The Dark Ages

"Happy New Year." I say that without exclamation, because the start of a new year is rarely a happy experience for most of us. We're feeling fat and bloated, sleep deprived and cranky, and, after spending little time in the office over the last two weeks, doubtless unhappy to be back at work. Riding the bus and subway to work this morning, I couldn't help but notice the somber faces of the crowds trudging Park Avenue, bent against the cold wind like beggars under their sacks. It's certainly easy to understand why so many animals hibernate through this season. But we humans, ostensibly masters of our environment, able to combat extremes of heat and cold, labor on through the seasons, bundled against winter's cold.

But apparently this flurry of activity during winter's coldest months is a modern development. I was recently reading a new historical geography of France - The Discovery of France - and learned that in the coldest areas of western Europe many communities essentially hibernated until the spring thaw. There would be little or no commercial activity, no travel, and only meager time spent outside. Families would huddle together with their animals - including sheep, cows, goats, etc. - and spend much of their time sleeping. While this might seem surprising, realize that winters were generally colder and of longer duration until the early 20th century. (Chalk that difference up to the climate change wrought by global warming.) Also understand that for many Europeans, fuel supplies were quite limited and expensive when available. But enough science and history.

When I was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in the early 80s, we called this time between the Christmas holiday and Spring break the "Dark Ages." Tucked under red comforters in our folding beds, we'd awake each morning to the clang of the warming steam radiators and a lone bugler blowing reveille in the darkened barracks. We would line up outside barracks in our company formations and march off to breakfast in the dark. And, after a day of classes we'd change into our grey wool blouses and march off to supper - again, in the dark.

For Rats (VMI's term for freshmen) this was a time of fear and depression. Having enjoyed the liberation of home and family for the holidays, we would spend the ensuing winter months praying for the arrival of Spring and the end of the period of torture and humiliation known as the "Ratline." Laboring under a heavy course load, we struggled through months of physical and emotional torment. When friends ask what it was like, I compare it to the first half of the movie Full Metal Jacket - plus 18 credit hours. (This was the period during which so many Rats reached the breaking point and quit, abandoning VMI for the relative ease of regular college life.)

On a warm spring day, with flags fluttering and the parade ground covered by cadets on parade, VMI could seem a magical place . . . proud parents taking pictures of their sons (and now daughters) arrayed in coatees and shakos, with freshly polished brass and steel sabers glinting in the mountain sunlight. Under those conditions, with the statues of Stonewall Jackson and George C. Marshall surveying the field of neat formations, it was easy to get caught up in the romance and history of a place like VMI, the "West Point of the South," as it is nicknamed. But in cold January and February, under grey clouds that matched our grey uniforms, the place seemed a prison. (Indeed, while visiting VMI as a senior in high school, my father remarked during a tour of the campus, surrounded by other parents and prospective cadets, "It reminds me of Alcatraz.")

By the winter of my senior year, the romance of VMI had faded, the naivete of an 18-year-old freshman having been replaced by the realization that the quaint 19th century uniforms and flashing sabers were just window dressing to cover up the harsh reality of military life. Rather than marvel at the history and pageantry, I was more apt to contemplate the final line of Wilfred Owens' great poem from the trenches of the First World War: "Dulce et decorum est/ pro patria mori."

Like VMI, New York City can exhibit that polar contrast between its mythic, beautiful face and the grey reality of urban squalor. And today that reality seems just a bit harsher as used Christmas trees are tossed to the curb throughout the City and the Christmas decorations come down, only to be replaced by the garish displays of Valentine's Day wares. Here's hoping the "Dark Ages" are mercifully short and Spring arrives a little early this year.

"Drought"

Looks like "drought" is the buzzword in this week's news, whether one is talking about the fires in southern California or the record dry spell and water shortage in the southeastern U.S. The fires in California, brought on by a nasty combination of too little rain and the Santa Anna winds, are nothing new - although this round seems to be more widespread and devastating than the fires of previous years. Scientists will doubtless remind us, as they do after other newsworthy fires in high profile places like Yellowstone, that fire is a natural part of the landscape's life cycle. Periodic wildfires burn out excess growth and unhealthy trees, preparing the soil for new growth. And it is amazing to witness the rapidity with which teeming life returns to a burned over area. Nevertheless, it's hard to nurture those warm and fuzzy "Animal Planet" feelings when one witnesses the evacuation of thousands and the destruction of so many homes in the region. Although one might want to tell them, "we told you so," one can't help feeling sorry for families that have lost everything.

