Cross-posted on THE ENVIRONMENTALIST and Reuters

At least 36 states will face water shortages in the next 5 years as supplies decrease due to drought, rising temperatures, population and inefficient management.  Tensions created by mandatory conservation restrictions have turned neighbors against each other by reporting to the water police suspected illegal watering based on a lawn that was simply too green.  

For a change, there is some good environmental news. Companies and individuals have developed technologies to capture water vapors in our air to create drinking water... or, as in this picture, a water maker that collects dew.

A Siegel has raised the issue of Bush's desire to now control the climate change debate with his faux concern about global warming. While FISA affects our privacy rights, democracy and justice, if Bush changes our environmental laws, it will impact whether we live, our health, where we live, our quality of life, whether we have animals and the nature of our environment.  If Bush changes our environmental laws, we will have measures enacted that will undermine sincere efforts to find and implement real change so that corporations may continue to reap profits from raping our environment.  Correcting Bush's laws will not be easy.  The public will be conned that there is no need for further legislation so that any climate change proposals will be taken off the table. Finally, if Bush changes our laws, he will eliminate what has been an effective tool for environmental groups to force Bush to comply with our laws and these lawsuits have been a necessity particularly given our very feckless Congress.

Air pollution from our power plants and cars is
destroying the fragrance of flowers. This may sound like a silly, liberal "tree-hugging" complaint about the evils of air pollution. But, think about the ecological impact: Our lovely little bees use the scent of flowers like a roadmap to the source in order to pollinate flowers for our bouquets as well as our flowering plants for our food supply.

Today, a top government health official announced that climate change will have a "significant impact" on health, particularly the elderly and children, in the "next few decades."

Howard Frumkin, a senior official of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave a detailed summary on the likely health impacts of global warming at a congressional hearing. But he refrained from giving an opinion on whether carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, should be regulated as a danger to public health.

Frumkin presented some details about the type of public health impacts from climate change. This was important testimony of our government admitting that global warming is not a myth, that the impacts will include much more than warmer temperatures, and that the time frame of impacts happening is the "next few decades."  However, this information would have been released a year ago if the WH had not censored the testimony that was presented at that time.

Last month Al Gore discussed how our democracy crisis is impeding our efforts to address the climate crisis. As Gandhi said, "We must become the change we want to see" in the world. Gore stated that we can not solve the climate crisis until we solve the crisis of citizenship and democracy.  The outcome we desire for global warming or any environmental issue is not going to be achieved by our beliefs unless it is accompanied by new behavior of citizen involvement at both the personal and political levels. Behavioral changes are good, like conservation, but Gore stated that it is more important to change the laws. Changing laws requires acknowledging an urgency of the environmental crises we face.

Last week, new Bushie rules were approved to authorize using streams, wetlands and waterways as waste dump sites as long as man-made streams are "created" to replace the streams killed by the waste.  This is a faith-based rule:  Even the government admits there is no evidence that people have the godly powers to create functional ecological stream systems.  That faith is based on the greed of appeasing special corporate interests that don't want to spend money on responsible waste disposal methods.  

This rule is not limited to mining waste, but the destruction of streams and watersheds is prevalent in Appalachia.  MTR mining has already destroyed 1,208 miles of streams in just 10 years, but greedy profiteers have since added another 535 miles.  

Note: This diary was written by me, but I'm having some difficulties posting and my dear friend, Patriot Daily, helped me out. We aren't trying to circumvent rules. --Avila

On Thursday, diarist politicalceci asked Does America Still Care About Torture? I encourage you to read this excellent diary on the revelation of the Yoo Torture Memos (PDF) if you haven't.

From An Interview with Steven Miles: The torture-endangered Society:

Americans have kept the reality of torture far from consciousness. Although we are steeped in fictional torture, we are nearly insensate to the reality of torture. We are unfamiliar with its techniques, its effects on individuals and civil societies, and with how widely it is used.

