The Water Issue: Still an Issue

The weather here is absolutely gorgeous. I enjoy it a little cold, so this morning when I strapped on my socks, shoes, sweatshirt and stocking hat to walk to school, I was invigorated. On top of that there's nothing to fear, because the high will be in the mid-60s.

This trend looks to carry forth for the next 10 days, at least, which will be gloriously pleasant, but hopefully not so pleasant that we forget about the issue at hand: even when it's not hot, a drought is just as devastating.

Here's an article from last week denoting the myriad problems on the horizon pending we actually run out of water. It’s nice that we had some rain last week, but, we have to remember that this is a recurring and consistent problem, which will not go away even if we have consistent rain through the winter. I’m not sure if I’ve had the chance to go off on the city of Atlanta and state of Georgia's "planning," but I will again: it’s pretty damn ridiculous that a city with no zoning restrictions at all and relatively nice (read: warm) weather didn’t see 4 million people coming, especially after the first 2 million moved in.

Really, though, what happens when actually run out of water? Easy! We pump water from other states?

That seems a dubious solution. Not only will that create more strain on other water supplies, effectively dispersing the problem instead of solving it, as this article discusses, we're not the only one's feeling the heat from this.

I’m not usually a fatalist, but I’m pretty sure we’re fucked. And I can’t say that I’m holier than thou; I’m having plenty of trouble remembering to conserve water due to my usual habits. Though I never thought myself specifically wasteful, I now notice EVERY time I leave water running, which is more often than I'd like.

In that way, we’re certainly responsible, and though we’ve been raised to feel like we should trust our government officials to inform us when something goes awry — in this case, like completely running out of water — I can't use that as an excuse. Yeah, I’m pissed — I wish someone would have mentioned it, because even if I personally had been conserving water my entire life, the rest of society functions in the manner above, trusting its government. (and I do think we should be able to)

Maybe this is the inevitable decline of America-at-large’s honeymoon phase with capitalism. When other people don’t have money or resources, it’s difficult to notice when you do. No matter how much money you have, you’ll notice when there’s no water.

Although, when those people notice they don’t have water, they’ll just take their money somewhere else, and Atlanta, for one, will have blown all that money it spent on development in the past few years, basically spiraling it into economic demise.

This reminds me of that Futurama episode, when (from Wikipedia): “Atlanta moved offshore [to the Atlantic Ocean] in an effort to boost tourism and become a bigger Delta hub. The city overdeveloped and its excess weight caused it to sink to the bottom. Everyone that stayed with the city evolved into merpeople, with the assistance of leaking caffeine from Atlanta's Coca-Cola plant.”

Hey, at least we’d have water, then.