Spoiled food. Diseases of every kind running rampant - with no available treatment.
No water. Maybe its payback time again. Mother Nature seeking retribution. Time for Georgians to pay a price - dying of thirst while Floridian mussels grow fat and happy with all the cool, clear Georgian water they can drink.
As a general rule, you can survive without water for only 3 or 4 days. After that, you become a little desperate - if you’re still alive. Desperate enough to do almost anything imaginable for a drink. It will be interesting to see how the pending crisis plays itself out.
Maybe the government will come through after all - but I wouldn’t bet on it. They already have a culprit in mind, to avoid any responsibility, and any anticipated bailout, for the fires in California.
A story appeared yesterday on Fox Fake News, the government’s propaganda channel, claiming the out-of-control fires in Southern California represented a terror plot by ... are you ready? ... Al Qaeda! Fox said the FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month about an “Al Qaeda” terrorist in detention, who talked about a plot to start forest fires all over the western United States.
Fox forgot to mention that this memo surfaced 4 years ago, in 2003, not last month as first claimed. (Fox viewers, as usual, are completely misinformed again.)
Pathetic! That’s the kind of non-government we’re forced to endure. One that refuses to accept responsibility for anything. A “government” whose sole function apparently is to steal as much of the world’s oil as it can before being put out of business.
As for the California wildfires, local and state officials did a commendable job all around - proving to many the unnecessary nature of a federal government that is more often a part of the problem rather than the solution.
Bush cut infrastructure funding to finance his Mideast wars. Dead brush accumulated uncollected in high risk areas. Funding for water drop aircraft was cut. Most of the National Guard, including their needed heavy equipment, was sent to Iraq.
No wonder he blames Al Qaeda. Let New Orleans drown and Georgia dry up and California burn to the ground. Cut the funding for everything to fight wars of conquest - for whose benefit? We have little to fear from mythological terrorists. Our own government is the enemy determined to destroy us. If we let it.
The title of this little essay is Disaster Revelations. The culpability of our federal government is not exactly news to anyone. One of the real revelations, to my mind, has to do with the ever-increasing polarization of Americans. The ever-widening class discrimination which alienates our connectedness to each other.
The chasm between rich and poor grows wider every day. The rich become super rich - and more isolated from the vast hordes of people who will never enjoy their privilege or status. The middle class expends its efforts to stay in place, clutching at disappearing opportunities, unwilling to accept its destined decline into poverty.
The poor become poorer, hoping for the slightest improvement in their condition, accepting empty political promises of a better future, concerning themselves with inane television programs designed to coerce them into spending their meager wages on unnecessary things - and to accept their assigned status as the unthinking, consuming engine driving their country - which has all but abandoned them - to new and inconceivable heights.
The difference between the rich and poor is almost the difference between two species. Shared experiences are no longer really shared at all. Victims of a natural disaster experience the event in completely different ways - each believing their own reactions to be the only ones of value.
Nothing demonstrates this difference better than the obvious comparisons between the victims of hurrican Katrina and the current victims of California wildfires.
Imagine for a moment that you are old, poor and black (3 strikes against you already) and also a New Orleans survivor of hurricane Katrina. You watch the non stop TV coverage of California burning - and you remember - and you compare.
You remember the insurance company that denied your claim after accepting premiums for decades. If you had wind damage, you were only covered for floods. If you had water damage, you were only covered for wind. You swallow your frustration and accept the vicious, predatory actions of legalized theft that leaves you without funds or shelter or any legal redress.
You’re impressed momentarily with the figure of half a million evacuees in California - comparing it to the 90,000 square miles ravaged by Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. You watch one million dollar mansion after another go up in flames - comparing it to losing your own home under 15 feet of water in New Orleans. Comparing the handful of fire-related deaths in California to the 1800 deaths from Katrina.
An interesting comparison. One related to wealth, one to poverty and color. Your chances of survival were obviously much greater in California - able to participate in the exclusive protection only wealth can bring. Wealth, and the right color.
You remember the Louisiana Superdome and survival under concentration camp conditions. A million people fled New Orleans and its suburbs and about 25,000 - elderly, poor, without assets or means to escape, living paycheck to paycheck and still awaiting the month end checks that were never issued - found themselves at the Superdome refuge of last resort.