Still, these fires should remind us that much of that region is built on a mirage that has been unnaturally sustained through irrigation. (A few months ago I did an article - cross-posted here - on the use of desalination technologies to meet water demands in an increasingly drought-stricken West. Also, the book Cadillac Desert is arguably the best explanation of how developers coaxed a green "paradise" from a semi-arid landscape.) And long before civil engineers dammed western rivers and began digging irrigation channels, fire was a natural sculptor of the western landscape. It will be interesting to see how the region responds to this latest challenge. One would hope that developers, and the local governments that approve or reject their proposals, would finally recognize the area's natural limitations and plan accordingly in a manner more attuned to environmental impact.

On the other hand, in the Southeast, particularly in the area around Atlanta, extreme drought is a new experience for many people. Sure, the region has experienced periods of severely diminished rainfall before and suffered the consequences within the context of lessened agricultural output. The problem this time, however, is that the drought is affecting an area that has experienced a remarkable population explosion in recent years. Atlanta, for example, faces the disastrous possibility of losing one of its primary sources of potable water, Lake Lanier. Several communities from Virginia through the Carolinas have already instituted strict water conservation policies and municipalities like Atlanta are on the verge of declaring states of emergency. People like my parents in southeastern Virginia adapt to the restrictions on water use, but they really don't have a sense of the magnitude of the latest emergency. Sure, they can't wash their cars or water their lawns. But as long as they have water to drink and take a shower, they're not really worried.

Several months ago I wrote:

"Still, unless one is directly affected by water shortages, it may prove difficult to galvanize popular interest in the debate over the efficacy of desalination programs, particularly when the media pay so much attention to the Middle East and its role in feeding our fossil fuel diet. Think of it in these terms, however. In 1999, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Yamani, offered an ironic conclusion when asked about the significance of oil to his nation's development. 'All in all, I wish we had discovered water,' he remarked, a telling observation in a world so often assessed through the refracted politics of oil. In the end, water may be the 21st century's oil, and could prove even more expensive."

So here we are in October and the situation is far more dire and affects a far more substantial portion of the population. Perhaps now ordinary people will take notice and respond with an urgency heretofore not seen. Indeed, I think we're going to be hearing far more in the near future about water shortages and the ramifications of long-term drought from a national perspective. Realistically, the situation should spur a deceleration of the development boom that has punctuated western and southeastern economic growth in the last 25 years. And, given the growing interest in global warming and climate change, recent events should spark a popular demand for more eco-sensitive responses to demands on our natural resources. Otherwise, communities like Atlanta face a long-term situation more threatening than the effects of a fire. As I noted in April:

"Assuming the mantle of historical geographer and studying a map of the West, one sees a landscape dotted with ghost towns. Yet they're not of the mythic 'Old West' variety; they are towns that sprang up in response to the discovery of gold, silver, copper and uranium, or flourished when the first roads spidered westward to California. Today, there are countless exit ramps along the east-west highways that lead to abandoned mining communities and once prosperous towns with derelict truck stops, gas stations, garages and warehouses. Fifty to 75 years from now, we may have a new breed of ghost towns - communities that emerged around the burgeoning agribusinesses that took advantage of post-Depression irrigation efforts, but dried up as their access to inexpensive water evaporated. Even larger interior cities like Denver may face significant contraction if their diminished water supplies, dependent on the shrinking snow pack of the Rockies, can not be supplemented by other sources. Water-stressed urban areas may become the West's equivalent of decaying, post-industrial 'Rust Belt' cities, their economic hearts on life support as businesses and citizens leave for - literally - greener climes. And one suspects that these new ghost towns of strip malls and convenience stores will prove neither as picturesque nor as attractive to tourists as Bodie, California, and similarly 'historic' mining communities."

Now take that scenario and apply it to the southeast. Is Atlanta on the list of future ghost towns, a city crippled by a combination of drought and developmental shortsightedness? Obviously these are worst-case scenarios, dependent on just the right convergence of circumstances. This year's drought could be followed by next year's floods. Nevertheless, the current emergency should give localities cause to reexamine their pursuit of unmitigated development. In the meantime, pray that the rains fall in Georgia and the politicians learn a valuable lesson.

