William McNeill, in his environmental history of the 20th century, pointed out that by the 1980s, the most ferocious enemies of the environment were the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the American Republican Party. Long before rightwingers got boners for Putin, they were all about imitating the Communists by creating massive government funding attacks on rivers and soil and swamps and then privatizing the sons of bitches.
In the Soviet Union, the Aral Sea was the great victim of the environmental purge. In the U.S., it has been the Ogallala reservoir – the underground water that feeds the Midwest – and, I learn today, shockingly, the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The numbers in this article are staggering:
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-great-salt-lake-could-vanish-within-just-5-years-scientists-warn
“At this point, to reverse the decline, enough water to cover more than 2.5 million acres of land (over 10,000 square kilometers) a foot deep needs to flow back into the lake each year.”
Which is the same as saying we have entered into the final days. The Aral Sea disaster was used for years as an example of the disasters resulting from central planning. Well, welcome to the disasters of laissez faire water usage! Although in truth the state sponsors the use of semi arid or arid land, extensively irrigates it, lets mineral salts leach up through the soil, then finds it it running out of water, and repeats. The Great Salt Lake is now reached the toxic mineral cloud state. In five years, they will be wearing masks in downtown Salt Lake City to go about their business. And none of the Q nuts will protest about that – after all, killing the environment is their interpretation of God’s business.
Our era of spectacle catastrophe is going to love this one.
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