Category: Miscellaneous

In response to the Pacific Institute’s new report calling for California farmers to pay more for less water, the farmers are saying that the water crisis is green-made and that the solution is more water.

According to ClimateWire:

Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, called the current drought “man-made” and the Pacific Institute’s recommendations “nonsensical.”

The group’s recommendation to raise water rates, Wade said, “isn’t based on water being more expensive, or it costing more to get it to consumer, or some use for this added cost. It’s simply raising the cost so that fewer people can afford it, and therefore less water is going to be used and it will be reallocated to some other use. We think that’s gaming the California water market to the disadvantage of people who grow fresh fruit and vegetables and nut products and things we’ve grown accustomed to.”

Pumping restrictions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are also not needed, Wade said. “We are facing a man-made drought, a regulatory drought and a situation where water is reprioritized away from its historic use to a point where tens of thousands of acres have been fallowed in the Central Valley and 40,000 people are out of work.”

Another farm group, the California Farm Bureau Federation, said increasing the water supply through recycling and desalination would obviate the need to cut usage or raise prices. “Certainly, improved water efficiency will be one of the ways that California solves its water crisis, but that water crisis is too severe to be solved in a one-dimensional way,” said group spokesman Dave Kranz.

“To sustain food production here in California and accommodate the growing population we have and environmental values we’re trying to maintain, we have to develop a package of water solutions that includes new storage, recycling, desalination — all of those strategies have to be part of the mix.”

From The Times (July 24):

… Our intransigent refusal to choose green will be met by a new militancy from those who believe we must be saved from ourselves. Ultra-green states cannot arise without some form of forced switch to autocracy; the dictatorship of the environmentalists.

The old two-cow analogy is a useful one. You have two cows. The communist steals both your cows, and may give you some milk, if you’re not bourgeois scum. The fascist lets you keep the cows but seizes the milk and sells it back to you. Today’s Green says you can keep the cows, but should choose to give them up as their methane-rich farts will unleash hell at some unspecified point in the future. You say, sod it, I’ll keep my cows thanks. Tomorrow’s green, the Bolshevik green, shoots the cows and makes you forage for nuts.

If the choice is between ecological meltdown, or a more immediate curtailment of our freedom, where do those of us who are neither red nor green, but a recalcitrant grey, turn? Back to those small desires, and a blinkered hope that the choice never becomes so stark. If it does, I’ll take my chances with Armageddon.

Share this:

• Email
• Print
• X
• Facebook
• More

• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Reddit

From The Times (July 24):

… Our intransigent refusal to choose green will be met by a new militancy from those who believe we must be saved from ourselves. Ultra-green states cannot arise without some form of forced switch to autocracy; the dictatorship of the environmentalists.

The old two-cow analogy is a useful one. You have two cows. The communist steals both your cows, and may give you some milk, if you’re not bourgeois scum. The fascist lets you keep the cows but seizes the milk and sells it back to you. Today’s Green says you can keep the cows, but should choose to give them up as their methane-rich farts will unleash hell at some unspecified point in the future. You say, sod it, I’ll keep my cows thanks. Tomorrow’s green, the Bolshevik green, shoots the cows and makes you forage for nuts.

If the choice is between ecological meltdown, or a more immediate curtailment of our freedom, where do those of us who are neither red nor green, but a recalcitrant grey, turn? Back to those small desires, and a blinkered hope that the choice never becomes so stark. If it does, I’ll take my chances with Armageddon.

Share this:

• Email
• Print
• X
• Facebook
• More

• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Reddit

From Bloomberg:

…almost two-thirds of U.S. investors say climate change is a minor danger or “no real threat,” according to the first Quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll.

But European and Asian investors hold the opposite view:

In Europe and Asia, Bloomberg users are “more concerned about their governments taking too little action,” [pollster Ann Selzer] said. “In the U.S., the common response is fear government will take too much action.”

It just goes to show that Europeans and Asians learned nothing from the 20th century.

Below is a photo of Poland’s Belchatow power plant, the largest single carbon dioxide emitter in Europe — about 31 million metric tons annually.

Belchatow is driving European greens nuts as it plans to increase its generating capacity by 20% next year — even though this means buying more emission allowances. Belchatow also signals the failure of the European emissions trading scheme, the British green group Sandbag told ClimateWire.

So for being the largest emitter of life-giving CO2 in Europe and simultaneously helping to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol, let’s take a moment to venerate the aptly named Belchatow.

The American Meteorological Society this week endorsed federal funding of geoengineering — that is, the Society believes that taxpayers should support surplus, unemployable, over-educated madmen willing to research how best to blot out the sun and implement other bizarre schemes in hopes of  slowing climate change. Our only question is where the giant rubber-room research facility will be constructed.

Listen to Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) shock Bill Maher with the news that he doesn’t support cap-and-trade.

At a Council of Foreign Relations meeting last month, Sen. John Kerry (D-Teresa’s skirt) said, according to ClimateWire:

“Almost indescribable, catastrophic things can happen” should concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere exceed the “tipping point” of 450 parts per million, Kerry said at the meeting. “The crisis in Darfur, Sudan, is but one example of how climate change can contribute to a more dangerous world.“

Also according to the report,

Kerry noted that so-called “environmentally displaced persons” may soon outnumber war refugees but added that the United States faces other climate-related security risks beyond refugee crises.

Earth to Sen. Kerry: Drought is a weather event, not climate change. The Darfur crisis involves civil war not carbon dioxide.

BTW, let’s not forget that Sen. Kerry previously said that the Waxman-Markey bill won’t work.

At a Council of Foreign Relations meeting last month, Sen. John Kerry (D-Teresa’s skirt) said, according to ClimateWire:

“Almost indescribable, catastrophic things can happen” should concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere exceed the “tipping point” of 450 parts per million, Kerry said at the meeting. “The crisis in Darfur, Sudan, is but one example of how climate change can contribute to a more dangerous world.“

Also according to the report,

Kerry noted that so-called “environmentally displaced persons” may soon outnumber war refugees but added that the United States faces other climate-related security risks beyond refugee crises.

Earth to Sen. Kerry: Drought is a weather event, not climate change. The Darfur crisis involves civil war not carbon dioxide.

BTW, let’s not forget that Sen. Kerry previously said that the Waxman-Markey bill won’t work.