Water on Earth

January 31, 2001 Ancient Water Development on the Planet Earth Earth, the home planet of the human empire which now spans thousands of star systems. Earth is the planet that human life evolved on so many millennia ago. Unfortunately, Earth is no longer habitable due to the misuse of limited resources. This article is a short history of the first tendrils of the destruction of Earth's ecosystem. The North American continent began to be actively settled in the 1600's (Old Christian Calendar). Before these settlers came to the "New World", the land was populated primarily by non-sentient animal and plant life with a few primitive or nomadic tribes of humans. As the population began to explode due primarily to immigration from the other, crowded, continents, the people needed room to grow food crops in order to make a living. The eager settlers quickly snapped up the farmland along the coastline, along rivers, and on the shores of lakes. As the population continued to increase at unhealthy rates the people were forced to expand their farmland to areas that are not as fertile or suited for growing crops. The western half of the newly found continent was desert, some of the most arid land on the planet. Several rivers cut through the barren land, and there was enough vegetation and water to support a cover of grass and shrub. Humans did not have much experience at unnatural farming at this point, and were forced to learn as they went. A prevailing myth among the people settling this inhospitable land was that the rains would come if they built their lives there. As they found in the coming decades, they were wrong. Initial explorers of the region braved some of the harshest conditions that can be found on a class M planet. Groups of four or five males would trek a thousand miles across unexplored country just to find out what was out there. One of the primary forms of travel was atop floating pieces of wood lashed together to form a primitive boat which the men would then load themselves and their meager supplies onto. The force of the current would carry them downstream, the men not knowing whether the next corner held a beautiful natural lake or if it terminated in a thousand foot waterfall certain to end their lives. Not only did the men have to brave the water dangers, they also had to deal with spoiling food, intense daytime heat, freezing nights, and a murderous local population of humans who did not want them invading their lands. The people persevered, however, and the land was mapped by hand, inch by inch. With the land charted, more and more people changed their lives forever and moved hundreds or thousands of miles searching for a better life. As the population swelled in the newly settled desert the people began to develop new ways to bring water to their crops that were dying in the arid land. The local people built small dams across creeks and used the stored water to irrigate their crops. Farmers with land farther away didn't have access to the water and their crops continued to struggle. The farmers needed more water, the desert did not provide enough rain to feed the crops, the farmers looked to their government for help. The government began to build dams. Starting small at first, but quickly moving on to gigantic structures of concrete that plugged the river and siphoned off substantial amounts of water, which was then delivered to nearby farmers. Those first dams started a cascade reaction that resulted in over 70,000 dams over the next half century, with nearly all the rivers of reasonable size dammed at least once. The Colorado River alone had nine major dams on it spread over its 1,400 mile length. The dams held back over 21 trillion gallons of water, most of which went to agricultural use. All the dams were put up within 50 years, less than a century later the river was dead, the water poisoned by salts and human-waste chemicals. The silt that collected in the reservoirs eventually spelled doom for the river. Radical measures were attempted but in the end nothing could stop the inextricable assault by the laws of nature. Our ancestors weren't stupid, however, all of their actions were logical at the time. For the first time ever, humans had the ability to change their environment to meet their needs. The availability of materials and manpower coupled with the start of a period of remarkable ingenuity brought about the greatest changes the planet had ever seen. The expansionist attitude of the people at the time brought about their doom. When the dams were first built, at a rate of hundreds per year, their benefits far outweighed the known risks. The goal at the time of construction was to get water to the farmers, which would then lead to the ability of the new society to support a larger population. Unfortunately, their ignorance of the ramifications of their actions led to wanton destruction of the natural ecologic system. Thousands of species of animal life were made extinct by dams, thousands more were destroyed by the unnatural irrigation of large tracts of poor farmland. A thousand years before, those in power would salt the land of their enemies to prevent anything from growing. Our ancestors did the same thing to themselves, unintentionally. When the dams were first built, people didn't know about the problems that come along with backing up water for irrigation use. They didn't realize that salt is a large component of runoff from the surrounding land. They didn't know that the salt would accumulate in the vast reservoirs backed up by the dam. They didn't know a lot. By the time it became critical enough that plants started dying from the salted water it was too late, the land had been salted, the soil was dead. We didn't limit our destruction in the name of progress to the rivers, however, we also depleted the underland lakes: aquifers. The largest aquifer on the continent covered a third of the land, in some places up to 600 feet in depth. At the time of the initial expansion, technology didn't allow farmers to extract very much water from the table at a time. The invention of the centrifugal pump changed all that. Suddenly farmers could extract a hundred times more water than they could before. The aquifer gave out at nearly the same time that the dams changed from clean water of life to salty water of death. Dozens of projects were proposed to rescue the farmers and save the economy, but none were feasible. Most could save the land only at the expense of other lands to the north, an unacceptable proposal. The solution to the problems faced by our ancestors is obvious to us now. Don't change nature on a large scale. Through the use of genetics, artificial food sources, non-fossil energy, and biological growth methods the need to alter planets is no longer needed. The volunteer limitation of planetary populations ensures that a small amount of manufacturing and infrastructure can support an entire culture without destroying the local ecology. The extensive use of artificial nutrients allows humans to live long productive lives without destroying nature to get it. Energy is produced from the sun and its electrical and magnetic discharges. Of the thousands of non-human cultures that have been discovered, humans remain to be the only one that has rendered its home planet inhospitable to life. Our newest colonized planets are the model for coexistence, but our history haunts us even now. If we were to attain the ability change history, we should go back to the 1920's and slow the development of dams. Given time humans could have discovered the problems associated with their actions before they became critical and started the long fall of the planet's economy and culture. Now, of course, we have learned to act not as the exploiter of planets but as caretakers. We have learned to work side-by-side with nature and to respect the way things are. We cannot succeed at the expense of nature, that only works in the short term. In the long term our only hope for survival is to work with the natural workings of gaia, to respect nature, to live in peace with our Mother. Travis Puderbaugh

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