Cadillac Desert (Don't Try This At Home)

I hope before China's president Xi Jinping heads back home from his summit in Southern California with Barack Obama, he'll swing by Hoover Dam.

On the way, he can look out over the southwestern United States, the massive experiment in human engineering that Mark Reisner has referred to as "Cadillac Desert."

The eyes of the world have been on China in the last decade as it has completed the Three Gorges ("San Xia") Dam - a project that has changed the physical and human landscape of China in unprecedented ways. But it's important that people remember that, before San Xia, there was the Owens Valley, the California Water Wars, and the Central Arizona Project.

Reisner's book, Cadillac Desert (and the documentary of the same name), describe how ambitious American entrepeneurs, entranced by the potential to turn Southern California and Arizona into boom areas with the simple addition of a little bit of water, have upset the balance of nature and set us on a path for disaster.

So this seems like a good moment to remind people of the odd coincidence that China's geography closely parallels that of the U.S. -- a densely populated East, and a great desert in the West.

China has not embarked on a full blown "Cadillac Desert" effort of its own . . . yet . . . .  But if the U.S. can turn the desert green, why not China?

Well ... the "why not?" can be explained in terms of environmental destruction and the enormous expenditure of energy to enable people to live in a hostile environment (the energy spent transporting water, providing air conditioning, and on and on and on ....).

It has been pointed out that the history of modern China has been closely tied to its triumph over the physical environment. (See, for instance, Judith Shapiro's book, Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China.) But China has not been the only country making war on its own environment; the United States has been leading the way. Countries need to learn lessons from their own missteps, and engage in dialog with other countries about them.

One can only hope that Barack Obama and Xi Jinping will take a moment out from their talks about regional power politics to discuss our global future.


MORE: #chinaEARTHusa - Radical Change? or Planetocide?


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(See #chinaEARTHusa - Radical Change? or Planetocide? )


Other related links

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