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NYT Pushes “Groundwater Crisis” to Attack America’s Poultry and Dairy Industries

NYT Pushes “Groundwater Crisis” to Attack America’s Poultry and Dairy Industries

It appears 2024 may be the year of the manufactured “Water Crisis”.

Throughout 2023, one topic I have kept returning to is the use of environmental rules to undermine the nation’s meat and dairy industries in the name of climate change.

I recently noted that the Environmental Protection Agency was poised to foist methane regulations on this country. While theoretically targeting the petroleum industry, those rules could be used to control cattle ranches and dairy farms, given that these are also important sources of methane generation.

However, an increasingly skeptical public is challenging these assertions, as the predictions of fossil-fuel-caused climate apocalypse haven’t come true. Now it appears eco-activists and their media minions are looking for a new manufactured crisis to use as an excuse to mandate societal-level controls on important matters like diet.

Watch for 2024 to be the Year of Water Crisis. As we head into the New Year, The New York Times has decided to push a story about a “groundwater crisis” created by the American love of poultry and dairy products.

America’s striking dietary shift in recent decades, toward far more chicken and cheese, has not only contributed to concerns about American health but has taken a major, undocumented toll on underground water supplies.

The effects are being felt in key agricultural regions nationwide as farmers have drained groundwater to grow animal feed.

In Arkansas for example, where cotton was once king, the land is now ruled by fields of soybeans to feed the chickens, a billion or so of them, that have come to dominate the region’s economy. And Idaho, long famous for potatoes, is now America’s largest producer of alfalfa to feed the cows that supply the state’s huge cheese factories.

Today alfalfa, a particularly water-intensive crop used largely for animal feed, covers 6 million acres of irrigated land, much of it in the driest parts of the American West.

These transformations are tied to the changing American diet.

This is a subject that will likely require even more attention in 2024. In early 2023, the World Economic Forum decided that the world wasn’t panicked enough about COVID-19 or carbon dioxide but began turning its attention to a “water crisis.”

Today, the planet is facing an unprecedented water crisis, with global freshwater demand predicted to exceed supply by 40 percent by 2030, President of the 77th United Nations General Assembly Csaba Kőrösi said at a press conference on the upcoming UN Water Conference, as Down to Earth reported.

“The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It’s a triple crisis,” Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Johan Rockstrom, who is co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW), told The Guardian.

Based on “experts” that pushed approved Science™ narratives earlier this year, a panel at one of the WEF elite conferences focused on initiating an official “water crisis” response. Professor Mariana Mazzucato (Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose) launched a lecture on water being a “common good” and how there needs to be a correction for something the “private sector’s not doing,”…such as taking care of water resources due to “climate crisis” threat.

She stresses “objectives,” especially during “urgent periods” (e.g., like a pandemic). Then she plows into turning water into an “urgent” and an “intersectoral” problem.

To help understand this mindset, it is helpful to know that Mazzucato believes the state is the “driver of innovation.”

Capitalism as we know it isn’t really working, according to economist and author Mariana Mazzucato. Take the current concrete crisis across UK schools. For Mazzucato, that’s a case of too little being spent on the school buildings themselves. But there’s another problem: lax regulation. If we continue to weaken the rules in the name of a stronger economy, she says, we risk tragedy.

“You need to invest. You also need to regulate,” Mazzucato warns. “You can’t just say build more houses if then those houses are with really bad cladding.”

It’s worth watching this panel to understand the thinking that percolates down like a toxin into the groundwaters of political policy. But, in a nutshell, people like Mazzucato think that the men and women overseeing farms and ranches can’t be trusted to manage resources properly…despite the fact they would be out of business if they failed to protect their local and regional environments.

The good news is that in 2023, many Americans will receive the diet the WEF and the United Nations commissions would serve to regular people while they enjoy their locally sourced gourmet treats.

I think the elites will find it far more challenging to create a global panic on any issue nowadays, especially water. But trust the NYT to be among the first to start trying!

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Comments

Out – Peak Oil
In – Peak Water

Conservative Beaner | December 27, 2023 at 8:15 am

Well if the seas are rising just desalinate and use that for fresh water. Oh wait, that’s a lie too.

Mazzucato has a personal water crisis- hydrocephalus.

I’m more than happy to let the stupid people that believe this crap starve to death

There are a lot of crises in America. If groundwater is one of them, it’s miniscule compared to the big ones that are destroying our nation.

Be warned: they are coming for you; the cows, chickens and veggies are just in the way.

Maybe they could harness our windmill/solar panel electrical surplus to desalinate salt water! Problem solved!

Mazzucato looks like a dude.

It’s such a bullshit argument…. ‘sacrificing regulation in the name of growth.’ The water industry in the US is very highly regulated and has been for many decades.

Building major cities in the middle of deserts is a bad idea.

Tearing down reservoirs in the name of little critters is a bad idea.

Failing to build new water infrastructure (dams, reservoirs, treatment plants, etc) is a bad idea.

