Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
Until …
The world is facing its sixth extinction crisis, scientists are beginning to agree. 96-year-old Australian scientist Stephen Boyden’s comment on our hopes of preventing says what everyone involved in trying to save species feels:
“While there's a glimmer of hope, it's worth working to solve the problem. We have the scientific knowledge to do it but we don't have the political will,” Boyden said.
This news certainly deserved more than it received in this rewrite of a Bureau of Reclamation press release. But, the event to which it negligently refers was tremendous and unique, an event which took 18 years in federal court, a fight for funding in Congress that cost one congressman his seat, and may be responsible for the insanity of another still sitting congressman, whose district straddles the Friant-Kern Canal as well as making the San Joaquin River habitable for salmon again.
The United Nations reported this week that the Sixth Extinction is well on its way. Without strenuous, consistent and intelligent action taken on a global level, the predicted “iconic” event of the new Anthropocene epoch of man-made ecological catastrophe is upon us. And the velocity of the rate of extinction in this epoch eclipses the known geological record.
Oil prices are rising again and they’ve passed the $50 break even price for fracked oil. This has given the Monterey Shale play new life. Couple that with the Trump administration’s hatred of any environmental regulation and, Behold, 1.6 million acres of public lands along the San Andreas Fault are opened for oil fracking. The potential for catastrophe is immeasurable.
--blj
5-9-19
Sacramento Bee
Trump plan to allow new fracking on California coast, Central Valley moves forward
Ralph Nader is not generally known for his insights into the San Joaquin Valley, but at this hour with the kind of corporate concentration we keep seeing more of in all aspects of agriculture and in all levels of politics, you’ll agree with us that he has a great deal to say about our local, regional and state public affairs, although he can speak as few others can about the nation itself.
--Badlands Journal editorial board
May 2019
Sun Magazine
Bottom of Form
Bottom of Form
The Sun Interview
The Great Work
My melancholic contemplation of the Sixth Extinction (got as far as the White Nose Syndrome wiping out bats) has been rudely interrupted this week by the saber rattling flatulence emanating from the White House. I turned as this site has often turned in the past to Pepe Escobar, the former Roving Eye of Asia Times and the best correspondent in English on subjects like the New Silk Road and a region he calls “Pipelinestan.”
The California High Speed Rail project, ruinous to farmland, farm operations and habitat for endangered species, was sold to voters in a highly deceptive initiative and has been rammed down the throats of Valley landowners ever since by a cabal of project potentates and real estate special interests cattle-prodding local governments into support.
There’s help for the Bloomingcamp Ranch right here in Merced City, where Safeway has been tapping into our tap water for years and bottling it for sale. We also have a local developer down here who is expert is constructing pipelines apparently to nowhere. So he can certainly build one from Merced City to the outskirts of Oakdale, so customers of Bloomingcamp can have confidence in the ranches water source. From Ranchwood to Bloomingcamp, ranch-to-camp, so to speak.
The lede of the article below was buried in its last graph.
“Unfortunately, this complex scheme leaves (farmers) with more questions than answers,” Stabenow said. “I have a number of concerns about whether this plan is fair and equitable to all farmers. Government checks are no replacement for lost markets, and this temporary support will only go so far.”
But, how do you build a water bank under ground?
LeZotte said Santa Clara is sensitive to farmers’ apprehensions about groundwater getting moved.
A sentiment worthy of UC Merced. -- blj
5-29-19
Sacramento Bee
Thirsty Silicon Valley water agency might buy a Central Valley farm. Why agriculture is worried.
By Dale Kasler