Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
That's too many waits. Still, in usual form, I know what you, my phantom-like readers are thinking. You may be sick of the shtick, but as you know, we aren't all born clairvoyant - it'd be a shame to waste this talent. Especially considering how many seconds of your valuable time I've already wasted with my inane prattling. For every second of your life I steal, I only become stronger.
Obviously, my brain has been far too congested this year for my own good, let alone the good of any of you. Thus, this is me continuing to turn over that new writing leaf with as many harpoons and pitchforks as it takes.
Showing posts with label Environmentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environmentalism. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Water, Water Nowhere, Still Not a Drop to Drink
Looks like that teeth-rotting lovey-dovey part of February's behind us now. Whew. "Eff that," even, as people too lazy to pronounce entire curse words might say. "Eff that in the em-effin' ey." Those people are weird.
I'll have some longer ramblings for you later this week - just as you've all no doubt been dying for more of - but today? Environment talk and another meme! Put down that baseball bat - you're thrilled, damn it.
I wrote about this last fall, but I figured I'd post an update, just so we can all bask in the glory of what continued climate change is doing to the American southeast. (Unless you're surrounded by water like Florida. I'll get you yet, Florida, you and your awesome manatees.)
To recap, for a long time, we've been caught in this ongoing cycle - every summer we enter drought conditions, and every autumn, we get enough rain to take care of that and leave us in comfortable condition, in regards to our water resources. As of 2007, this is no longer the case. We had a much worse summer than usual, with minimal rain. By the end, we were facing one of the worst droughts in a long time - and certainly the worst we've seen in the 13+ years we've lived here. We saw little rain over the fall, and winter hasn't changed that either. The situation? It is not looking so good.
Last fall, the state began passing restrictions on water use and emphasizing that each and every one of us should begin doing what we can to conserve. In following their instructions, my family and I became much more conscious of our water use, taking shorter showers, making sure to never leave water running, and so forth. We successfully lowered our water bill a decent bit. The majority of North Carolinians? They ignored the governor and continued to use water as though we weren't going through anything out of the ordinary. A-hyuck, if this here faucet-thinger still works, there must not be a prob'lem! Gub'mint's just tryin' to screw with us again! (Because yes, we're all backwater hicks. I'm simply an exception from the north, living in their midst and learning their ways. Sort of like a male Jane Goodall. Except stupid enough to rely on bad southern stereotypes for this routine when redneck jokes have never been funny.)
The wealthy, as mentioned in the past, continue to see watering their precious immaculate green lawns (Covered with lots of all-important pesticides to ensure that everyone knows how superior they are by the quantity of dead squirrels around their property.) as a guaranteed right, rather than the superficial bullshit it is. They haven't helped the water issue at all. And with few taking the situation seriously, we've had to curb our water usage even more.
As you can imagine, this includes some fairly unsavory sacrifices. Like no longer flushing the toilet as often. That's not exactly a pleasant sacrifice to make. We're also going to be placing one-liter plastic bottles in the back compartments of all our toilets to reduce water usage when flushing by close to that one liter, at least, which should help a smidgen. And in using the dishwasher even less, we've switched to using paper plates more often so we can simply toss them, while doing what dishes we need to in the sink. All inconvenient, but ultimately decent ways to reduce water use.
The question, however, still remains - will North Carolinians wake up to what we're dealing with before it's too late? At the rate things are going, we're going to end up in a state of emergency by early-mid summer unless people start conserving water more and we get some real rain in the coming months. Will it take losing our drinking water and the ability to practice regular, proper hygiene for people to open their eyes? I sure as hell hope not. Proper hydration, cleanliness, and clean teeth are not things I'd like to see become rare privileges. And I sure as hell don't see this administration doing much if and when we end up in a state of emergency here. They've sat on their hands and claimed they were helping while doing little when worse has occurred, after all, Hurricane Katrina in particular coming to mind, while the right likes to blindly sit back and say that New Orleans has made a full recovery, when in reality, no matter how you look at it, it hasn't. And at the rate things are going, it'll never be the same city it once was again.
