What Will Happen When the Southwest Spreads East - US News
What Will Happen When the Southwest Spreads East - US News: "The New Southwest"
This is a great article, one which I have taken the time to store in my own documents. Dr. Jay Banner of UT Austin provides some excellent insights as well as graphics on the longer term cycle of what is happening to Texas, and in particular along the I-35 corridor. Take a closer look at the images showing Texas before, during and after the drought of 2011-2012. Recovery is much harder than the process which can destroy things.
Unfortunately, we have growth which can exacerbate the problem. Fortunately, we have growth, which can solve the problem. How can we finance a reduction in evaporation rates? Evaporation is like inflation or high interest rates. We can't control the amount of rainfall coming into our accounts, but we can control the amount of evaporation going out of our accounts. It is called Permaculture and we need to rebuild our landscapes around those concepts. Fortunately (again), the progress of Permaculture in terms of local food production, water production (through dramatically reduced evaporation rates of upto 50%) and carbon sequestration are all things we really, really need. Permaculture is a triple bottom line activity when done right. That is the concept behind our work, doing it right. Our progress in this respect can be amazing - just see this TED talk on how quickly both solar and wind beat our initial estimates for impact. We are now at multiples of the best earlier forecasts for those technologies.
I-35 represents the frontline preventing desertification and recovering rainfall from evaporation. What we do here will influence the world's deserting areas.
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