“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.”

“Based on the record of the last seven years, we can take it for granted that the Bush administration hasn’t the slightest desire to glance down; that no one in FEMA who matters has given the situation the thought it deserves; and that, on this subject, as on so many others, top administration officials are just hoping to make it to January 2009 without too many more scar marks. But, if not the federal government, shouldn’t somebody be asking? Shouldn’t somebody check out what’s actually down there?”

“To find even tentative answers to such questions you have to leave the mainstream. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, for example, interviewed paleontologist and author of The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery recently on the topic of a “world on fire.” Flannery offered the following observation:

“It’s not just the Southeast of the United States. Europe has had its great droughts and water shortages. Australia is in the grip of a drought that’s almost unbelievable in its ferocity. Again, this is a global picture. We’re just getting much less usable water than we did a decade or two or three decades ago. It’s a sort of thing again that the climate models are predicting. In terms of the floods, again we see the same thing. You know, a warmer atmosphere is just a more energetic atmosphere. So if you ask me about a single flood event or a single fire event, it’s really hard to make the connection, but take the bigger picture and you can see very clearly what’s happening.”

Great comprehensive post from Tom Engelhardt on the reality of water issues. These are just a few of the many quotable facts in his post.

And I’m wondering what price will initiate real change. The recent protests in Burma against the military oppressive government weren’t triggered by human rights abuses, they were the result of the government removing their artificially low gas prices (under 10 cents a gallon). Overnight it became virtually impossible to afford to drive. This triggered an entire country to rise and confront their government on a wide range of issues.

Recent earnings reports from the big oil companies had their results down sharply from the year before (when they recorded the highest profits in history for any kind of company). Ask yourself why? My answer?

They have been intentionally keeping gas prices at the pump from rising as oil prices have risen because they know the social implications of a sharp rise. One economist estimates that a $10 rise in oil should increase retail gas prices by 2.2 cents a gallon. Oil has risen almost $50/gallon without a related rise in gas prices over the past year. However, on the heels of these earnings reports and the extremely unstable political situation in the Middle East (Kurds and Turks fighting, Musharraf showing his true thug nature, Israel and Hamas fighting, sword-rattling between us and Iran…) we’re finally seeing prices rise. High test today was $3.47! Now these are New York state prices that include high taxes but…

So oil is nearing $100/barrel which puts the true cost, adjusted for inflation, higher than at our worst point during the Arab oil crisis of the seventies. I’m old enough to remember gas lines, rationing and an uptake in public transportation. I imagine that these things won’t happen until we hit $5 because we’re slightly more efficient mileage-wise than we were then. But only slightly, thanks to the insane lobbying to keep gas-guzzling behemoths legal by the US auto industry.

We could easily be driving 100 MPG vehicles today. If we were, we wouldn’t be at war in the Middle East, we’d be in a position to tell the Saudis to stop this fundamentalist craziness, we’d be an example in fighting climate change for the rest of the world and we’d be creating a better world for our grandchildren.

So bring on the $5/gallon gas if that’s what it takes to wake us up.

BTW, GM posted a $39 billion dollar loss today. This would never have happened if they had any real strategic long-term planning instead of the afore-mentioned lobbying and reliance on old technology instead of innovation.

It has started. Arizona governor Bill Richardson opened the first salvo by suggesting that the Northeast should ’share’ their water with the Southwest. Apparently we’re ‘awash’ in it and they desperately need it to justify building more golf courses , growing more lawns in desert lands and building more McMansions. Now that the Colorado is running dry and their aquifers are empty, they are looking north and covetously eyeing the Great Lakes.

Only one problem. Richardson is running for President and he can’t win without the Northeast so he quickly backed off from his comments. This kind of thing only reinforces that we need a comprehensive water rights policy that is national and international. Alabama and Florida are fighting over watershed rights that transcend state and national boundaries. California and the Southwestern states are doing the same and Mexico can only look on as less and less water flows downstream to them.

No one is advocating the real changes that must be made:

• Immediately put a moratorium on any new construction that cannot show rights to at least 50 years worth of water supplies not currently claimed by others
• Drought areas must impose permanent mandatory water conservation plans on all sectors including businesses
• Long term water reclamation, storage, transportation and generation strategies must be developed and funded
• Rates for water use must immediately be raised two-fold to put the nation on an emergency notice that is a looming national problem
• Raised taxes on excess water use should be funneled into long term water conservation and reclamation strategies

This is a real time problem. And no one, especially the politicians, is doing anything about it.

Kevin of Desmogblog has put together a document that actually shows the entire White House hatchet job on this critical CDC report on the effects of global warming on disease.

His biggest discovery? 50% of the report was redacted, over 1500 words. This is criminal and unscientific. Disease outbreaks are going to be a major negative result of climate change and it is the CDC’s mission to plan for them so that stockpiles of medicine can be prepared, hospitals prepped in advance and immunization programs launched. By censoring the message of this report the White House may be taking actions that could result in thousands of deaths in the future.