This whole situation makes me hope all the more that I manage to make it into one of the grad schools I'm applying to - for either this August or next January - the sooner I can get up north and into an area where water is more plentiful again, the better.
With that thoroughly rambled about, onward to part two! Hye tagged me with this "Rules of Four" meme, so in the interest of helping you to Get to Know Your Blogger better, in pretending you're actually interested, here's my responses:
4 Jobs I have had:
Technically, I haven't had an actual paying job yet - and yes, I do realize how sad that is when I'm turning 24 in a couple of months. Granted, I am a "Blogger," with these eccentric ramblings of mine, or whatever they're worth, and I do have a minimum of advertising I'm not expecting to ever really make any money on in the end, but still, blogging is something, experience-wise. I also work as a reviewer over at Anime Dream, a geeky Japanese animation news and review site I've been a part of since summer 2002, though I haven't done much work there in a while. We take things at our own pace though, and I've got more stuff coming in the pipeline there yet. I also spent 7 months last year working as a Teaching Assistant at the North Carolina State University Japan Center, pretty much from as soon as I got home from my final semester of courses at Charlotte in May until a couple of weeks before Xmas. It wasn't for pay, but to fulfill some international experience requirements for graduation, and it was a worthwhile experience, meeting a lot of interesting people and getting to assist in low level Japanese language instruction. That's three, anyway. I don't have anything I can really put down as a 4th yet, but if I'm lucky, I'll be a published novelist by the end of 2008, so that should hopefully take care of that.
4 Movies I watched over and over:
There's a number of movies that qualify for this. The most frequent four though are definitely Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Last Life in the Universe. All wonderful movies, all highly recommended.
4 Shows I watch:
I watch a lot of shows, so these are tough picks. Going with two of my favorites in primetime, I'd have to say Pushing Daisies and Chuck. (Though The Office is way up there too.) And going with two of the three shows I watch nearly daily, The Daily Show and Colbert Report. (Though I watch Late Night with Conan O'Brien all the time too. The fake feud the three hosts orchestrated a little while back as an opportunity to kill time on all three of their shows before the strike ended last week was pretty hilarious.)
4 Places I have been:
I haven't been outside of the USA yet, so nowhere foreign, but I've been all over the east coast. I went to New York City on a 6th grade string orchestra trip back in the mid-'90s, and have wanted to return ever since. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland - though we left shortly afterwards - and back in summer 2002, after graduating from high school, I went on a weekend "returning to roots" trip of sorts up there with my father, and really enjoyed that city too. Definitely far more my kind of place than the south. Because I've had a lot of family down there, we used to go to Tampa, Florida every summer when I was a kid, so I've spent a good time in that part of the country. Florida's nice, but way too hot for my tastes. Fun to visit, but I couldn't live there. And that pretty much does it for vacation places, but I did spend the first decade of my life growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I still consider that to be my hometown, despite having lived in the south longer - this just isn't my place. (And if that doesn't count, I also went to Indianapolis, Indiana for an aunt's wedding when I was pretty young, though I don't remember much about it.)
4 People who email me:
I don't tend to get much in the way of personal email, but I occasionally get pictures and such in the mail from friends, particularly a good friend who's abroad, working in China now, after he was in Japan for a year not too long ago. He always has amusing stuff to share. Then I get messages from Facebook and livejournal on there, just for various notifications of things. And I get email from a few mailing lists I'm on - Robert Wexler's mailing list in working to check the Bush administration's power, Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac daily poetry and history mailing list, and the Human Rights Campaign mailing list, being a member of that as well.
4 Favorite Things to Eat:
This is a tough one. I love lots of different kinds of food, so picking a few favorites isn't easy. To take a stab at it, though, I love nikujaga - it's a wonderful Japanese stew of sorts that's hard to stop eating. I'm also quite fond of good, fresh sashimi - I love sushi in general, but biting into some well-prepared fresh raw tuna or salmon is pretty incredible. I'm also quite fond of Japanese gyoza dumplings (As well as Chinese shumai dumplings.), though I usually only have the frozen kind. And to throw something more western in there, I love cheese ravioli with a good tomato sauce - Italian sausage in it is always a nice plus, too.
