The United States has been pumping so much groundwater that the ground is beginning to split open across southwestern parts of the country for miles on end.
    • garden_boi@feddit.de
      9·
      1 year ago

      Try to do better than the average human: Try minimizing your personal footprint, participate in some nature related NGO, etc.

      Only by acting can we escape this feeling of depression and discouragement 💪.

      • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.oneEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        I get that, and I do my part,… but I recognize the reality that the majority never will, and that’s the depressing part.

        I, you, everyone you know, everyone they know and their kids could recycle, buy an EV and be a saint, sipping solar from their rooftops until they’re 70, and the world would still burn like a matchstick in thirty years.

        It’s industry, law and utilities that really desperately need the change. Power stations and infrastructure, monetary investment, even.

    • Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz
      2·
      1 year ago

      I’ve adopted an extremely fatalistic position that for me loops back to optimism: if we are that terminally destructive we will destroy ourselves. And once we do that the planet can move on.

    • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      As long as humans keep growing the population on one hand, and on the other hand cannot both individually and collectively decide what is enough then we will have this issue. People never want to talk about population and carrying capacity of our world, but there are limits. I do not follow this org but my wife does https://www.populationbalance.org/ .

  • Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz
    11·
    1 year ago

    The federal government has almost no regulations against groundwater pumping, and individual states have weak, variable rules from region to region, per the Times. Arizona is no exception. For most of its history, groundwater has been unregulated in much of the state, operating on a first come first serve basis, according to the National Audubon Society. This means no limit on how much groundwater can be used, and people can simply drain the groundwater until it runs out, Cook said. Also, it’s rare to find studies of groundwater on a national scale. Most of the time research focuses on a single source or region.

    🤦🤷

    I have a friend in Udaipur where the Indians created several water collecting basins in like medieval times to combat freshwater shortage. Even if we assumed climate change wasn’t solvable (it obviously is) this particular effect could be mitigated.

    • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Pretty much every historical civilization grew beyond it’s bounds then collapsed. The problem here is the collapse will be global. We either change in a way of our choosing or it will be forced upon us by war, disease, and famine. It is the standard way things go.