Extreme Drought in Republican states?

One of the ironies of global warming is that Red States are the hardest hit by extreme drought conditions. Check the map. Republican governors in Georgia and Mississippi have led prayers to bring rain (unsuccessfully) and petitioned for flood disaster relief the next (successfully).

Every state is hit to some degree, but in the South and Southeast extreme droughts in summer now alternate with (less frequent) extreme flooding. Climate change scientists attribute these wild swings to global warming and they predict the droughts and deluges are likely to get worse. Is anybody listening to them?

The National Drought Mitigation Center, whose map this is, tracks drought and its impact on farming conditions (crops, pastures, grasslands) and water supplies. With little or no rain most years, there is tremendous pressure on reservoirs and southern cities’ water supplies. Farmers stockpile against the bad months; golf courses, fishing and boating are affected; the risk of fires goes up and harvests go down; water needed for the turbines of hydroelectric, nuclear and coal-fired power stations is getting scarcer, so electricity prices are affected and that’s just the dry years. A whole lot of denial is going on here and it’s costing us all a lot of money.

It affects Democratic blue states too of course. In California, we defeated Prop 23 (despite Prop 26), but we are looking at a steep drop in the water from the Colorado River and a threat to the LADWP share of electricity generated by the Hoover Dam, a showdown over the Sacramento Delta - the list goes on. Prop 23 means that a massive cap-and-trade program will be implemented, but that is for the long term and in the short term we are going to have to sort out our water problems. Los Angeles consistently ranks number 1 in the nation as the city most likely to run out of water in the future. That is a Blue State issue too.