Press Releases and Articles
POINT-COUNTERPOINT: It’s time to make change happen
by Bob Bland
Herald/Revies, July 16, 2008
Cochise County residents live in a wonderful part of the world: the “best climate on Earth” and clean, clear skies. We have forests perched on the sky islands that rise out of the desert. We have the vital corridor for wildlife that is the San Pedro River. We have a fantastic national monument in the Chiracahua Mountains and a beautiful national memorial in the Huachucas.
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Still, we have serious environmental issues. There is not enough water to meet the demand of farmers and ranchers, industry, Fort Huachuca, and all the people who would love to move here for our climate and our communities.
We are concerned about the toxic remnants of mining and the possibility that mining might start up again, here in Cochise and neighboring counties.
We are burning the last of the world’s oil, so the price of gas will continue to increase as demand increases and supplies fall — and fail.
The climate is changing as a result of human activity, and global warming is just the beginning of the effects of the gases we are pumping into the atmosphere.
The problems are monumental, but not insurmountable, and can be solved if we all work together, “thinking globally and acting locally.”
As Pat Fleming, a candidate for representative in state legislative District 25, says, “Arizonans cherish our environment and want to be good stewards of land, air, water, skies and wildlife. We can protect and preserve these resources for future generations with responsible, considerate policies.”
The most critical of those policies may be those involving oil and energy. The failed, oil-loving policies of the Bush-Cheney administration are certainly the ones affecting us every time we stop at a gas pump.
We are almost totally dependent on nonrenewable sources for our energy and our transportation, and we are lacking in the large-scale plans to get us out of our current dilemma easily. Bush and his big oil friends in Texas and Saudi Arabia like it that way.
We could all be driving electric cars powered by the sun by now if we had listened Jimmy Carter and energy activists in the 1970s. We could have invested in solar and wind power, what went instead into drilling for dwindling drops of oil. Arizona could already be supplying all of the state’s energy and transportation needs from solar-thermal plants in the Sulphur Springs Valley and the Yuma desert.
With the end of oil reserves in sight, we need to change where and how we invest for the future. This is “change we can believe in,” as Barack Obama says.
If oil is for fighting in Iraq, water is for fighting in Arizona. And if the solution to energy is global, the solution to water is local.
Cochise County has a limited amount of water and there is no way we can get more, short of a miracle. On that we should agree, even while we may disagree on where that limit is and how to approach it.
I think that first dibs on water should go agriculture, but there should be regulations on how they use. Having biked past pipes belching water in the middle of a California drought, I know agricultural use should be carefully controlled such that it does not lower the aquifer. Similarly, residential water should be restrained. Probably the best way to accomplish this is with pricing, creating a rebated fee on water that is ensures that the water-frugal profit and the water-guzzlers slow down. Fort Huachuca is doing an admirable job of restraining water use and should receive a salute for showing how it can be done.
Mining is a local issue fraught with problems. We all want the products that depend on mining, but we don’t want the effects on “our backyards.” I believe we need strict environmental controls on mining rather than the haphazard approach where we have tiny companies making big promises without any reasonable expectation that can be fulfilled. The toxic byproducts of mining last decades and only those companies with decades-long commitments should move forward.
To me, what is most important is that none of them are short-term problems and they all have long-term solutions. So those of us who have spent decades fighting for the land are now passing the torch to a new generation of conservationists. We have witnessed environmental destruction, but we have developed the tools and attitudes that today’s young people can use to save our planet. Under the leadership of Barack Obama and his young supporters, there is great hope for the future of America the beautiful.
BOB BLAND is chairman of the Cochise County Democratic Party. The party office is at 1010 E. Fry Blvd. For information, call 458-9467, or go online to www.cochisedemocrats.com.
