Shittin’ In Our Nest Part 1
I’ve always been of the opinion that the people who care the most about our natural resources are hunters and fishermen. I still think that. And as time goes flowing on by, it seems like we’re ruining stuff faster than those who care about it can do anything to protect it.
Birddog and I went fishing Thursday over at a beautiful little lake in far Eastern Oklahoma called Eucha. It’s a water supply lake for Tulsa and has many springs and creeks in its Ozark watershed. The last time we fished it was probably six or seven years ago, again in August when we damn near got struck by a lightnong bolt that came clear out of the blue. Actually grey but it was a surprise. The nickel sized hail that covered the front deck abotu an inch deep wasn’t any fun either especially as we weere hightailing it back to the ramp. On that trip the lake was clear and dark. We had to back off from the banks to be stealthy. This trip it was split pea soup green, full of weeds and didymo and it just broke my heart to see it. Much of the watershed for this lake is in western Ark and eastern Oklahoma and is prime chicken house country. The Oklahoma atty general sued and had them all at the table to hammer out an agreement on pollution control and monitoring. Then Scott Pruitt was named Atty General by a new governor and he dropped the entire project. I don’t want to make it political but that asshole set us back fifty years in conservation in Oklahoma.
In May of 2019 when we had big time flooding, some barges got loose on the Arkansas River and dumped 30,000 tons of Diammonium Phosphate in the river down at the lock by Webbers Falls, Ok. Not one single word about cleanup, accountability, penalties for letting barges loose, whatever. I’ve written our state DEQ and recieved the following response, “Due to the flow of the river at the time of the accident is is highly unlikely that any of the pollutants remained in state waters for very long.” LOL. That big dead spot down there in the gulf just got bigger. FYI, phosphorous has a half ife in soil of about 1000 years. It just doesn’t get better over time. Think about that next time you put 102010 on your lawn or garden.
I started diving in 2003 (thanks to Trav!) and have dived every year since except for last year. Most year twice. I don’t know how to describe to you the difference in what I saw diving in 2003 to what I see now. The ocean is quite literally the engine that drives the whole shooting match on earth. Its not to big that we can’t fuck it up. Because we are.
The dilemna is how do we fix it? I always hear the argument that we can’t do it all by ourselves. No we can’t, but why should that keep us from leading? My personal belief is that we can’t fix it as long as we expect fresh strawberries in January. That’s just a silly example of how fucked up and upside down our food system is. That we even HAVE a food system might be a part of the problem. After all, its feeding this ever growing population that has caused us to have to have a supply chain like this to begin with. And its the world’s biggest polluter. Not just ours, everyones’. People want to blame factory farms but all factory farms do is fulfill a need. We want cheap food available 24X7 and we hope its nutritious. So we have #2 corn as our number one foodstuff and we can’t even fucking eat it.
So this is already a Thump post, but I was hoping to start a discussion on what’s a sane way to proceed. my thoughts boil down to:
1. Potable water is going to be the #1 commodity in the 22nd century.
2. We have too many dad gum people. Just look at the American West. They can either build more houses or feed the 35% of Americans that they feed. they don’t have the water to do both. Who do they screw? ITs caused by overdevelopment which is caused by too many people.
3. Given how scarce natural resources are, we might want to be more prudent about how we marshall ours in America. Nobody ever mentions saving for the future any more at all. Maybe we should be savers more and consumers less.
BKB
ps….I had a frozen ice cream cone this week, and it had a plastic cup over the top I suppose to keep the nuts from falling off. A plastic cup. WTFO? Stupid shit.