Freshwater Ghost Towns and the Promise of Desalination

This piece is a first draft of an editorial I'm penning for a friend.

Does the "American Dream" automatically include a green lawn fed by the rhythmic clatter of sprinklers across our "crabgrass frontier?" If you live out West, you've likely already addressed this question . . . and probably endured restrictions on watering your lawn! In some parts of the country a lush, green yard, resembling those featured in annoying Scott's commercials for fertilizers and anti-weed treatments, may soon be a thing of the past. In fact, in western states, concern has obviously moved beyond the silly aesthetics of lawn care to the more serious issue of having sufficient water supplies for human consumption and agricultural production.

For decades the response to growing demand has been the construction of canals and pipelines to tap the resources of the region's more water-rich areas. (And, as Marc Reisner detailed in Cadillac Desert, this drive for water was not always accomplished through friendly or entirely legal means.) But as long as rain and snowfall amounts remained relatively constant, supply met demand. Nevertheless, after decades of unrestrained development, increased demand for water, and several years of severe drought, the water supply and demand equation is not so easily balanced. Factor in the admonitions of scientists studying the myriad effects of global warming and attendant climate change, and one faces the likelihood of dire consequences for large sections of the United States, particularly the West.

Emerging from this debate over dwindling water resources is renewed interest in the potential of desalination. To most Americans, desalination is associated with Israel, Saudi Arabia and neighboring, largely desert nations. Surprisingly, desalination of brackish water has been undertaken for decades in the U.S., particularly in the treatment of water entering Mexico. In the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government actually funded desalination research and, through the Army Corps of Engineers, built a number of plants, most in the West. With adequate rainfall, as well as greater investment in canals and pipelines, however, funding for desalination technologies dried up and federally-run plants were mothballed.

Yet with water shortages a reality and alarmist predictions of future shortfalls sounding more likely, desalination processes now attract greater attention and capital. Although desalination can be accomplished by several means, including evaporation/condensation, vacuum distillation, and electrodialysis, reverse osmosis remains the dominant technology worldwide. With reverse osmosis, high-pressure pumps force water through semi-permeable membranes which filter out the dissolved solids. For ocean proximate communities threatened by imminent water crisis, these desalination technologies offer an enticing response to predictions of dryer years ahead.

Still, what about land-locked cities - Denver, for example - that do not have the option of establishing desalination plants to solve their future water consumption needs? For those communities that do not have access to an ocean or significant agricultural runoff, the painful reality will likely reflect two scenarios: localities will face substantially slowed growth or even population and commercial decline as water becomes more scarce, or, they will find themselves shopping for water resources from those lucky municipalities that have a marketable water surplus, in the way some local utilities now shop the national electric grid for power. Except water, unlike electricity, is not an easy commodity to transport in large quantities. Not every city or town facing water shortages will possess the capital to invest in pipelines or other modes of transport. Moreover, large cities will face significant opposition from environmentalists - and competing communities - in their efforts to alter further the western landscape with dams, pipelines and canals. Las Vegas, for example, faces serious legal battles in its efforts to tap the springs and rivers of northern Nevada.

Assuming the mantle of historical geographer and studying a map of the West, one sees a landscape dotted with ghost towns. Yet they're not of the mythic "Old West" variety; they are towns that sprang up in response to the discovery of gold, silver, copper and uranium, or flourished when the first roads spidered westward to California. Today, there are countless exit ramps along the east-west highways that lead to abandoned mining communities and once prosperous towns with derelict truck stops, gas stations, garages and warehouses. Fifty to 75 years from now, we may have a new breed of ghost towns - communities that emerged around the burgeoning agribusinesses that took advantage of post-Depression irrigation efforts, but dried up as their access to inexpensive water evaporated. Even larger interior cities like Denver may face significant contraction if their diminished water supplies, dependent on the shrinking snow pack of the Rockies, can not be supplemented by other sources. Water-stressed urban areas may become the West's equivalent of decaying, post-industrial "Rust Belt" cities, their economic hearts on life support as businesses and citizens leave for - literally - greener climes. And one suspects that these new ghost towns of strip malls and convenience stores will prove neither as picturesque nor as attractive to tourists as Bodie, California, and similarly "historic" mining communities.

