Article: LACK OF WATER: NEXT ADDED 100 MILLION AMERICANS

Lack of water: THE NEXT ADDED 100 MILLION AMERICANS
By Frosty Wooldridge

By mid October, 2006, America reached 300 million people. In the next 34 years, through unrelenting immigration, the United States of America adds another 100 million people. By 2050, our country adds 20 million to reach a total of 430 million. Many experts expect higher numbers. Is it a milestone, millstone or societal nightmare?

In the face of scientific evidence of our polar ice caps melting, accelerating species extinction, water shortages, soil erosion, air pollution, acid rain and vanishing farmland-where can we find a national leader to address America's worst crisis early in the 21ST century? Overpopulation! No leader in the Catholic, Protestant or Jewish churches speaks out.

While the Pope witnesses starvation, misery and suffering worldwide, he promotes maximum human birth rates. Islam commits to the same agenda. Church leaders will not budge from their 2000 year old dogmas. They refuse to step into the realities of the 21st century.

U.S. industry giants won't speak about it. President Bush ignores it. All 50 U.S. governors flee this subject. No U.S. senator touches it. Most Americans vehemently deny its reality. They're like the late Ray Charles injecting himself with heroin for years while denying it harmed his life.

A few like Colorado's U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo and former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm speak realistically about it.

But, like the Amtrak Express on the midnight run, it's comin' and it's comin' fast.

Have you ever heard of "silent-assertion"? Mark Twain said in 1860, "The shabbiest of all lies is the lie of silent-assertion...it happens when politicians, presidents, the media and all leaders obfuscate, deny, suppress or ignore a social wrong or anything deleterious occurring inside American society." In his time, slavery continued as the silent-assertion of the day until it exploded into states rights and the Civil War.

Today, you witness in the halls of Congress and the White House a complete abrogation of common sense, civic responsibility, action for the common good and rational thinking toward the future. With each new scandal, such as Congressman Mark Foley of Florida soliciting young boys, an aberrant side-dish serves up weekly that detracts from the harsh realities we face.

James Madison said, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the rights of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

We face an invasion by Mexico so crippling, so debilitating, so preposterous in its scope-that any public servant with an ounce of brain power would step up like President Eisenhower and stop it! Instead, Bush and members of Congress stand around scratching their rear-ends.

We face disaster from our southern border. In the last century, Mexico expanded from 50 million poverty stricken peasants to 104 million today. In this century, because the Catholic Church encourages unlimited births, Mexico will explode to 300 million, which is three times as many as today. If you think they will ever solve their problems, think again.

As this population overload advances, we face major water dilemmas.

In a September 30, 2006 Rocky Mountain News report, Boulder scientists predict grim drought forecasts for the West. They used eighteen of the world's most powerful computer climate models. Martin Hoerling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, "Climate change is moving us in the direction of a perpetual state that is of the Dust Bowl type."

Scientists expect increased evaporation and drier soils leading to more severe and frequent droughts. Hoerling said, "Droughts could be 25 percent worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl days."

Who stands to suffer the greatest risk? Today, citizens downstream of the Colorado River devour 13.5 million acre feet of the river. Bob Raynolds of NOAA said, "We're going to have to adapt our survival strategies to coping with less water."

My question is: how will we adapt when we've added 100 million people in the next 34 years? Why not choose to stabilize our population so we won't have to adapt but, in fact, flourish with a stable population that remains sustainable?

Associated Press writer James McPherson on July 30, 2006 wrote a piece "Without Rain, Dakotas Dry Up." He reported, "Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this summer will never end up as pasta or bread...what is left is hot winds blowing clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds."

More than 60 percent of the United States suffered abnormally dry or drought conditions last summer. I traveled through 48 states in June, July and August. I saw burned up corn and pigmy crops from the lack of water. This drought stretched from Georgia to Arizona and from Montana to Wisconsin.

Mark Svoboda, climatologist for the National Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska said, "The Dakotas are the epicenter...it's just a wasteland in north central South Dakota."

Is there a chance that America will experience commensurate rain fall to provide food and water for that added 100 million in 34 years? Will we be able to feed and water the 300 million already in the USA? Is there a chance that science might produce miracle crops that grow without water? As farmland and wetlands vanish by the millions of acres for new malls, highways and housing, do you our water supplies grow?

Short answer: No!

Along with lack of water, we degrade water quality. Californians buy more filtered water than anywhere else in America. Why? They can't provide enough clean water to their 37.5 million residents. What about polluted and chemicalized water run-off. We spray crops; inject insecticides and herbicides into millions of acres of farmland. It seeps into our groundwater and runs into our rivers. The Mississippi River spews millions of gallons of fertilizer and chemically poisoned water into the Gulf of Mexico that creates a 3,000 square mile dead zone where few fish or native marine life can't live. Every river running to the oceans carries enormous amounts of poisons. Acid rain from toxic air pollution falls with every rain storm.

Water? It's no longer pure. It's no longer clean. It's dangerously polluted. It's no longer ample. With an added 100 million people, our supply, our way of life, our nation and our society faces consequences we may not be able to solve.

"Modern industrial society is a fanatical religion. We are demolishing, poisoning, and destroying all life-systems on the planet. We are signing IOUs our children will not be able to pay. Without radical changes in heart, mind, vision and action, the Earth will end up like Venus, dead!" Brazilian Minister for the Environment