California Dreaming

I wonder what conservation in California would look like under a McCain/Palin administration. Do you? Given the fact that both of the crackpots bearing the GOP standard are unabashed supporters of oil drilling in the ecologically sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for crude that, for starters, doesn't come close to sustaining America's rate of consumption and, in any event, wouldn't come on line for another decade--at stupendous cost to the environment--we probably shouldn't be encouraged. As it turns out California, the nation's most populated state and the WORLD'S sixth largest economy, faces an existential threat to its continued viability due to a combination of short-sighted water-management policies, extreme population growth, and climate change. Try visualizing McCain in the White House as the following challenges to California and the southwest region in general evolve:

The Silence of Collapse
by Rachel Olivieri

There is no landmass on Earth quite like California. Here one finds the world’s most ancient trees, bristlecone pines, more than 4,700 years old, in the White Mountains; the tallest and largest trees, the coast redwood and giant sequoia, respectively; the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Whitney; the lowest and hottest place in the Western Hemisphere, Death Valley; the largest western hemisphere estuary, the Bay Delta; an 800-mile coastline; the most irrigated acres; the most endangered species in the U.S.; the most diverse geology and biodiversity in the U.S.; and the greatest, most ecologically destructive water projects on Earth...

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