Feeling the Dry

Feeling dry lately? Haven't we all? It's not a coincidence.

And we're far from alone. Sao Paulo, Brazil's & South America's most populous city, is enduring its worst drought in 50 years. Meanwhile in Iran, the water level of the Middle East's largest lake has dropped 95% in the past 20 years. In Northeast India, the increasing frequency of drought now threatens its famous Tea industry. And coming dangerously close to home, California's epic drought may turn out to be the worst the state has experienced in 500 years as farm crops and urban water supplies throughout the state are feeling the burn (and the dry).

Of course, we're also feeling the dry right here. Rural Nevada has been enduring a rather harsh drought for some time now. Yet as the powers that be in Southern Nevada become increasingly worried about the Las Vegas Valley's water supply, they're renewing calls to build the Snake Valley Pipeline to divert water from an already parched region. Tensions are already mounting high in Nevada and elsewhere in the US, and those tensions show no sign of letting up any time soon.

Yet in some corners of Capitol Hill, the usual suspects want to continue denying reality. And not only that, but they're also trying to prevent meaningful action to take on the increasingly obvious threat of climate change. Some are even going as far as claiming that "Noah's Ark" is "proof" that climate change isn't a big deal.

We wonder if they'd dare to say such nonsense directly to the faces of people who have suffered from recent floods, drought, or other forms of extreme weather as of late. If they need any more real proof of the real danger of the climate crisis, they can take a peek at those fast glaciers of Greenland... Or just notice the interest groups waging epic political battles in California & Nevada over dwindling water supplies.

We're all feeling the dry here. It's why we're now so thirsty. But if we truly want to quench that thirst for the long term, we must look beyond "quick fix solutions" that don't truly fix our long term problems. We must finally deal with what's making us so damned dry (while simultaneously drying or flooding other parts of the world) in the first place.