I keep hearing the usual meme that starts spinning as the primary season nears the end: We are Democrats who will unify behind our nominee.  The only problem is that this year the meme refuses to address and resolve the big elephant in our faces.  This is not like any other campaign. This is the first time that a Democrat has used race baiting, terrorism innuendo, and sexism against another Democrat in the primary to the degree and manner that Hillary Clinton has used these issues against Barack Obama in her quest to be our nominee. Racism was used against Jesse Jackson, and sexism has been used against all female candidates, including Hillary. But, as Meteor Blades noted, "[n]othing compares to this year... ."

We have been warned for years that global warming will happen at some distant time in the future.  Today, a report was released which concluded that human activities have already caused increased temperatures in the Western states. This follows on the heels of another report that decreased mountain snowpack is also due to global warming.  This presents a dilemma for California: Should the limited water supplies be used for people or endangered species?  Today, courts are correctly following the law by mandating that water projects maintain instream uses for species, which means less water available for people. In fact, last year, one judge issued an injunction to turn off the pumps that divert the water which supplies people in order to maintain instream uses of water.  Soon, the state or water purveyors will be lobbying Congress to change the Endangered Species Act so that protected species can die. Soon, the state or water agencies may be arguing that water infrastructure should be constructed without regard for environmental impacts.  Yet, Congress is not taking action to address global warming now.

The Washington Post is reporting that the scary airport sniping experience at the Balkan airport did actually happen to a DC lawmaker, but it was Sen. Olympia Snowe and 6 other senators on a fact-finding mission, not Hillary Clinton.

According to the WP, this Snowe trip happened in October 1995, 6 months before Clinton visited Tuzla in her very peaceful mission in March 1996. The Snowe delegation was on a "fact-finding mission through war-torn Sarajevo, just before the Dayton accords resulted in a U.S. military presence on the ground in Bosnia."

So, Hillary was partially accurate:  A female senator did travel to Bosnia around the same time, but just with a different name.

Often I hear people discuss women's rights as generally limited to abortion, as if our right of choice was the only right hanging in the balance in our feminist march for equal rights. The assumption is that women's rights were achieved decades ago so today we only face a few minor unresolved "details."  

Tonight, I compiled a partial list of rights still denied to women. What rights would you add to this list?

Naomi Klein's shock doctrine theory explains on so many levels what has been happening in our country since Bush took office.  In a nutshell, different shock triggers are used to compel people to accept policies which are against their own interests.  The shock trigger mechanism may be wars, terrorism, natural disasters or similar crisis which throws people off their feet long enough for the government to implement its plans.  

Katrina was the natural disaster shock which Bushie parlayed into a golden parachute for corporations by quickly --- and sometimes quietly --- implementing bathtub policies that may have been successfully opposed if we, like NOLA residents, were not in some state of shock since 9/11.  The government has managed to maintain this shock in NOLA by waging a political war on at least 3 primary aspects of daily lives:  homes, jobs and education.  The scope of the shameful governmental policies in NOLA is an enormous, tangled spider web of roadblocks to life.  

Yesterday, faithfull reported on Hillary Clinton's interview (audio link) where she stated her position on mountaintop removal (MTR).  In short, Hillary did not flat out reject or denounce MTR.  Rather, Hillary believes that the mythical economic necessity of MTR means that we need to accept environmental trade offs.  Hillary also implied that somehow decapitated mountaintops can be recovered.  Well, "All the King's horses, And all the King's men, Couldn't put Humpty together again" for the same reason that we can not grab all the soil and rock blasted from the mountaintop and simply glue it back together as if nothing happened.  The mountaintops are physically gone. The answer is to stop the bombing of our purple mountains majesty.

An AP investigation found that our nation's drinking water supplies for at least 41 million Americans are contaminated with pharmaceuticals that had been initially provided to people, pets and cows.  Some of the drugs are absorbed by the body while the remainder ends up in wastewater. The contamination extends to drinking water supplies, watersheds and groundwater basins.  Some of the drugs will not even be removed by modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes and no sewage treatment systems are specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals. There really are no cost effective alternative options because private drinking water wells are affected, water bottlers often use tap water and home filtration system makers do not usually treat the water or test for drugs. Only the reverse osmosis technology removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use.

While it is shocking to find out that we may be involuntarily ingesting unknown quantities of a variety of drugs, this really is business as usual.