The Colorado River and the New York Times Magazine Article on Climate Change

The Colorado River and Today’s New York Times Magazine Article on Climate Change
Sunday, August 5, 2018

Today, the New York Times Magazine unveiled its sweeping story about climate change. The link is here. We encourage everyone interested in the Colorado River to read it. Why? The Colorado River is in a bullseye of climate change impacts in the United States. All the best available science indicates that the current “drought” is likely not a drought, but rather long-term drying/aridifcation due to climate change. And, it’s going to get worse.

Further, we say this: The U.S. Government is not going to address the problems caused by climate change on the Colorado River. In fact, they’ve told the seven states to address the problem and have taken a more hands-off approach. The states are, of course, the fox guarding the hen house. Every state in the upper basin (CO, WY, UT, NM) is trying to get more water out of the river, when taking less water out of the river is the absolute only solution that makes sense. The so-called “drought contingency plans” are a band-aid on an arterial hemorrhage.

Even further, the mainstream environmental groups are also not going to solve or address the problem. All of the larger environmental groups are funded by the Walton Family Foundation which actually supports large new dams and diversions (Moffat Collection System Project, Windy Gap Firming Project, Fontenelle Dam Re-Engineering), and has focused on the drought contingency plans, while also promoting a convoluted “water market” scheme so capitalists and “impact investors” can make even more money with so-called “conservation outcomes”, a scheme that has generated almost no recognizable conservation results.

Our policy is “No New Dams And Diversions”, and we think it’s the only sane policy on the Colorado River in its current situation, let alone its future with even less water in a climate changed world. We also believe that Lake Powell is unsustainable and doomed by climate change, and so it should be drained and Glen Canyon Dam should be torn down.

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