High Plains Water Crisis Will Force Farmers to Think Like Environmentalists

[marmar]

From CounterPunch, via AlterNet:


High Plains Water Crisis Will Force Farmers to Think Like Environmentalists

By Julene Blair, CounterPunch. Posted July 30, 2007.



If Midwest farmers continue pumping water at current rates, they'll be forced to revert to dry-land agriculture and livestock grazing within decades -- they could change their habits now and make the High Plains sustainable for the future.

Environmentalists get a bad rap in farm country. Many farmers complain that environmental regulations interfere with their property rights and ability to feed a hungry world. To that end, these farmers want unfettered access to chemicals and genetically engineered seed. On the semi-arid High Plains, where I grew up, they also want all the water they can pump.

Yet only those who ignore science news can deny the human threat to every natural system on which life depends, be it climate, water, air or soil.

Carl Jung, who pioneered our understanding of the subconscious, wrote that when humans are unaware of their "inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves."

We externalize the side of us that we do not want to own. We look for scapegoats. Instead of getting upset about the possibility that humanity's present course could end civilization as we know it, we get angry with those who name the problems.

Environmentalists speak the other side of our own consciences. We vilify the messenger to drown the message. If we heeded the message, few of us would avoid implication.

I should know. If I wish to place blame for the most disturbing crisis on the High Plains, I need look no further than myself.

That crisis is depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, the huge groundwater reserve underlying the Plains all the way from South Dakota to Texas. In some areas of western Kansas and northern Texas, the water usable for irrigation is already gone. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/58244/