I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Holodomor. It was an engineered famine, a halocaust, in Ukraine during the thirties. At that time Ukraine was the bread basket of Europe but Stalin in his wisdom decided to crush Ukrainian culture by seizing all the produce and exporting it. 10,000,000 starved to death.
Anyway something similar is happening in California today, not as dramatic as the holodomor thank goodness but central government policies is turning the fruit basket of America into desert.
Apparently environmentalists claim that this little fish, the delta smelt, is under threat. And to protect it is is necessary to cut back on the amount of water allowed to be taken for irrigation of the orchards and market gardens of Central Valley California.
With the inevitable results, productive land becomes unproductive, the orchard workers are unemployed along with the cannery workers with flow on effects for everybody else and in a land of plenty people are literally going hungry.
The welfare of little fish trump that of people - but then the people at the heart of this, the greens don't like people very much so that should come as no surprise to any of us.
Source: Fresno, Zimbabwe
Anyway something similar is happening in California today, not as dramatic as the holodomor thank goodness but central government policies is turning the fruit basket of America into desert.
Apparently environmentalists claim that this little fish, the delta smelt, is under threat. And to protect it is is necessary to cut back on the amount of water allowed to be taken for irrigation of the orchards and market gardens of Central Valley California.
With the inevitable results, productive land becomes unproductive, the orchard workers are unemployed along with the cannery workers with flow on effects for everybody else and in a land of plenty people are literally going hungry.
The welfare of little fish trump that of people - but then the people at the heart of this, the greens don't like people very much so that should come as no surprise to any of us.
Source: Fresno, Zimbabwe
I liked one of the comments on the article:
ReplyDeleteThrow a communist out the window and he comes in the front door as an environmentalist.
That's what you get for living in a ground floor dwelling.
The larger issue is water supply in general. Fresno farmers got only 10% of their usual water allocation in 2009, and water supply issues were triggered by 3 years of drought and structural issues with dams and canals in the delta, I believe.
Getting any more water risks the fishes, because the solution was to pump water from one area to another, sucking the fish in too, and the fish triumphed. Actually, I think the lawyers triumphed because any sensible action and accommodations have been blunted by long drawn out court battles.
The real problem is drought and water management, and it is exacerbated by trying to maintain an environmental balance when the environment is already out of balance.
The fishes have won at the expense of the farmers this time, but both may lose the war in the long run, unless they get better at finding workable solutions instead of litigation.