4 Places I would rather be:
I haven't traveled enough to easily throw a list like this together. I'd love to see Japan and what I can of Asia in general, though. Same goes for Europe and Canada. And visiting South America - especially Brazil - would no doubt be a fantastic experience. Though at this point, my main geographical focus in my life right now is more in the New England area.
4 Things I look forward to this year:
Hopefully watching the Republicans suffer a crushing defeat in the November election so we can get a serious start on repairing the decades' worth of damage the Bush administration has done to this country and world, for one. I'd also really like to get into a grad school and finally get out of the south. I'm also looking forward to hopefully getting my first novel published, if things actually go well at all after finishing it, though I'm not exactly counting on a response from the woman I'm writing it for this year - not that I'm holding my breath for it to be a positive response I get from her anyway, rejection being what's to be realistically expected. And in and of hoping to get my first book published this year, I'm looking forward to hopefully getting my first paycheck then as well. (And not so much the part where if I do indeed get into grad school, I end up buried up to my neck in debt for the next several years at least.)
Well, that's that. I'm no good at the tagging part of these things, so hey, if you're looking to tell your readers more about yourself, feel free to consider yourself tagged by me and have at it! Hopefully all that random information didn't bore you too much.
I'll have some longer ramblings for you later this week - just as you've all no doubt been dying for more of - but today? Environment talk and another meme! Put down that baseball bat - you're thrilled, damn it.
I wrote about this last fall, but I figured I'd post an update, just so we can all bask in the glory of what continued climate change is doing to the American southeast. (Unless you're surrounded by water like Florida. I'll get you yet, Florida, you and your awesome manatees.)
To recap, for a long time, we've been caught in this ongoing cycle - every summer we enter drought conditions, and every autumn, we get enough rain to take care of that and leave us in comfortable condition, in regards to our water resources. As of 2007, this is no longer the case. We had a much worse summer than usual, with minimal rain. By the end, we were facing one of the worst droughts in a long time - and certainly the worst we've seen in the 13+ years we've lived here. We saw little rain over the fall, and winter hasn't changed that either. The situation? It is not looking so good.
Last fall, the state began passing restrictions on water use and emphasizing that each and every one of us should begin doing what we can to conserve. In following their instructions, my family and I became much more conscious of our water use, taking shorter showers, making sure to never leave water running, and so forth. We successfully lowered our water bill a decent bit. The majority of North Carolinians? They ignored the governor and continued to use water as though we weren't going through anything out of the ordinary. A-hyuck, if this here faucet-thinger still works, there must not be a prob'lem! Gub'mint's just tryin' to screw with us again! (Because yes, we're all backwater hicks. I'm simply an exception from the north, living in their midst and learning their ways. Sort of like a male Jane Goodall. Except stupid enough to rely on bad southern stereotypes for this routine when redneck jokes have never been funny.)
The wealthy, as mentioned in the past, continue to see watering their precious immaculate green lawns (Covered with lots of all-important pesticides to ensure that everyone knows how superior they are by the quantity of dead squirrels around their property.) as a guaranteed right, rather than the superficial bullshit it is. They haven't helped the water issue at all. And with few taking the situation seriously, we've had to curb our water usage even more.
As you can imagine, this includes some fairly unsavory sacrifices. Like no longer flushing the toilet as often. That's not exactly a pleasant sacrifice to make. We're also going to be placing one-liter plastic bottles in the back compartments of all our toilets to reduce water usage when flushing by close to that one liter, at least, which should help a smidgen. And in using the dishwasher even less, we've switched to using paper plates more often so we can simply toss them, while doing what dishes we need to in the sink. All inconvenient, but ultimately decent ways to reduce water use.