It’s not a ‘crisis’ it is a mere engineering problem that needs some money and for the pearl-clutching, mother gaia worshipping, progressive morons to get the fu*k out of the way.

    Olinser in reply to Paul. | December 27, 2023 at 12:48 pm

    There is no power or money in ‘solving’ the problem. There’s a LOT of money and power in ‘fighting’ the problem.

Another foreigner telling us how our country should be run.

Is it a coincidence that the NY Times now publishes articles about how the dairy industry is ruining the environment. Representative Elise Stefanik’s district in upper New York State is largely dairy farms. The distriect relies heavily on the feeding of cows and production of milk.

Another day, another crisis promulgated by the left. Next step, announce the grift (organized by these same leftists) to mitigate the fictitious crisis.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Can’t these Marxist fools make money the old fashioned way; through innovation, risk taking and hard work? Nevermind…

    DaveGinOly in reply to MAJack. | December 27, 2023 at 11:08 am

    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
    H.L. Mencken

[The men and women overseeing farms and ranches] would be out of business if they failed to protect their local and regional environments.

As a counterpoint, note that farmers have over-fertilized some of the richest farmlands in America (e.g., in southern Wisconsin) to the point where the well-water on local farms has become dangerous to drink due to high nitrate levels.

Even Marxists and panic-mongering eco-nuts get a few things right once in a while.

    Research the Aral Sea. Marxist ideology destroyed it

      moonmoth in reply to rbj1. | December 27, 2023 at 2:18 pm

      Non sequitur. The claim made in Leslie’s article is that out of self-interest, farmers and ranchers will of course be careful to protect their local environments. My counterpoint is in no way addressed — much less refuted — by the fact that Marxists have destroyed the Aral Sea.

        MosesZD in reply to moonmoth. | December 27, 2023 at 2:52 pm

        If your well has nitrate contamination from man-made sources, your well was improperly dug and fitted. Nitrate contamination, from man-made sources (it occurs naturally btw) is from surface runoff. If you have it, you have broken or bad well. It’s your responsibility to have it of proper-depth and re-cased in such a manner that you don’t have this issue.

        In short, you don’t know shit about wells and country-living city-boy. You read something and think you understand. You don’t.

          moonmoth in reply to MosesZD. | December 27, 2023 at 7:03 pm

          If your well has nitrate contamination from man-made sources, your well was improperly dug and fitted.

          It’s the farmers’ own wells. So, thanks for proving my point: that the farmers have failed to protect their own local environment, and indeed their own families’ sources of drinking-water.

          In short, you don’t know [etc.]

          Vulgar ad hominems noted. Thanks for reminding me that it’s the participants in the comment section who keep me from recommending this site to fence-sitters and even liberals who might otherwise have their minds changed by the many excellent articles that are posted here.

          Thanks for reminding me that it’s the participants in the comment section who keep me from recommending this site to fence-sitters
          And the concern troll is back.

          You might want to ponder that your response to people is part of what drives them to insult you. And a reminder that if your friends who are fence-sitters would be more influenced by the presence of bad commenters than the original work itself, they might be not really interested in ant sort of reasoned argument.

          moonmoth in reply to MosesZD. | December 27, 2023 at 8:50 pm

          Nitrate contamination, from man-made sources is from surface runoff.
          Hydrogeological studies show that contamination of the region’s aquifers is overwhelmingly attributable to percolation of nitrate-bearing water down through the soil, rather than to runoff.

          https://www.wri.wisc.edu/research/characterizing-the-sources-of-elevated-groundwater-nitrate-in-dane-county-wi/

          https://www.wri.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/summarydnr218.pdf

          https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/sites/default/files/topic/DrinkingWater/Publications/DG001.pdf

          But you know more that the authors of the reports do, so you’d better get on the stick and straighten them right out.

          I know that the writers of moonmoth’s reports wouldn’t have been allowed to publish if their conclusions hadn’t fit the narrative.

          gibbie in reply to MosesZD. | December 28, 2023 at 10:35 am

          “Thanks for reminding me that it’s the participants in the comment section who keep me from recommending this site to fence-sitters and even liberals who might otherwise have their minds changed by the many excellent articles that are posted here.”

          Only some of them, but enough that I agree with you completely. I suspect there would be more of the better comments if there were less of the worse.

CA will pass law requiring state residents to drink their own urine. Other dem controlled states that consider CA the “thought leader” on climate policy will follow.

Isn’t a fresh water crisis a compelling reason for Western nations to immediately block Third World migration?

    CommoChief in reply to George S. | December 27, 2023 at 11:04 am

    Yep. What is the carrying capacity of say….Los Angeles? Not based on imported piped water form dams and reservoirs that the environmental whackos hate, just on a twenty year average of precipitation? Suddenly all those extra mouths clamoring for scarce local water resources that these ‘sanctuaries’ decided to take in from abroad don’t seem like such a good idea.

    smooth in reply to George S. | December 27, 2023 at 1:24 pm

    Deport 3M illegal aliens, and CA so called water crisis disappears overnight.

