Hard Rain

Cedar Rapids looks a bit like Venice, lately.

The flood waters are beginning to recede — for now.

Remarkably, the media is calling the event a “500-year flood.”

Again. They did so before — 15 years ago, in ‘93.

This time around, it was much worse.

What will it look like the next time around?

Nobody wants to think about that, now.

Though we must do so, sooner than later.

Because we may have passed the tipping point.

Because climate change may now be racing away with us.

We can’t wait for the sage heads in Washington.

Because we have to take drastic action now.

Before the middle of the country becomes what it once was — an inland sea.

Here’s our relief plan, in case your community needs one.

On the bright side, I’m happy to see that the oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is now doing something I’ve been pushing for years — taking water where there’s too much and sending it where it’s needed.

There Will Be Water

By irrigating the American West & Southwest, we could help the natives maintain their livelihoods by saving crops & forests & ski slopes, and meanwhile soak up CO2 from the atmosphere — thereby rescuing our own asses.

After the Deluge

Cedar Rapids, IA: Flood of 2008

95% of the area above is typically dry.

I know — I grew up there.

Lots of people around the state report that it’s worse than the flood of ‘93 — supposedly a once-in-500-years event.

What many people don’t seem to understand is that this is just a taste of what’s in store for us if we don’t drastically reduce CO2.

Miraculously, I continue to see conservative talk heads dismissing all talk of climate change as “speculative science” and arguing for more oil wells.

O, if only this were a just world and I could bitch-slap every one of their asses back to hell…

To repeat: We need to build an aquatic equivalent of the electrical grid. It’s most likely too late to avoid future floods unless we put in place canals, reservoirs and pipelines to shunt water away from future disaster areas.

We could thereby transport it to California, the Rockies and the desert Southwest — all of which are starved for water and/or burning up and blowing away — thus accelerating climate change.

To those who object to the cost: Consider the cost of flooded fields unable to produce food to feed a hungry world. We’ve already seen the tip of that iceberg, whose larger part is global famine, war, epidemics, and economic collapse.