In a world with everything going crazy, with the Russians invading Ukraine, the Iranians making believe that they can actually build an atomic bomb, the Israeli’s pretending that they want to treat the Palestinians as equals and the President of Afghanistan issuing edicts to us about our troops, the one big thing that stands out as most important is our employment situation in this country. It still stinks.
But the real solution of the jobs problem is staring us in the face, it’s just that no one wants to accept it because the broader scenario, in which it is included, is so troubling. We have spoken about education in the new technologies and about retraining for jobs that have gone begging but so far no one wants to admit that there is a great jobs creator out there lapping up on our shores; it’s far better than anything which has come along since the beginning of the industrial revolution and it doesn’t include making bombs. Sure war is always the great jobs creator, if it doesn’t destroy your industry before you can gear up to make those bullets and bombs, but this solution is a completely passive one that all the movers and shakers are terrified to face.
This job creator is called water; arguably the most necessary substance on earth. Without it our lands become arid, our animals and crops die. Man can only go a short few days before he also dies without it. But we are facing a future where we are going to have just too damned much of it.
As we all know there has been much conjecture about global warming and various other environmental threats and they all have inspired great controversy. Whether it’s us or God, causing the great melt off is, in this case, irrelevant. It’s happening. It’s provable because it’s there for all to see. It’s a fact. Deal with it. And that’s what we have to do, right now and with everything we’ve got.
Greenland is melting. So is the Arctic and Ant-Arctic at somewhat slower rates but the fact remains that in fifty years without counting the Arctic or Ant-Arctic melt downs, we are going to have oceans that are twenty feet higher than they are today. This number will be fifty feet if we throw in the current melt rates at the poles. This is, of course, unsustainable. This is not arguable or debatable, it’s a fact, it lives in reality. If you want the figures read my blog, Fossil Fuels: The Enemy.
A look at the map of the United States shows almost every major city in America coming under this threat in some shape or form. Most of our great cities are coastal; New York, Washington, Boston. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, New Orleans, Houston, Galveston, and any city in Florida. They will all be inundated. Cities like Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit are on the Great Lakes, which will also rise. Many others are on various rivers, which will overflow their banks. Only a few, like Denver, Atlanta and Indianapolis may escape the rising seas. This is also true around the rest of the world. Man has traditionally located his great cities on or near water.
So what do we do? We build. We create the greatest infrastructure program in the history of man. Or we sit back, do nothing and eventually move inland and create new cities, because those are the only two alternatives.
We have it within our skill set to protect all our cities but that project will take enormous funding and incredible human resources. It will also create great wealth. But this time, besides enriching the already wealthy, it will create hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of jobs, jobs that fall into, as does any infrastructure job, the blue-collar range; the area that is most vulnerable in our current economic situation.
What we are looking at are the construction of barriers and sea walls around every major America city that is vulnerable to the ocean or any other major body of water like the Great lakes or the Gulf of Mexico. In addition we are looking at building locks in every American river of any size, creating a Panama Canal situation in which ships may enter the river at ocean level and gradually be lowered to the level of the individual city.
It’s a monumental task. For those of you who are distance challenged, fifty feet is equal to a five-story building. Go outside and look up. It’s a serious height. Can we do it? In all probability, yes. Do we have the guts to attempt it? Doubtful. Must we do it? Absolutely!
The first problem is, of course, how to finance it. There are a number of ways, all of which will have to be undertaken at once. I’ll start with industry. Right now corporate America is sitting on several trillion in cash that they have not expended in production because of their perception that there are no consumers out there to buy their product. If they lend that money to the government at a sustainable rate of interest the government and the water will create those consumers for them.
When we needed an enormous influx of funds to create our war machine, during WWII the government sold War Bonds. This is a circumstance even more dire than any war we have so far faced. We are looking at the annihilation of most of our major cities. Water Bonds will be the big producer of funding for two reasons. The first is that they are backed by the government and are therefore a safe investment and the second is that patriotism sells. Unfortunately we won’ be able to look to most of our major foreign loan sources because with the possible exception of Switzerland and Saudi Arabia they will all have the same problem as us.
Then of course there will be taxes. I know that there are many in the GOP, led by the likes of Grover Norquist, who would rather see our major cities be destroyed than have the tax rates grow by even a cent but it seems that logic, backed by fear, maybe for the first time in fifty years will win out and support some tax increases. It will take all of these avenues and possibly more to finance so great a project but American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit can win out.
This is exactly the kind of project America needs right now; it isn’t generated by greed or the almighty “me.” It will create much- needed jobs and build a consumer base. It will loosen up non-productive cash being held by our corporate and industrial base, thereby creating other business and industry to service the basic construction projects. It will be middle-class centric, just like the post WWII industrial boom and it must be successful if the United States is to continue as the world’s leader in commerce and industry. It’s a no brainer, even for those with no brains, so let’s get it started and get it done, because it won’t happen overnight and time is running out.