Anyone who knows anything about environmental disasters knows about the drying up of Aral Sea and has known for a long time.
Quote from the article:
“You may say that the Aral Sea has already disappeared,” said Bo Libert, a regional adviser for the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe and an author of a report on water use in central Asia.
Yes. The sea is not drying up, it is gone already.
Just caught this bit of nonsense in the article I posted:
Drought and excessive use of its main feeder rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, are mostly to blame.
Uhm – no. That’s not right. That makes it sound like it was semi-natural, and had nothing to do with the ridiculous environmental policies of Communism – which is exactly why the Aral Sea has been destroyed.
What you SHOULD have said is that the Sea has dried up because of the ravages of Communism and because of the USSR’s boneheaded plots to try to make cotton bloom across the deserts of Uzbekistan.
This is a man-made disaster. The Aral Sea has died because of human stupidity and the careless and rapacious way Communist regimes treated nature.
The UN is just picking up on this disaster now?
It’s done. Let it go. Let the Aral Sea go. It’s a disaster, nothing can stop the disappearance now, let it fade into a memory. Let those ships which now sit in the middle of the desert (photo below) stay there. As warnings and reminders.
Not of the dangers of drought but of the dangers of stupid people in power who end up engineering droughts through ridiculous use of state power.
The USSR was and communist regimes in general are horrifically rapacious toward the environment, but drought does magnify the impact of human folly. I just read this story about the Colorado River earlier today.
Red I wanted to request that you include some Central Asia references in your perfect blog post, but I realize it’s your blog and I didn’t want to be greedy. I assumed all good things come to those who wait – and here it is! You’re the best!
Obligatory anti-Communist mini-rant, with gratuitous Reagan reference:
When I was a little kid, it was far from clear to me that freedom would triumph over communism, and I thought we might well lose. When I learned about the Soviet’s “great experiment” in Uzbekistan (among other things), I realized “these people are idiots, and they can never win because they are too stupid”, and it made me feel a lot better. I don’t know if President Reagan came to the same conclusion because of his study of Soviet agriculture policy, but however he did it, he realized almost before anyone else that the Soviets were idiots and were bound to lose.
MikeR:
Yes, I saw that article – I can’t believe it – I had no idea it was so bad!!