    Tionico in reply to George S. | December 28, 2023 at 3:18 pm

    HEY!!! NO LOGIC ALLOWED AROUND HERE!!!

    And yes, I wuz hollerin that mighty loud…..

You know you are dealing with a cult when every single data point demonstrates there is no anthropogenic global warming, yet the cultists cite that very data as if it were proof of their dogma.

retiredcantbefired | December 27, 2023 at 11:53 am

Suppressive measures…. First in the Netherlands and Ireland, coming next to the US.

RFK Jr. and other environmental scabs worked day and night in the 90’s to destroy western cattle ranching. First denounce as destructive, then regulate and harass, impoverish and last, buyout large tracts of grazing land using land “conservation” NGO cutouts. Following all that BLM would gate-off and lockout public lands to recreational users citing phony environmental impact surveys.

Then, fifteen years later, remove the constraints and resell the land to coastal venture capitalists.

RFK Jr. and DiFi pulled that scam and got into a nasty public fight over patronage rights.

Start by searching the NYT archives: BrightSource; Mojave; RFK Jr.; Dianne Feinstein.

“Professor Mariana Mazzucato,” is Anne Applebaum 2.0. A smiling Karen frontman for hostile governmental agencies and NGO’s.

@MikeBenzCyber has the dope on how people like Mazzucato are cutouts for intelligence community pogroms. His proofs are their very own websites and web forum videos. It’s an open conspiracy; one just needs to watch the videos.

The videos and web page documents detailing Anne Applebaum’s duplicity are astonishing. And yes, it’s that Anne Applebaum, the historian-author. Her only truly good book is Gulag. Her book Red Famine is highly derivative of Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow, so derivative that her book should be titled Red Plagiarism.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | December 27, 2023 at 1:20 pm

At some point, Davos is just going to have to be bombed back to the Stone Age.

I am 63. I have lived through:

Population Bomb (since the 1960s).
Global Famine by 1980. (Various reasons.)
Global Cooling (1960s & 1970s).
Glaciers by 2020
Peak Oil (every few years starting in the 1980s)
Peak Resources (every few years in the 1970s)
Oceans dead within a few years (1970)
Desertification (big in the 1980s)
Mass Extinction (hasn’t happened)
Entire Island/Coastal Nations Drowning/Flooded.
Manhattan Under Water by 2015
Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985 (from 1970)
Ice Caps gone by 2008, 2012, 2014, 2015, etc…
No Glaciers by 2012, 2014, 2015 (Al Gore many times)
Polar Bears to go extinct (Al Gore many times)
Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’ (from 2014)
British Children won’t see snow in their lives (2000).

Currently, they’re still getting it wrong about Global Warming and now they have this… Which isn’t even new. I’ve been hearing about this, on-and-off, since the 1970s.

You’d think people would learn to tune these people out.

The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR/PBS, the Guardian, Liberation, the New Yorker, the Nation, Mother Jones, the Atlantic, and the rest of the vile Leftist/Dhimmi-crat propaganda rags are useful only inasmuch as they reveal Leftist/Dhimmi-crat priorities, by dutifully parroting the Party line.

My food comes from those who eat the diversified plants in the wild.

Venison burger is vegan in my opinion. They eat the grass and other plants and I eat them once I’ve killed them.

Providing an adequate food supply is killing people, that’s their logic.

It’s a triple crisis
Because the double crisis of climate and Covid didn’t drive enough of us into the arms of the globalist cabal.
People are starting to see it like the Spanish Inquisition sketch with Monty Python: “Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. [snip] I’ll come in again.”

state investment is the real driver of innovation
If “innovation” were defined as “all the money in the right elitist pockets” then she might have something.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus comes from a country that was an ancient center for the domestication of cattle and goats. He ought to show some national pride and respect for his country’s traditions.

As for cattle and global warming, Uncle Kepha is a complete skeptic. Back in the ice ages, herds of giant bison twice the size of modern ones and even mammoths roamed North America and northern Eurasia. Surely they produced more f-rt gas than modern cows? They were, after all, large herbivores. During the little ice age, we had 60,000,000 bison in North America, which is a bit larger than our current US cattle herd.

I’m old enough to remember when we were warned that we’re heading into a new ice age, that we’d run out of oxygen, that we wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves, that the ozone would be gone, etc. etc. IN young manhood, I became a “Jesus Freak”, and was treated to “this generation” scenarios for the Second Advent (I’m still a “Jesus Freak”, btw). My concllusion? Apocalypticism, whether couched in theistic or modern “scientific” terms, sells.

    Tionico in reply to Kepha H. | December 28, 2023 at 3:40 pm

    and he fact that it sells, and will continue to sell, is solid proof that there are very few citizens with much at all “upstairs”.

    Starts with da gummitt skewl sisstum. Kids are not taught how to reason, how to analise a set of information or data, how to think a thing through to its conclusion, how to weigh various alternatives….. in short, how to THINK.

Mariana Mazzucato is an economist like Jeffrey Dahmer was a humanitarian.