Inherit the Wind

Finally. It took a killer drought to finally wake up Californians, who have led the madness of mass transportation powered by a single car. This and the headlong transfer of transport from trains to diesel long haul trucks, plus the clear cutting of most of North America’s forests (the Amazon is getting it now), has resulted in a tragedy and reckoning that is on us.

The lunacy of what California has done to with the Central Valley Project will go down in history as whoop assed stupid.

You see I have started to use that term, I know, I know, its name calling; but how else can you define this madness?

Oh, all the petroleum we blithely burn every day, in the millions of gallons, is finite.

Just like the water we throw away every day, oil and gas is not forever.

Almond and walnuts are NOT a vital food source; they are ornamentals almost. But those beautiful trees, which no doubt help some in reducing CO2, a pittance, use 80% of California’s water. And, farmers have invested billions in them. If they let them die, it takes years to grow them back.

Read “The Worst of Times”, a book on the Dust Bowl.

We are doing the same thing those farmers in the early 1900s did. We are using governmental programs, in their case it was the program of genocide of Native Americans and giving the land to immigrants. Those immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe, did what they were trained to do; plant wheat and lots of it.

Now the prairie was thousands of years in the making. And the “Great American Desert” was known for brutal droughts and cold spells, and for winds coming down the plains at great force.

But from about 1900 to 1930 there was a lull in this normal weather. And a war created a huge market for wheat. So the immigrants planted in soil that never should have been planted, killed the buffalo, shot the Indians (those who dared hang around), and planted, and planted and planted.

Then the war ended, the market crashed and the rain STOPPED. The Comanche had warned the immigrants that the land was considered “no mans land” and they refused to live there! That’s right, they would not live there.

If you check what is left of Native American history for California, you will not find vast settlements in the central valley, but in the headwaters, where the weather was better, the heat less, and the rivers did not flood all the time.

Of course, the Central Valley Project was built to stop the incessant floods that occurred from 1870 to 1940 caused by the gold rush, that literally destroyed California’s watershed. Add to that the madness of copper mines and other mining operations that denuded the land, leaving an ecological nightmare.

In the western part of Shasta County, the fumes from the smelters at the turn of the century killed hundreds and turned people’s hair green!

So the Central Valley Project was finally finished in 1963, actually later, and the water was saved and flowed. And farmers, who up to then had planted crops the natural environment supported, quickly bought up water rights and planed RICE (and later almonds; etc).

Rice! The crop of monsoon soaked Asia suddenly, in the 1970s, became a billion dollar industry. And rice needs water, lots of it.

Meanwhile California remains an arid area (a Mediterranean climate) with a history of drought. Add to that increasing temperatures caused by global warming, and we have……”The Worst of Times”.

And still, we have a vocal minority (at least I think they are a minority) who say this is all a liberal plot to grow government. The latest is the idea (?) to build pipelines from back east to bring the water to the west coast. Don’t these fools study evaporation.

And our governor sides on the side of the almond growers.

Go outside today. I assume you can and spend two hours in the same place and observe. Imagine you are a Native American, as I am partly, and witness the Great Mystery’s work. You will also witness, probably, the squeal of brakes, the roar of engines, the contrails of jets in the sky, the endless hot north wind and the mountains with no snow…none.

The Native Americans warned us. They told us our disregard for the Great Mystery’s home, our responsibility to protect, would have a reckoning, nature setting it straight.

It is happening right now. And we are just beginning to see it…we won’t see things the same again.

The tragedy is it was there all the time, the wanton destruction of nature’s balance, the greed, the genocide, the horror, the horror…..

Our grandchildren will inherit the wind.