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Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

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Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#91

Post by TylerE »

vkou wrote: post #84
TylerE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The sum total of every single American lawn occupies less than 0.5% of the overall land area of the continental US. Meanwhile, if 'emissions from passenger cars in the US' were a country, they'd be the sixth largest carbon polluter in the world. Not to mention the millions of years of life lost to traffic, air pollution, crashes, and their contribution to our sedentary lifestyles.

The west is currently in extreme drought. The amount of water used on lawns in places like Arizona is absolutely obscene.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#93

Post by 8bitsrule »

In the meantime, the drainage basin on the other (Agassiz) side of the continental divide from the Mississippi headwaters has been experiencing very high levels. (Following long-term flooding this spring.) Manitoba reports:

"Inflows were the highest-ever recorded and due to exceptional precipitation across southern Manitoba and Northwest Ontario this spring, especially in the Winnipeg River and Red River watersheds." - https://www.hydro.mb.ca/corporate/facilities/water_levels/

FWIW, historically, the lands up there haven't been 'improved' very much.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#95

Post by drewm1980 »

fredrikholm wrote: post #17
hinkley wrote: post #9

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more…

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction. The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks…

We need a state of climate emergency to just ban some needlessly destructive practices, ideally globally. Mowing lawns is something we can just decide not to do. Meat and dairy we can just decide not to do.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#96

Post by drewm1980 »

zip1234 wrote: post #88
Metacelsus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Supreme Court will probably gut those laws in the near future.

How would wetlands conservation laws not be constitutional?

Environmental conservation laws should be considered a matter of national security. We need to mobilize the military industrial complex on the side of the environment before everything dies.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#97

Post by rayiner »

bombcar wrote: post #18
fredrikholm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction. The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks…

The absolute amount of effort we spend fighting nature instead of just guiding and living with it is frightening.

You should go live in a third world village for a few years and then come back here and say that. Life in “nature” sucks. The kids in my dad’s village don’t have to take a boat to school during monsoon season, like he has to do growing up, because they “fought nature” to control flooding.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#98

Post by rayiner »

zip1234 wrote: post #88
Metacelsus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Supreme Court will probably gut those laws in the near future.

How would wetlands conservation laws not be constitutional?

Because Congress hasn’t passed comprehensive wetland conservation laws. The executive branch has invoked authority under the Clean Water Act, which applies to “navigable waters” which in turn is defined as “waters of the United States.” https://www.epa.gov/wotus/about-waters-united-states

A marsh on your farm that isn’t connected to a navigable body of water is outside the reach of the CWA.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#99

Post by rayiner »

drewm1980 wrote: post #96
zip1234 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would wetlands conservation laws not be constitutional?

Environmental conservation laws should be considered a matter of national security. We need to mobilize the military industrial complex on the side of the environment before everything dies.

Ah yes, “we need to bend the procedures for the stuff I think is important.”

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#100

Post by ericmay »

nightski wrote: post #90
reportingsjr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be astounded if you looked more deeply in to this. I have tried in vain to get my landlord to stop paying a lawncare company to regularly (every month or two) dousing the patchy, dry, awful grass patches some call a lawn with fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides. There is a huge business around doing this as well, you may not see it if you don't walk suburbs during working hours when much of this is do…

Oh no I believe it and I am against those practices very much! But I feel like lawns are demonized when they don't need to be if properly done. There are a lot of benefits to lawns that are just being flat out ignored in a large part of these comment sections.

I think the reason for this is as follows, if you'll allow:

Let's pretend that wine is good for cardiovascular health (there were some conflicting studies so it's truthy enough I think for this point).

We're having a discussion and we have a mutual friend who is a raging alcoholic. They drink and drive every night, they get blacked out completely, they can't hold a job. Myself and a few others are like hey friend, you need to go to AA, you need to get help, you need to see a doctor. We find them at bars and take their keys. We tell bartenders to stop serving them. They go to liquor stores and just cannot stop.

And you're like, well ya know wine does have some cardiovascular benefits. And it's a great social lubricant.

Now of course you aren't really dismissing the problem here, which is that our mutual friend is a raging alcoholic. We all can see that undeniably. But you're also not really helping because you're espousing these health benefits but we're trying to keep someone from killing themselves or others. We're working on a gigantic problem with this person and these health benefits just do not enter into the picture at this point.

This maps back to suburban America (and elsewhere) where yea there are well taken care of lawns and sure a few people can have them. But our suburban friend here is a raging alcoholic and no amount of lawn is really good for them regardless of the benefits it may have.

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