You are still haunted by that traumatic experience. Total chaos. No services. No food or water or help for 5 days. Fights. Rapes. Suicides. Drug overdoses. Deaths from heat exhaustion. Deaths from 6 to 100 reported - the final figure inconclusive.
You compare this to the Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego that entertained some 10,000 evacuees from the California fires. Evacuees that had all the services they needed. Food. Drink. Cots. Massage therapists. Clowns to amuse the kids. Yoga instructors. All evacuees expected to be gone by the 3:05 kickoff time for the Chargers game on Sunday. An adventure and a picnic and a good time was had by all.
Clowns? Massage therapists? Yoga instructors? People even came around with special food for pets! A Disneyland made-for-movie disaster bearing only the faintest resemblance to the tragedy in New Orleans. Not the same experience at all.
Two years later you’re still in New Orleans, living in a cramped FEMA trailer, in a neighborhood still in ruins. Reconstruction funds are slow in coming and now, two years after Katrina, you’re still waiting for help. Maybe you should be grateful that they’ve finally picked up all the dead bodies lying in the streets.
You watch one million dollar home after another go up in flames in California, and try as you might, you feel no sympathy at all. In fact, you take a certain consolation in the temporary misfortunes of others - these California millionaires who undoubtedly had the right insurance - who will write off their losses and spend some of their hoarded millions to build something even more spendid.
I understand that for an extra annual insurance premium of $10,000 any California millionaire can have the exclusive use of his very own fire department. If you have the money, you can survive a wildfire.
If you’re a poor, old black man who has lost everything, struggling to survive in a FEMA trailer in New Orleans, trying for 2 years to get a little help from a criminally negligent government, a private fire department is an idea as much divorced from reality as science fiction.
Imagine these two, a millionaire and the old black guy, meeting in a bar, discussing their “shared experiences” - each suspicious of the other, each cautious in the presence of a different species. Until the old black guy remembers a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The rich are different from you and me.”
And then Hemingway’s response, “Yes, they have more money.” And the realization that beneath the facade of privilege and superiority and power lies the disguised, helpless acceptance of the human condition - and the real shared experience after all.
You felt sad and diminished at the unaccustomed schadenfreude, but you dismiss these feelings as being beneath you and undeserving of your consideration. A fellow human has suffered, and who are you to judge? It might be more constructive to focus your attention where it rightly belongs, and try to come up with a logical answer as to what to do about it.
Hurricane Katrina was not to blame. New Orleans flooded due to failure of the federally built levee system. Citizens of Georgia, California and Louisiana are made to pay an expensive price - not because of any natural disaster, but because of a government that no longer cares.
If you’re old, poor and black in New Orleans, be advised that you have been abandoned by your government. You have no government - absolutely no one in Washington to represent you. That goes for Georgians who mistakenly believe that they are more important in the government’s eyes than Florida mussels.
That goes even for you California millionaires - you of privileged, self-deluded status - who are as expendable as anyone else to the voracious appetites of an out of control totalitarian government.
Forget natural disasters for awhile. They come and go and there’s not much you can do about them. Concentrate on the genuine - maybe final - disaster that is yet to come. Ignore the lies and propaganda - and figure out a way of avoiding war with Iran. A war that could so easily become a world-wide nuclear conflagration.
If that happens, you can forget about floods and fires and droughts. You won’t have a worry left in the world. The endangered species will be the human race - and for the first time, we have the power to destroy it completely.
Floridians? Go ahead and enjoy your mussels. Just ignore those pictures of dry, parched, thirsty Georgians in your head.
Californians? Start building concrete homes - they don’t burn so easily. Better yet, move away to another, safer state. Unless you really enjoy the fires, mudslides and earthquakes.
Louisianians? Help is on the way. FEMA said so. Would FEMA lie? You better believe it. Just hope for the best. It’s about all you can do.
The rest of you? Keep praying for an asteroid to hit Washington when Congress is in session. Pray real hard.
"Keep praying for an asteroid to hit Washington when Congress is in session..." ...and Ron Paul is in New Hampshire.
Posted by: SueM | October 28, 2007 at 09:10 AM