AMERICA’S DROUGHT PREDICAMENT
AMERICA’S DROUGHT PREDICAMENT
By Frosty Wooldridge
August 7, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
On many of my transcontinental bicycle treks across six continents over the past 30 years, I noticed one repeating aspect of problems in Third World countries: leaders ignore problems until they become irreversible and unsolvable.
Once those problems manifest, citizens in those countries live with the consequences, i.e., they live in misery. What kind of misery? According to the March 14, 2005 issue of Time Magazine, eight million people starve to death annually around the globe. Over 35 percent of human beings on this planet do not enjoy clean drinking water, daily! Tuberculosis kills two million human beings annually. AIDS killed millions in Africa with millions more expected to die. In China, their government forces its citizens into one child per family. Why? Because, 50 years ago, they ignored their growing population until it exploded into 1.3 billion people. Such horrific numbers couldn’t be sustained. Today, even with one child families, they can’t solve their food, air and water dilemmas let alone present anything but a subsistence life for most of their citizens.
Do you think other countries’ leaders might step up to address such problems? Let’s look at the problems facing Mexico. In the last century, it grew from 50 million to 104 million. It’s expected to double to 200 million within this century. As witnessed in the past 20 years, it can’t feed, clothe or house its citizens—so 10 million Mexicans migrated illegally to the United States. As Mexico doubles again, we can expect no less than 10 to 30 or 40 million more Mexican migrants flooding into the USA.
You think it’s been hot and dry this summer? So what’s the problem? Short answer: water!
Two years ago, a devastating drought gripped Colorado and much of the West. Water rationing became the norm in Denver where I live. Reservoirs dropped to dangerous levels. That wouldn’t have been a problem in 1990 with only 3.1 million in the state. However, in a decade, 1.3 million people moved to Colorado. Demographers expect another four to six million within 44 years.
At the same time, California adds 20 million by 2035, Texas adds 12 by 2025 and Arizona will add up to four million. Check these figures out at populationreferencebureau.com and balance.org and numbersusa.com
In other words, as we allow millions to immigrate into America, we create commensurate penalties for our citizens. As if an echo or a mirror, our own leaders mimic the same actions as Third World leaders. Why? The future doesn’t concern them. However, the future involves all our children. You have to wonder where our children will flee for a better life.
Associated Press writer James McPherson on July 30, 2006 wrote a piece “Without Rain, Dakotas Dry Up.” He reported, “Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this summer will never end up as pasta or bread…what is left is hot winds blowing clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.”
More than 60 percent of the United States suffers abnormally dry or drought conditions this summer. I’ve traveled through 35 states thus far this summer. I’ve seen burned up corn and pigmy crops from the lack of water. This drought stretches from Georgia to Arizona and from Montana to Wisconsin.
Mark Svoboda, climatologist for the National Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska said, “The Dakotas are the epicenter…it’s just a wasteland in north central South Dakota.”
A South Dakota farmer, Paul Smokov, 81, said, “Conditions this summer are the worst…I could see it coming in May. That’s the time the good Lord gives us rains, but we never got them this year. This is the worst since the 1930s.”
Let’s sober you up a few notches. At current legal immigration levels of 1.1 million annually and our own population growth momentum of 1.0 million annually—that equals 2.1 million people added to the USA annually. Let’s multiply that by 10 years. That’s 21 million more people requiring food and water. If you add at least 1.5 million illegal aliens crossing US borders annually (Time Magazine reported 3 million annually), that equals a minimum of 15 million more people requiring food and water. When you add 21 million plus 15 million, you discover a net gain of 36 million people added to the United States in 10 years. In 20, it equals 72 million.
In a July front page exclusive, USA Today reported the United States will add 100 million by 2040.
Is there a chance that America will experience commensurate rain fall to provide food and water for that added 100 million in 34 years? Will we be able to feed and water the 300 million already in the USA? Is there a chance that science might produce miracle crops that grow without water? As America suffers farmland and wetland vanishing by the millions of acres for new malls, highways and housing, do you think crops might grow on concrete and asphalt? Could cows and sheep munch on fields of freeways?
Short answer: No!
You witness a president and Congress mirroring Third World leaders. Not one single senator steps up to the microphone to speak on this growing national nightmare. The president refuses to address America’s water crisis. Dick Cheney is clueless or could care less. Condi Rice, for all her brainpower, struggles under the nightmare of an irrelevant war. The presidential cabinet acts more like sycophants than knowledgeable leaders. They plunge the United States into the same irreversible and unsolvable consequences now experienced in China, India and Mexico.
What choices do Americans possess in light of this frightening future? You stand up, speak out, promote and elect leaders who will address our country’s water crisis and other accelerating problems, or your children suffer the same fate as citizens of China, India and Mexico.