The question, however, still remains - will North Carolinians wake up to what we're dealing with before it's too late? At the rate things are going, we're going to end up in a state of emergency by early-mid summer unless people start conserving water more and we get some real rain in the coming months. Will it take losing our drinking water and the ability to practice regular, proper hygiene for people to open their eyes? I sure as hell hope not. Proper hydration, cleanliness, and clean teeth are not things I'd like to see become rare privileges. And I sure as hell don't see this administration doing much if and when we end up in a state of emergency here. They've sat on their hands and claimed they were helping while doing little when worse has occurred, after all, Hurricane Katrina in particular coming to mind, while the right likes to blindly sit back and say that New Orleans has made a full recovery, when in reality, no matter how you look at it, it hasn't. And at the rate things are going, it'll never be the same city it once was again.
This whole situation makes me hope all the more that I manage to make it into one of the grad schools I'm applying to - for either this August or next January - the sooner I can get up north and into an area where water is more plentiful again, the better.
With that thoroughly rambled about, onward to part two! Hye tagged me with this "Rules of Four" meme, so in the interest of helping you to Get to Know Your Blogger better, in pretending you're actually interested, here's my responses:
4 Jobs I have had:
Technically, I haven't had an actual paying job yet - and yes, I do realize how sad that is when I'm turning 24 in a couple of months. Granted, I am a "Blogger," with these eccentric ramblings of mine, or whatever they're worth, and I do have a minimum of advertising I'm not expecting to ever really make any money on in the end, but still, blogging is something, experience-wise. I also work as a reviewer over at Anime Dream, a geeky Japanese animation news and review site I've been a part of since summer 2002, though I haven't done much work there in a while. We take things at our own pace though, and I've got more stuff coming in the pipeline there yet. I also spent 7 months last year working as a Teaching Assistant at the North Carolina State University Japan Center, pretty much from as soon as I got home from my final semester of courses at Charlotte in May until a couple of weeks before Xmas. It wasn't for pay, but to fulfill some international experience requirements for graduation, and it was a worthwhile experience, meeting a lot of interesting people and getting to assist in low level Japanese language instruction. That's three, anyway. I don't have anything I can really put down as a 4th yet, but if I'm lucky, I'll be a published novelist by the end of 2008, so that should hopefully take care of that.
4 Movies I watched over and over:
There's a number of movies that qualify for this. The most frequent four though are definitely Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Last Life in the Universe. All wonderful movies, all highly recommended.
4 Shows I watch:
I watch a lot of shows, so these are tough picks. Going with two of my favorites in primetime, I'd have to say Pushing Daisies and Chuck. (Though The Office is way up there too.) And going with two of the three shows I watch nearly daily, The Daily Show and Colbert Report. (Though I watch Late Night with Conan O'Brien all the time too. The fake feud the three hosts orchestrated a little while back as an opportunity to kill time on all three of their shows before the strike ended last week was pretty hilarious.)
4 Places I have been:
I haven't been outside of the USA yet, so nowhere foreign, but I've been all over the east coast. I went to New York City on a 6th grade string orchestra trip back in the mid-'90s, and have wanted to return ever since. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland - though we left shortly afterwards - and back in summer 2002, after graduating from high school, I went on a weekend "returning to roots" trip of sorts up there with my father, and really enjoyed that city too. Definitely far more my kind of place than the south. Because I've had a lot of family down there, we used to go to Tampa, Florida every summer when I was a kid, so I've spent a good time in that part of the country. Florida's nice, but way too hot for my tastes. Fun to visit, but I couldn't live there. And that pretty much does it for vacation places, but I did spend the first decade of my life growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I still consider that to be my hometown, despite having lived in the south longer - this just isn't my place. (And if that doesn't count, I also went to Indianapolis, Indiana for an aunt's wedding when I was pretty young, though I don't remember much about it.)
