Water is life. When the land dries up, things start to die. The National Climate Data Center has this to say about October's drought situation for the U.S.:
About 42 percent of the western U.S. (Rockies westward) fell in the moderate to extreme drought category, and about a third fell in the severe to extreme category (as defined by the Palmer Drought Index) by the end of this month.
The persistent dryness has depleted soil moisture, ravaged pastures, and dried up streams. Soil moisture (both modeled and observed) and streamflow (both modeled and observed) were most severely affected in the three core drought areas: the Southeast, upper Great Lakes, and West. - NCDC
Putting the direct impact on human populations aside, droughts are yet another environmental 'feedback loop'. Plants and soil life that, when given the chance, work to sequester greenhouse gases, die and become a carbon source instead of a carbon sink. Lack of moisture can quickly translate to lack of soil fertility, and both combined equate to increased emissions, decreased productivity, and, ultimately, suffering for wildlife and humanity.
Add in human reactionary responses and we have another feedback loop. Restaurants in Atlanta, under pressure to reduce water consumption, are doing things that are normally regarded as environmental no-no's, like using disposable paper plates to save on washing, and refusing to offer tap water, selling bottled water instead. Human efforts to continue a semblance of normality in drought conditions cause an increase in energy consumption. Cattle ranchers, as you'd expect, want to keep their stock alive, so must truck water in to do so. And for at least one town in the U.S. south-east, this is what it's come to for humans as well:
As twilight falls over this Tennessee town, Mayor Tony Reames drives up a dusty dirt road to the community's towering water tank and begins his nightly ritual in front of a rusty metal valve.
With a twist of the wrist, he releases the tank's meager water supply, and suddenly this sleepy town is alive with activity. Washing machines whir, kitchen sinks fill and showers run.
About three hours later, Reames will return and reverse the process, cutting off water to the town's 145 residents.
The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, which sits near the border with Alabama about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Chattanooga, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out. - International Herald Tribune
How does the water get into the tank?
Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. — before the school bus stopping and starting blocks the narrow road — and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Alabama. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons (75,000 liters) of water from the hydrant to Orme's tank. - International Herald Tribune
Atlanta, the current focal point of the drought, due to five million residents all dependent on two man-made reservoirs - water supplies that are shrinking at a rate of one foot per week - is a whole other matter entirely. You just can't truck water to five million people and in a drought-ridden region, where exactly would that water come from anyway?
Back in Orme, Mr Reames said he feared for Atlanta. "We can survive. We're 145 people but you've got 4.5 million there. What are they going to do?" - Telegraph
What are they going to do, indeed?
 Chattahoochee Watershed |
With a drought that shows no sign of slowing (El Niño's twisted twin, La Niña, is expected to bring continued dry weather to the southeast well into 2008), and some city officials predicting that Atlanta only has three months of water left before they hit bottom, I'm sure there are many in Atlanta looking for answers. But, although the Georgia State Governor may be praying for rain, and humbly making admissions of human wastefulness on the state Capitol's steps, I wonder if a better question to ask might not be "what should we have done?" As Larry Copeland and Patrick O'Driscoll wrote in USA Today, Atlanta "should have seen it coming."
Sure, we can't roll back the clock - but what if we could? Would we do things differently? Would we have the courage to make the necessary difficult decisions before hitting the hard wall of resource constraints? Would we, to pick one example out of the hat, have the courage to stand up to water intensive companies, like the Atlanta Coca-Cola plant? The U.S. is now dealing with an almost identical situation seen but largely ignored in other countries. It's no longer just 'their problem' anymore. Will Atlanta residents allow Coca-Cola to cry "let them drink coke"?
Of course, this is not all the fault of one company, or even a host of companies - although all contribute. The mix of causes is wide-ranging and complicated - some obscure. We have decades of encouraging overpopulation in the city, over development and under investment. We cut down forests, which would generate water vapour, and as the web of life starts to break up, more trees die inadvertently as a result. We have the weather phenomenon, La Niña, as a direct causal influence, and although the jury is still out on how global warming may be influencing these phenomena, El Niño and La Niña have intensified since the 1970s. Another little understood, but potential contributor is global dimming. Aside from the generally accepted understanding that our aerosol pollutants are having a counteracting cooling effect on the planet, there's also a lesser known possibility that our aerosols are reducing precipitation.
There are an ever increasing number of these 'indirect effects', but the two most discussed are the aerosol/cloud opacity interaction (more aerosols provide more sites for water to condense in clouds, thus cloud droplets are smaller and clouds become more opaque), and the cloud lifetime effect (smaller droplets make it more difficult to make drops big enough to rain, and so clouds live longer). - Real Climate
 The Alabama Farley Nuclear Plant Nuclear is the most water-intensive of all electricity sources |
Then of course is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, controlling water flows from Lake Lanier to accommodate, amongst others, the enormous water needs of a downstream Gulf Power coal-fired power plant and cooling requirements of the Alabama Farley twin-reactor nuclear power station.
There is also concern that the south-east -- normally the wettest region in the U.S. -- could become tinder dry, and burn, like we've recently witnessed in California, Greece, Australia and many other places. In the worst case scenario, Atlanta could become another New Orleans - albeit without the hurricane - but where New Orlean's residents returned, lack of water could well keep Atlanta residents away permanently.
"A catastrophe on the level of Katrina seems to be looming at this point," said John Heard, utilities director for Cumming. "The forecast is not favorable." - Washington Post
Tensions in the region are mounting. Along with hope, Atlanta is trying to cling to its dwindling water supplies, while downstream Florida and Alabama are pleading for an increased share of Lake Lanier's flow.
But as the title of this post indicates, my main point today is not so much about Atlanta and its drought problems - but more of attitude and action. In blogging about environmental and climate change concerns, we are continually bombarded with comments and attacks from people who view our posts as attempts to infringe on the right to perpetual economic growth and 'prosperity'. But hopefully situations like this drive home a point that should be obvious, but to some, somehow, isn't - that prosperity, heck, even survival, is dependent on basic environmental resources. There are limits to growth. There's no getting around this. In order to minimise misery, there must be limits to wastefulness, consumption, pollution and we must learn to apply foresight judiciously. Atlanta could have seen this coming. Indeed, some did. But changing course is no easy matter when there are so many conflicting views, motivations and levels of understanding.
In my own human experience, I recognise my own failings and stupidity as I seek to do right but often struggle to do so. The framework of our existence is often solid and inflexible. We are hedged in by outer influences and circumstances and hampered by our internal weaknesses, selfishness and lack of objectivity - or creativity. It's no different for politicians and industry members and the public - all individuals like me, grappling with the same issues but seeking to extract the most enjoyment from the moment for ourselves. The old highly regarded attributes of frugality, thrift, moderation and wisdom seem to have been traded for short-sighted personal ambition. This has to change. Ask the farmers of Georgia whose crops are withering and dying. As a race, we are, to use the old expression, getting too big for our boots.
Over the next few years Atlanta was predicted to increase from five to seven million people. It's possible the city may now shrink instead. Over the next forty years, our global population is expected to increase by around 40% - yet we don't seem to know how to live equitably and sustainably with the population we have today.
With the Bali UN Summit approaching, may we witness true leadership - determination, cooperation and objectivity. The kind of hard decisions and environmental investment that should have been made long ago to avoid the Atlanta crisis now need to be forged and applied to mitigate globally scaled versions of the same.
Is the world, perhaps, finally ready for such decisions, or will we continue on the same course and just hope for the best? Will we one day find ourselves on the steps asking God to do for us what we could have done for ourselves?
In this context at least, hindsight is not really such a wonderful thing.
