Monday, September 02, 2013

Sustainable?

Sustainability must be a concept that natural resource extractors hate to deal with.  So they  use it for their own purposes.  There is an interesting story in the Journal this morning about how the communities of Clovis and Portales in Eastern New Mexico will have the government build them a half billion dollar pipeline to bring water down from Ute Lake to help sustain them.  These farming communities(who generally hate the government but love subsidies) have finally had to start dealing with the unsustainable pumping of the Ogallala aquifer for their agricultural economy.  That water will be gone in less than a life time.  Reality bites.

In another story the oil and gas boys cheering section in New Mexico says their pumping of oil and gas is sustainable because of new finds and techniques for extracting the fossil fuels.  They should define what they mean by sustainable.  Does it mean pumping until the planet is uninhabitable?  Or does it mean until they run out of dirty fuel?  Or hopefully, does it mean that in the future there just wont be a need for it because solar and other alternatives replace it to a large extent?

And then the Journal once again lets that oil and gas mascot Marita Noon say the oil and gas industry has really never been subsidized.  Why does the Journal let that lunatic on to their editorial pages?  It just make them look like they live in a fantasy land.

I have to say that over the last few weeks the Journal has been doing some good work.  The story yesterday about Harding County's depopulation and the ensuing excitement about an all night gas pump being available was really great work.  And so was the story on the water situation in Clovis and Portales today.  I am really enjoying their use of photo graphs again. 

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