4 People who email me:
I don't tend to get much in the way of personal email, but I occasionally get pictures and such in the mail from friends, particularly a good friend who's abroad, working in China now, after he was in Japan for a year not too long ago. He always has amusing stuff to share. Then I get messages from Facebook and livejournal on there, just for various notifications of things. And I get email from a few mailing lists I'm on - Robert Wexler's mailing list in working to check the Bush administration's power, Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac daily poetry and history mailing list, and the Human Rights Campaign mailing list, being a member of that as well.
4 Favorite Things to Eat:
This is a tough one. I love lots of different kinds of food, so picking a few favorites isn't easy. To take a stab at it, though, I love nikujaga - it's a wonderful Japanese stew of sorts that's hard to stop eating. I'm also quite fond of good, fresh sashimi - I love sushi in general, but biting into some well-prepared fresh raw tuna or salmon is pretty incredible. I'm also quite fond of Japanese gyoza dumplings (As well as Chinese shumai dumplings.), though I usually only have the frozen kind. And to throw something more western in there, I love cheese ravioli with a good tomato sauce - Italian sausage in it is always a nice plus, too.
4 Places I would rather be:
I haven't traveled enough to easily throw a list like this together. I'd love to see Japan and what I can of Asia in general, though. Same goes for Europe and Canada. And visiting South America - especially Brazil - would no doubt be a fantastic experience. Though at this point, my main geographical focus in my life right now is more in the New England area.
4 Things I look forward to this year:
Hopefully watching the Republicans suffer a crushing defeat in the November election so we can get a serious start on repairing the decades' worth of damage the Bush administration has done to this country and world, for one. I'd also really like to get into a grad school and finally get out of the south. I'm also looking forward to hopefully getting my first novel published, if things actually go well at all after finishing it, though I'm not exactly counting on a response from the woman I'm writing it for this year - not that I'm holding my breath for it to be a positive response I get from her anyway, rejection being what's to be realistically expected. And in and of hoping to get my first book published this year, I'm looking forward to hopefully getting my first paycheck then as well. (And not so much the part where if I do indeed get into grad school, I end up buried up to my neck in debt for the next several years at least.)
Well, that's that. I'm no good at the tagging part of these things, so hey, if you're looking to tell your readers more about yourself, feel free to consider yourself tagged by me and have at it! Hopefully all that random information didn't bore you too much.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
How Dry was my Autumn
The seasons have certainly changed. You can tell here in North Carolina, because we've had a few days when it was actually comfortable outside - and even dipped down into the 40s at night. That's about as much as you can hope for, when summer's devoured the other seasons. Thanks, global warming! (And a special thanks to all the companies and pollutants they've pumped into the atmosphere, bringing this about! It couldn't have happened without you!)
Climate change - it's a popular topic these days. Of course, instead of seriously doing much of anything about it, we've politicized it (As is popular to do with any matters of science - if science can effectively prove it, it's evil, unamerican, and anti-capitalist.), because clearly the best way to resolve the issue is to tell everyone to shut up about it and pretend it doesn't exist. On the right, you've got viewpoints ranging from half-right (Claiming it's natural and should be happening like this, when the truth is that while climate change - the warming of the planet - is natural, it should be happening at a much, much slower pace. We've accelerated it by millennia through the abuse we've put this planet through.) to bat-shit insane ("Global Warming is an evil liberal myth concocted to attack industry and stop them from making money because liberals hate money! Let's kill them all now before it's too late!" ... Yeah, I kind of went a little Ann Coulter with that example.), entirely nonconstructive regardless in their focus on simply avoiding acknowledging the existence of a problem - let alone doing anything about it, as that'd entail holding corporations and in large part, the wealthy upper class, responsible for their actions.
Al Gore was recently among those awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Naturally, the right flipped out. After all, they don't want to agree with anything he's had to say, even though he successfully brought a great deal of awareness about the climate change crisis to the western world, and especially America, where we've been particularly slow on the uptake in acknowledging the existence of such a problem. On one hand, you have pundits declaring that George W. Bush should have been given it, simply to continue this never-ending war they see between Bush and Gore, constantly trying to tear down everything about Gore in order to conversely legitimize Bush's presidency, having never won the popular vote in the original election to begin with. (As for 2004, their own rhetoric of rule by fear was all too sadly successful in winning reelection.) On the other, you have idiots who insist that, on the grounds that Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, Gore - and by proxy, all Nobel Peace Prize winners - is a terrorist. I wish I was kidding.