And the prospects for those areas which ultimately embrace desalination technologies? Although a promising alternative, desalination offers no "silver bullet" in the drive to supplement dwindling water resources. Indeed, for some environmentalists and investors alike, current desalination methods promise as many headaches as solutions.

Desalination is, in fact, a high cost process. (Oil rich countries in the Middle East simply use their petroleum profits to fund desalination plants.) How will California and neighboring states meet this expense? Higher taxes? Surcharges for increased water use? Neither alternative will prove popular among residents already clamoring for tax reform and relief from high energy costs.

In addition, desalination plants are big power consumers. In a region struggling to meet current power demands, how will an overburdened energy infrastructure meet the needs of communities that invest in desalination plants? Do we secure adequate water supplies with a concomitant increase in the consumption of fossil fuels? And, since the U.S. is allegedly the "Saudi Arabia of coal," are new coal-fired plants brought online to feed our energy needs and power new desalination plants? One potential solution is investment in nuclear-powered desalination, an effort currently being tried in the former Soviet Union. Australians have taken the innovative step of powering desalination plants with wind-driven turbines, as a recent New York Times article reveals (New York Times, April 3, 2007). Yet both nuclear and wind power technologies will doubtless prove controversial options vis-a-vis their possible environmental impact in the West.

Finally, one must consider the environmental impact of the desalination process. How do communities dispose of the hypersaline brine, classified as industrial waste by the EPA? Uncontrolled discharge into oceans invites environmental disaster. And, given growing public concern over the tenuous health of the Pacific ecosystem - in the much-studied area of Monterrey Bay, for example - it is unlikely that localities will embrace the promise of clean water at the expense of local fisheries and marine life.

Study a 19th century map of America's trans-Mississippi West and one finds much of it labeled as the "Great American Desert." In the 1850s, settlers heading westward for California and Oregon saw this region as an obstacle no less imposing than the Rockies - an area to be traversed as quickly as possible to reach the promise of prosperity on the coast. Thanks to irrigation, however, regions like California's Imperial Valley became veritable "Edens" coaxed from desert soils. Tapping the seemingly limitless Ogallala Aquifer, farmers in the semi-arid High Plains from Nebraska to Texas transformed a grass-covered prairie into one of the most productive regions for growing corn, wheat and soybeans.

What happens if the increasingly burdened Colorado River, which feeds the Imperial Valley's All-American Canal, can no longer meet the needs of the region's cities and agricultural producers? What are the consequences when drought and demand so severely attenuate the primary source of water for more than 20 million people? (And, just as the Colorado is threatened, heightened agricultural demand now depletes the Ogallala Aquifer at a speed far exceeding the replacement rate.) With drought conditions and an impending battle over how western water resources are apportioned, desalination plants with pipelines supplying the interior may be the only means to forestall an economic disaster. Without adequate water, areas such as the Imperial Valley and the High Plains may quickly resemble that label of "Great American Desert" once erroneously attached to much of the West.

Desalination may represent the most viable answer to the conundrum of meeting the United States' water needs. Yet clearly it's an answer wrapped in a matrix of complex political, economic and environmental issues. With several western states preparing to square off in court over disputed water rights, the prospect of an acrimonious and extended legal battle would appear to necessitate aggressive exploration of desalination's potential. Communities in California and Arizona, for example, fearing future water shortages, have already reopened old plants and begun studying construction of new desalination facilities. Moreover, for green-minded investors, desalination technologies would seem a logical magnet for capital.

Still, unless one is directly affected by water shortages, it may prove difficult to galvanize popular interest in the debate over the efficacy of desalination programs, particularly when the media pay so much attention to the Middle East and its role in feeding our fossil fuel diet. Think of it in these terms, however. In 1999, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Yamani, offered an ironic conclusion when asked about the significance of oil to his nation's development. "All in all, I wish we had discovered water," he remarked, a telling observation in a world so often assessed through the refracted politics of oil. In the end, water may be the 21st century's oil, and could prove even more expensive. Desalination will doubtless play a role in mitigating predicted water shortages. Nevertheless, the extent to which this process will offer a panacea to thirsty communities remains to be seen.

