Murph writes about his schadenfreude watching the fires in California and droughts in the South from water-rich (and increasingly temperate) Michigan.

Michigan and other Rust Belt/Great Lakes states need to start planning now to respond in an organized fashion to any demands for water diversion from Great Lakes basin watersheds to the south and southwest. As Murph’s commenters note, New Mexico governor and presidential candidate Bill Richardson recently noted that “Wisconsin is awash in water.”

This will get ugly. In my opinion, the response to demands for diversion should be “move here.” The rust belt should begin planning for massive reurbanization of its decimated cities with relatively dense, transit-oriented, energy-efficient “green” construction and invite companies & communities to relocate. Planning ahead can help stave scenarios where organized southern and southwestern states might play water-rich states against each other.

Water is not oil. When you extract it from the watershed and don’t return it when you’re done, it seriously alters the ecology. If we’re going to support increasing populations of humans, we should bring them to the water, not the other way around.

Also, it’s a good thing the Great Lakes are shared with Canada and (as far as I know) Canada has even less of an incentive to divert water from them than the US does — creating an international, as well as domestic issue.

Update: I should point out in his post, Murph coined the term “thirstbelt” (or “thirst belt“).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.