While the politicians continue to fight amongst themselves - and accomplish nothing truly good or effective in regards to addressing the issue - everyday ordinary people seek out small ways they can contribute to slowing climate shift, while paying attention to its coverage. Here in North Carolina, we're facing the worst drought we have in ages - by far the worst I've seen in my thirteen years of living here. We've been plenty accustomed to summertime droughts and some amount of water restrictions - one has to wonder how many really bother to follow them, given their inconvenience, and the obsession many have with maintaining their immaculate green lawns - but this is the longest such a drought has spilled into the fall. Typically, the rain picks up much sooner and alleviates the problem. Now, all our local lakes are beginning to dry up entirely. The local paper's reported that our water supplies are expected to last just over another hundred days - in Durham nearby, they aren't even anticipating another hundred days - and that we'd need a good two feet of rain to get out of these conditions. The kind of rain we almost never see with any kind of consistency. The situation is grim, and conservation efforts, though encouraged, will help little now to stymie the constant drain on our water supplies. We're verging on a state of emergency, with little rain in the forecast down the line. And the government isn't exactly prepared for this sort of conflict.
In this day and age, there's little excuse for that. Not being well versed in ways to handle this sort of crisis, I wouldn't know where to suggest to begin, beyond at least opening up a constructive discussion on policy. But in this time when everything involving climate change, its ensuing crises, and problems posed to humanity by nature is politicized - the left trying to help, and the right putting a stop to that, with a ridiculous amount of power despite Democratic majorities in Congress - there's no real hope of that. The right calls for smaller government, and yet in these Bush years, they've supported its growth with their increased power that came with it, and began assaults on our civil rights and liberties we've appreciated for so long. They've demonstrated themselves what it is when big government goes wrong, while at the same time decrying big government otherwise. After all, what's the point of power if you're going to use it to help your country's citizens? Such as providing all-inclusive much-needed healthcare legislation for children? But no, health being a right as opposed to a privilege for the wealthy is a socialist value, and therefore evil and representative of what big government should never be. Instead, it's all about rolling back freedoms - all while talking about defending it - and killing a whole lot of people.
What a time we live in.
I just hope we see some real rain yet. It's the only shot we've got. And like most people, I'd really rather not stop practicing good hygiene on a daily basis. And drinking water - that's always been pretty cool, too. I'd rather not stop that either, so I don't, say, die. Nobody really wants to do that - save for those who do - and certainly not in a difficult state of emergency. And considering how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was handled, there's no reason to put any faith in the government - let alone this administration - to help anybody through such trying times. If the market isn't taking care of you (In other words, if you aren't wealthy and don't have other methods to avoid such trouble yourself.), you don't matter. Don'tcha just love the anti-socialist rhetoric of the rabid capitalism-obsessed right? It would seem that once you have money and power, the first thing you forget is people. But then, we are the "Look Out For Number One!" nation. Or so the conservatives strangling our government would like to justify.
Climate change - it's a popular topic these days. Of course, instead of seriously doing much of anything about it, we've politicized it (As is popular to do with any matters of science - if science can effectively prove it, it's evil, unamerican, and anti-capitalist.), because clearly the best way to resolve the issue is to tell everyone to shut up about it and pretend it doesn't exist. On the right, you've got viewpoints ranging from half-right (Claiming it's natural and should be happening like this, when the truth is that while climate change - the warming of the planet - is natural, it should be happening at a much, much slower pace. We've accelerated it by millennia through the abuse we've put this planet through.) to bat-shit insane ("Global Warming is an evil liberal myth concocted to attack industry and stop them from making money because liberals hate money! Let's kill them all now before it's too late!" ... Yeah, I kind of went a little Ann Coulter with that example.), entirely nonconstructive regardless in their focus on simply avoiding acknowledging the existence of a problem - let alone doing anything about it, as that'd entail holding corporations and in large part, the wealthy upper class, responsible for their actions.
