SAN FRANCISCO - It's hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona's green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high.
So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American West could become.
Bush fires are killing people and obliterating towns. Rice exports collapsed last year and the wheat crop was halved two years running. Water rationing is part of daily life.
The island of Kaua‘i is one of the most beautiful and fragile places on
earth. From above, it looks like a vibrant green flower, lush and
pulsing with life, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The
Hawaiian tourist industry calls it "The Garden Isle," comparing it to
the Garden of Eden. The image of Hawai‘i has always been sold as a
"paradise." But there is another side to life on this island, one that
visitors rarely see.
A little slavery is okay, just not too much of it.
Driving from Naples, Florida, the nation’s second-wealthiest metropolitan area, to Immokalee takes less than an hour on a straight road. You pass houses that sell for an average of $1.4 million, shopping malls anchored by Tiffany’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, manicured golf courses. Eventually, gated communities with names like Monaco Beach Club and Imperial Golf Estates give way to modest ranches, and the highway shrivels from six lanes to two. Through the scruffy palmettos, you glimpse flat, sandy tomato fields shimmering in the broiling sun. Rounding a long curve, you enter Immokalee.
On Monday, EU environment ministers successfully blocked a move by the European Commission to force Austria and Hungary to lift bans on genetically modified corn. A German decision on the Monsanto product is expected soon, as well.
The European corn borer is a tiny, nocturnal moth. It likes to eat potatoes and sorghum, but -- as can be gathered from its name -- its food of choice is corn. There's only one kind of insecticide that is approved for fighting the flying scourge.
SAN FRANCISCO - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday declared a state emergency due to drought and said he would consider mandatory water rationing in the face of nearly $3 billion in economic losses from below-normal rainfall this year.
As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be devastated and some growers in the most economically productive farm state simply are not able to plant, state officials said, calling the current drought the most expensive ever.
Now that we've decided
to "green" the economy, why not green homeland security, too? I'm not
talking about interrogators questioning suspects under the glow of
compact fluorescent light bulbs, or cops wearing recycled Kevlar
recharging their Tasers via solar panels. What I mean is: Shouldn't we
finally start rethinking the very notion of homeland security on a
sinking planet?
As our government enacts a stimulus package
and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home
mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their
communities.
When Abraham Lincoln formed the US Department of Agriculture in 1862
he referred to it as the "People's Department" because it served the
common interest of so many Americans. America's concerns about food and
the economy were addressed and investments in cutting-edge research
guaranteed the nation's food security.
On the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth earlier this month, the Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and his staff at the department’s Washington headquarters broke out its shovels and “
broke pavement” on a garden.
