Water Water Nowhere

It's time to piss off libertarians (A favorite thing of mine.) while asking an obvious question.  California is in an ongoing, epic drought.  Governor Jerry Brown has signed an executive order mandating a 25% reduction in water use.  If we don't have enough water to grow tomatoes, can we allow water to be used to grow marijuana?   Environmentalists (I consider myself an enviro.) love to point out that it doesn't make a lot of sense to grow things like rice and almonds, two water intensive crops, in a semi-desert place like California's central valley.  How much sense does it make to brew beer during a drought?  It's not like we can't truck in Bud from the Midwest.

I Hate To Be Negative.....

I hate to be negative but won't the effects of human driven climate change be mitigated by a population die off.  I mean, come on, get real,  I'm 60 and the population of both the planet and the United States have doubled in my lifetime.  The idea that we can provide food, water, and health care for a few more billion people is ridiculous.  We can barely provide for everyone now, and it's only going to get worse.

Now, I know that a lot of people read stuff like this and assume that famine, disease, and all that will be the plague of the third world, and it won't happen here. ( Fill in any first world country for here.)  I don't know why first worlders make that assumption.  A massive drought, not enough water to grow food, knows no boundaries, and when push comes to shove, we can only buy so much food  from other countries.  And let's not forget our old friend war.  War over resources has already begun, and it will only get worse.

Talk about the four horseman.

Yes, but...

I'll try and write more about the oil spill later, but while I'm thinking about this, I wanted to make a very quick point. The United States can't keep expecting other countries to solve our problems. Whether it's a no drilling policy in ANWR, or a possible ban on off shore drilling, (Unlikely) we can't look the other way while the environments of other countries are destroyed so that we can have more oil.

Cash for Clunkers, How About Solar Cells for the Middle Class

The cash for clunkers program is about to end, and only those ideologically opposed to any government involvement in the economy are calling it a failure. For a few billion dollars, (And yes, I do realise that's a lot of money.) we've increased fuel efficiency in the domestic auto fleet, lessening dependence on foreign oil, and started on the long, hard fight to control global warming by getting rid of older, heavier polluting cars. And as a bonus, we've saved a lot of auto industry jobs.

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So what's should we do next? I think we should add a little box to everybody's income tax forms. If you make less than a certain, to be determined, amount, and if you own your own home, make a check mark. That amount should be the line below which individual home owners cannot be expected to pay for their own, home, solar arrays. For a few billion a year, with home owners chosen by lottery, congress could jump start the home solar industry in the USA. Put in a provision to use American made solar panels, and local contractors rather than national businesses like Wal-mart, and we'd get the domestic solar panel makers humming, and stimulate, small local businesses. We'd decrease the amount of green house gases by cutting day time, coal fired, electricity use, and if a couple of hundred thousand home owners suddenly weren't paying electric bills, they'd spend a lot of that money on other things, which would stimulate the general economy.

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Of course, we'd have to give up on this whole idea that electricity should be supplied exclusively by large corporations. When electrification started, home electricity was being supplied to a small number of middle class homes, and above. That's not true anymore. Electricity is as much a part of vital infrastructure as roads. Perhaps those cities that own utilities shouldn't have their operations privatized. Perhaps private electricity companies should be taken over by local municipalities.