Monday, July 31, 2006

Altered Oceans: the LA Times Reports.

This is a must read. The LA Times has just started a 5 part series on our Altered Oceans. If you link the story here with Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, you have a very dismal picture of the future that man is building for himself.

The online story is full of video, graphs, charts. It needs a computer with DSL or cable modem connections to view it, but it is well worth the time to download even if you don't have that.

Then, ask yourself just what should be done to keep the delta from becoming yet another dead zone. Is the decline of certain fish populations the clue we need to be following? I surely think so or I would not be spending so much time on this. Is it going to be easy to solve? Hell no. If it were easy, we would have done it.

In the Delta, we are going to have to realize that there needs to be a way by which agriculture and the environment can coexist. Right now, we have to understand the the flow of nitrates, phosphates (fertilizer) and pesticide run off into delta waters may or may not be the major cause of what we see, but we know deep down that that it has to contribute to the problems.

The rural communities of the San Joaquin Valley are home to some of the most religious people in the country. I hope that they are asking themselves "What would Noah do?"