You’ve got to admit there is more than a little irony in Republican Governor Rick Perry’s highly publicized anti-science positions…especially the one about Climate Change.
If anyone has reason to believe in the consequences of human intervention on the environment, it should be a Texan!
The ability of Texas to prosper as it has, or even support human habitation over much of its territory, has always been highly dependent on the state’s ability to divert water through huge public projects.
Now, just as the will to make public investments has been completely eroded by magic thinkers such as Governor Perry, nature appears to be drawing a line in the sand…and that sand is at the bottom of countless dried-up lakes and stream-beds.
Injured and insulted by a population who pushed it always further and further while giving less and less back in the way of supportive regulation, the environment in Texas appears to have finally had enough.
In April, in the midst of the worst drought in history, Governor Perry called on Texans to pray for rain. One has to wonder how solid is the Governor’s connection to the divine since it is August and his prayers have still not been answered.
As late as ten years ago, there were still thinking minds in Texas, however; and they did have recommendations for addressing the calamitous math of a steadily growing population and dwindling water resources.
When the Legislature approved a statewide water plan in 1997, then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock hailed it as “the heart of our legacy,” while its sponsor, Sen. J.E. “Buster” Brown, promised it would provide plentiful supplies of the crucial resource “for our grandchildren and our grandchildren’s grandchildren.”Then came the Great Drought: Since passage of the landmark 1997 legislation, state funding for water projects has been as scarce as rain in the summer of 2011.
The 1997 water plan required an investment of $53 billion dollars of public funding, but as we are learning, Texans have voted resoundingly for the guy who wants to get government out of the people’s business.
So all that is on the table now for a November vote is a modest $6 billion bond, which, if passed, will bring the total investment of Texas in its water issues since 1997 to a mere $10 billion.
Watch closely, folks. Texas is poised to become the perfect storm of deregulation and denial.
That’s why Governor Perry is praying for rain.
So Perry and the insane right prayed for rain. What were the results, just what was God’s response?
Remember the tropical storm that hit Texas a few weeks ago, just weeks after the rain prayers to God Almighty. As it hit land, the storm dissipated! The storm came raging to the shoreline and as it entered Texas it didn’t just disintegrate, it vanished like it wasn’t even there. Just 20 miles inland there wasn’t even a cloud, like it hit a magic and invisible wall.
So God listened to Perry alright, but Perry and the extremist far-right pray to a different god, not the benevolent creator of the universe, but the one that feeds on misery and death and preys on the weak and sick – just like the far-right ‘christians’ do when they cut food stamps, medicare and Social Security.
But if you ask insane people like Perry what went wrong, they’ll usually blame someone that received a reward and wasn’t intentionally made miserable, like gays getting married in New York state…
The average person is not as crazy as we’d like to believe. You couldn’t walk into a store, agency, restaurant or gas station without someone remarking about the weather. In May, the remarks were, “Well, it certainly is a hot spring, but we’re used to that here.”
But by mid-August, the remarks had a surprisingly negative tone for Texas. (The main similarity between Texas and Vermont is that both states are full of people who just love it and brag about it all the time). “No end in sight”, “This just doesn’t seem natural”, & “Government has to control [other people’s] water use” were the kinds of things I was hearing.
They are reminded every day of their drought because the area looks so damn ugly…no watering allowed 5 days a week leaves most lawns and trees brown and dying. And at night, they cannot barbecue…and that is the most cited lament in all of Texas and Arkansas. They’ve seen something simple and important to them taken away due to a climate malady. People have eyes and ears, which they use slowly…but no politician can tell them what they see every day isn’t true.
“no politician can tell them what they see every day isn’t true.”
Republican politicians tell them all the time not to believe their own lying eyes. What you are seeing is the long-delayed reaction to the populace wondering why their eyes are lying to them when Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and every politician is telling them the opposite.
Your comment heartened me considerably, it’s good to know that there are some (many) that believe what they see over what Fox News tells them…