A few posts ago, I posited this question: "what was our greatest environmental disaster?" thinking I might get some serious responses.

Penny B. started out "My instinct is to say George Bush, his Iraqi disaster and the drainage of resources and intelligence from the United States."

Huh??? I ask a simple question and the Bush-bashing starts. To hear some people tell it, George Bush is the cause of all the problems in the U.S. and he started this war all by himself. For those willing to believe such things, mere facts don't matter. But for anyone still amenable to reason, it's worth parsing the events, both the good and the bad, that led up to our current situation. But to make ridiculous blanket statements is...

But I digress.

Back to my original question.

Your second response, Penny B., was more to the point. Yes, Katrina and what happened in New Orleans probably ranks right up there at the top of the worst environmental disasters to ever occur in this country. And similar to the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, it too was brought about by man trying to change nature. Turning swamp land into the city of New Orleans and turning prairie lands into farmland that blew away once it wasn't anchored down -- both were monumental disasters. Unfotunately, not much has been done to correct either.

I should have been more specific in terms of the geographic area. I was only referring to the United States. And I was only questioning real environmental disasters that have happened or are happening. Certainly, future "natural" events like climate change (I will disregard the "man-induced" description) or a comet or asteroid striking the earth -- either or both will probably happen someday. But more likely, would be another man-made environmmental disaster.

I'm surprised no one mentioned our water situation. (And, Canie, I remember you said you read "The Cadillac Desert.") How about the Ogallala Aquifer, our nation's biggest source of underground freshwater, that is declining at the rate of 1.1 million acre-feet a day? -- that is, a million acres, filled to a depth of one foot with water. At present rates of use, it will dry up, perhaps within a hundred years. In some areas, they say the water will be gone by 2010.

And where is it going? Agribusiness, mostly. It provides about 30 percent of the irrigation water in the U.S. It's being drawn down eight times faster than nature can refill it. With this water, farmers in Texas are able to dramatically increase production of their cotton -- which, by the way, no longer has an American market. But it has a Chinese market. So cotton growers in Texas, siphoning water from the Ogallala, get three billion dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies for fiber that is then shipped to China, where it is used to make cheap clothing that is then sold back to American chain retail stores, like WalMart, Target, or Costco.

Another environmental disaster, right here in our own country, that we helped to create and that we continue to support.

But an environmental disaster that would outdo all of the above COMBINED would be a chemical, nuclear or biological weapon used by terrorists in one of our large cities if we fail in the war on terror.

Barbara