Saturday, June 14, 2008

Global Drying, Transit, & Salmon Strongholds

An thoughtful article from the Wall Street Journal examining the relation of the huge planetary need for much more arable water, along with the already huge—and currently threatened in our state—need for water for human and environmental use.

This Bee editorial from today makes one good point that just when public transit is being used by a lot more people—due to high gas prices mostly—is not the time for the legislature to reduce funding but to try and get it back up to a level it can accommodate the growth, though without raising new taxes; which would cause an already over-taxed citizenry in perilous economic times, even more hardship.

This commentary on the concept of preserving salmon stronghold rivers sounds good, but, as always with ideas like this, the details are crucial and the article is painfully short on them.

The most important question that needs to be asked of all of the water related issues involving the salmon (and all aquatic life); “Is the primacy of the human need for water maintained or are the needs of the salmon (or other aquatic life) established as a priority?”