© 2006 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
By Frosty Wooldridge
August 7, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
On many of my transcontinental bicycle treks across six continents over the past 30 years, I noticed one repeating aspect of problems in Third World countries: leaders ignore problems until they become irreversible and unsolvable.
Once those problems manifest, citizens in those countries live with the consequences, i.e., they live in misery. What kind of misery? According to the March 14, 2005 issue of Time Magazine, eight million people starve to death annually around the globe. Over 35 percent of human beings on this planet do not enjoy clean drinking water, daily! Tuberculosis kills two million human beings annually. AIDS killed millions in Africa with millions more expected to die. In China, their government forces its citizens into one child per family. Why? Because, 50 years ago, they ignored their growing population until it exploded into 1.3 billion people. Such horrific numbers couldn’t be sustained. Today, even with one child families, they can’t solve their food, air and water dilemmas let alone present anything but a subsistence life for most of their citizens.
Do you think other countries’ leaders might step up to address such problems? Let’s look at the problems facing Mexico. In the last century, it grew from 50 million to 104 million. It’s expected to double to 200 million within this century. As witnessed in the past 20 years, it can’t feed, clothe or house its citizens—so 10 million Mexicans migrated illegally to the United States. As Mexico doubles again, we can expect no less than 10 to 30 or 40 million more Mexican migrants flooding into the USA.
You think it’s been hot and dry this summer? So what’s the problem? Short answer: water!
Two years ago, a devastating drought gripped Colorado and much of the West. Water rationing became the norm in Denver where I live. Reservoirs dropped to dangerous levels. That wouldn’t have been a problem in 1990 with only 3.1 million in the state. However, in a decade, 1.3 million people moved to Colorado. Demographers expect another four to six million within 44 years.
At the same time, California adds 20 million by 2035, Texas adds 12 by 2025 and Arizona will add up to four million. Check these figures out at populationreferencebureau.com and balance.org and numbersusa.com
In other words, as we allow millions to immigrate into America, we create commensurate penalties for our citizens. As if an echo or a mirror, our own leaders mimic the same actions as Third World leaders. Why? The future doesn’t concern them. However, the future involves all our children. You have to wonder where our children will flee for a better life.
Associated Press writer James McPherson on July 30, 2006 wrote a piece “Without Rain, Dakotas Dry Up.” He reported, “Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this summer will never end up as pasta or bread…what is left is hot winds blowing clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.”
More than 60 percent of the United States suffers abnormally dry or drought conditions this summer. I’ve traveled through 35 states thus far this summer. I’ve seen burned up corn and pigmy crops from the lack of water. This drought stretches from Georgia to Arizona and from Montana to Wisconsin.
Mark Svoboda, climatologist for the National Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska said, “The Dakotas are the epicenter…it’s just a wasteland in north central South Dakota.”
A South Dakota farmer, Paul Smokov, 81, said, “Conditions this summer are the worst…I could see it coming in May. That’s the time the good Lord gives us rains, but we never got them this year. This is the worst since the 1930s.”
Let’s sober you up a few notches. At current legal immigration levels of 1.1 million annually and our own population growth momentum of 1.0 million annually—that equals 2.1 million people added to the USA annually. Let’s multiply that by 10 years. That’s 21 million more people requiring food and water. If you add at least 1.5 million illegal aliens crossing US borders annually (Time Magazine reported 3 million annually), that equals a minimum of 15 million more people requiring food and water. When you add 21 million plus 15 million, you discover a net gain of 36 million people added to the United States in 10 years. In 20, it equals 72 million.
In a July front page exclusive, USA Today reported the United States will add 100 million by 2040.
Is there a chance that America will experience commensurate rain fall to provide food and water for that added 100 million in 34 years? Will we be able to feed and water the 300 million already in the USA? Is there a chance that science might produce miracle crops that grow without water? As America suffers farmland and wetland vanishing by the millions of acres for new malls, highways and housing, do you think crops might grow on concrete and asphalt? Could cows and sheep munch on fields of freeways?
Short answer: No!
You witness a president and Congress mirroring Third World leaders. Not one single senator steps up to the microphone to speak on this growing national nightmare. The president refuses to address America’s water crisis. Dick Cheney is clueless or could care less. Condi Rice, for all her brainpower, struggles under the nightmare of an irrelevant war. The presidential cabinet acts more like sycophants than knowledgeable leaders. They plunge the United States into the same irreversible and unsolvable consequences now experienced in China, India and Mexico.
What choices do Americans possess in light of this frightening future? You stand up, speak out, promote and elect leaders who will address our country’s water crisis and other accelerating problems, or your children suffer the same fate as citizens of China, India and Mexico.
© 2006 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
posted by shummer60 at Tuesday, August 08, 2006
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