Climate Change

Recently I added an editorial to an Op-Ed piece written by my friend Tom Glendening. You can find his original piece, written for "The Panelist" website, here. Tom's piece on climate change, its effects, and the possible solutions, was followed by two comments, one shouting an "Amen" from the choir, and the other declaring that climate change is a "hoax" cooked up by greedy scientists to secure funding. My response for "The Panelist" follows:


The first two comments offered here display the typically polarized debate over the severity - or existence - of climate change. Unfortunately, much of the debate in the last two decades - the period in which climate change alarms were first sounded and heard beyond the scientific community - has been shaped by a triumvirate of ignorance: a monolithic corporate system in which profits trump responsibility; conservative politicians who are little more than sharecroppers in the corporate fields; and evangelical Christians who alternate between preaching a "why bother" attitude with the imminence of the Second Coming, and emphasizing God's gift to mankind of "dominion" over the earth. What "fundamentalist" Christians often ignore in their interpretation of scripture is its emphasis on "stewardship" within that theme of "dominion." (As an aside, it's important to note that an increasingly vocal splinter group of conservative Christians has abandoned their bloc's anti-environmental stance and begun sounding the environmental trumpet - albeit to the tune of "stewardship of God's resources." If it brings them to the table, I'm not going to argue with their motivation.)

Since Plato's idea of philosopher-kings seems an unlikely course for our hedonistic, reality show society, we'll have to find an alternative to address the global issue of climate change and its impact, because it IS, ultimately, a global issue that requires global solutions. The United States acting alone will not solve the problem. Perhaps we can foster development of a more enlightened triumvirate that a) unites scientifically aware governments populated by politicians possessing an intact ethical DNA, b) a global corporate system that recognizes the deleterious effects unallayed climate change can have on the bottom line, and c) grassroots mobilization/education to create a groundswell of public opinion that will influence positively the first two elements in this list. (Realize that this goal will no doubt prove tantamount to dragging some of Plato's cavedwellers into the light. They will prefer the alternate reality of shadows cast on the wall. Let's just hope they, including Ben Hanley, notice when the cave becomes unbearably hot and unlivable.)

Upon reflection, the most important element in this group may be the shapers of public opinion. Because if there are enough Al Gores and Tom Glendenings (the author of the op-ed piece), public opinion - and consumer behavior - can tilt the monoliths of government and business into action.

A footnote: as a historian and artist, I tend to take the long view on most issues, realizing that if one looks closely enough, there are potent lessons to be learned from the collected data of our cultural histories. Take for example, the works of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a 16h century Flemish painter. Many of his beautifully rendered images depict a northern Europe that is cold, snow-covered, and ice-bound. This was Brueghel's reality, not merely an artist's fantasy world. Average yearly temperatures during that period were only a few degrees cooler than today - causing scholars to refer to this period (varyingly estimated from 1550 to 1850) as Europe's "Little Ice Age." I won't go into the science that explains this period . . . nor will I address the manifold consequences vis-a-vis economics, health, politics, etc. Just understand that this period was caused by a seemingly miniscule shift in average yearly temperatures. The current threat - with effects potentially magnified by anthropogenic variables - appears much more dire . . . and will likely not inspire a latter-day Brueghel to leave behind paintings of bucolic community life or winter wonderlands.

Dust Bowl and the 1930s

I just started reading The Worst Hard Time, a National Book Award winner by Timothy Egan. It chronicles the Dust Bowl experience of the 1930s. For some reason that decade has really captured my attention of late. When one looks at this period in U.S. history, it's incredibly rich, whether one focuses on politics, sports, entertainment, economics, or art. It's as if the Great Depression represented this incredible petri dish in which our whole society was "cooked" as if in a giant lab experiment.

As an artist and photographer I'm primarily interested in the artistic responses of the period. Think of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans among the photographers . . . Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Demuth, Scheeler, among the painters. And if one looks for a common denominator among these artists, and among some of the writers of the day - including Agee and Steinbeck - they often focused their work the so-called "Heartland," that region encompassing the Plains states. Why that region? Even today that area seems to garner considerable attention. In the last year, National Geographic did a feature article on the Plains states and the New York Times ran a series of articles on the depopulation of Plains states communities.

More on this subject - and the 1930s - on a later date.