Al Gore was recently among those awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Naturally, the right flipped out. After all, they don't want to agree with anything he's had to say, even though he successfully brought a great deal of awareness about the climate change crisis to the western world, and especially America, where we've been particularly slow on the uptake in acknowledging the existence of such a problem. On one hand, you have pundits declaring that George W. Bush should have been given it, simply to continue this never-ending war they see between Bush and Gore, constantly trying to tear down everything about Gore in order to conversely legitimize Bush's presidency, having never won the popular vote in the original election to begin with. (As for 2004, their own rhetoric of rule by fear was all too sadly successful in winning reelection.) On the other, you have idiots who insist that, on the grounds that Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, Gore - and by proxy, all Nobel Peace Prize winners - is a terrorist. I wish I was kidding.
While the politicians continue to fight amongst themselves - and accomplish nothing truly good or effective in regards to addressing the issue - everyday ordinary people seek out small ways they can contribute to slowing climate shift, while paying attention to its coverage. Here in North Carolina, we're facing the worst drought we have in ages - by far the worst I've seen in my thirteen years of living here. We've been plenty accustomed to summertime droughts and some amount of water restrictions - one has to wonder how many really bother to follow them, given their inconvenience, and the obsession many have with maintaining their immaculate green lawns - but this is the longest such a drought has spilled into the fall. Typically, the rain picks up much sooner and alleviates the problem. Now, all our local lakes are beginning to dry up entirely. The local paper's reported that our water supplies are expected to last just over another hundred days - in Durham nearby, they aren't even anticipating another hundred days - and that we'd need a good two feet of rain to get out of these conditions. The kind of rain we almost never see with any kind of consistency. The situation is grim, and conservation efforts, though encouraged, will help little now to stymie the constant drain on our water supplies. We're verging on a state of emergency, with little rain in the forecast down the line. And the government isn't exactly prepared for this sort of conflict.
In this day and age, there's little excuse for that. Not being well versed in ways to handle this sort of crisis, I wouldn't know where to suggest to begin, beyond at least opening up a constructive discussion on policy. But in this time when everything involving climate change, its ensuing crises, and problems posed to humanity by nature is politicized - the left trying to help, and the right putting a stop to that, with a ridiculous amount of power despite Democratic majorities in Congress - there's no real hope of that. The right calls for smaller government, and yet in these Bush years, they've supported its growth with their increased power that came with it, and began assaults on our civil rights and liberties we've appreciated for so long. They've demonstrated themselves what it is when big government goes wrong, while at the same time decrying big government otherwise. After all, what's the point of power if you're going to use it to help your country's citizens? Such as providing all-inclusive much-needed healthcare legislation for children? But no, health being a right as opposed to a privilege for the wealthy is a socialist value, and therefore evil and representative of what big government should never be. Instead, it's all about rolling back freedoms - all while talking about defending it - and killing a whole lot of people.
What a time we live in.
I just hope we see some real rain yet. It's the only shot we've got. And like most people, I'd really rather not stop practicing good hygiene on a daily basis. And drinking water - that's always been pretty cool, too. I'd rather not stop that either, so I don't, say, die. Nobody really wants to do that - save for those who do - and certainly not in a difficult state of emergency. And considering how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was handled, there's no reason to put any faith in the government - let alone this administration - to help anybody through such trying times. If the market isn't taking care of you (In other words, if you aren't wealthy and don't have other methods to avoid such trouble yourself.), you don't matter. Don'tcha just love the anti-socialist rhetoric of the rabid capitalism-obsessed right? It would seem that once you have money and power, the first thing you forget is people. But then, we are the "Look Out For Number One!" nation. Or so the conservatives strangling our government would like to justify.
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