Visiting Bombay Beach, mulling the Salton Sea's future

First, the background.

I've read Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert" (second and sadly last edition due to his untimely death) 10 or more times, with a heavily highlighted, underlined, and marginal-noted version in my hands.

Growing up in Gallup, New Mexico, my family may have, or may not have, stopped briefly at the north end of the Salton Sea on a return home from a SoCal vacation. We took I-10 on the way back and ate lunch at Palm Springs, that I remember. 

Anyway, I know well the history of the sea's formation, the geological background of the multiple Lake Cahuilla births and deaths and more. And, I knew the basics of Bombay Beach.

As an adult, I may or may not have tried to hit the west shore of the sea on a springtime visit to Anza-Borrego State Park when leaving it via east side. I know I did three years ago, on my second-last wintertime visit. Unfortunately, driving around an unfamiliar town (think it was Salton Shores) in the dark, I couldn't figure out how to get to the shore itself. In daylight, this trip, I realized much of what I was bumping up against was berms with Imperial Irrigation District no trespassing signs.

The birding part of the world is not dead there, as the avocets show.

That said, that's on the slightly higher elevated west side, which also has less agrichemical runoff as there's less agriculture there than north, south and east.

I did see the "peeps," sandpipers, on the east side, north of Bombay Beach itself. But no avocets, no grebes, etc.

South of Bombay Beach, the Sonny Bono/Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge may have sandhill cranes, along with other birds:

But it is artificially sustained with man-made islands as the sea shrinks, water diversions, and artificial plantings of various cereal grains. Dirty secret: a lot of NWRs are unnatural in this way, like Bosque del Apache south of Albuquerque and Hagerman near me in North Texas. And, as climate continues to change, this is becoming more and more unsustainable at more and more Western NWRs.

Anyway, before Bombay Beach, in what eventually evolved encompassing, albeit hit-and-miss, almost three-quarters of the sea on this vacation, I stopped at the northeast corner. And, got great sunrise alpenglow:

As I noted, that beach looks like the salt knobs at Badwater in Death Valley. But, it's not, as footprints sinking nearly three inches deep into semi-quicksand beach show.

I was walking to see this color-beautiful puddle:

But, as I note in the caption, who knows what agrichemical runoff is mixed with salt to produce that color?

I do know that you smell it.

Salton Sea doesn't smell like the ocean. It does have the salt smell, but it also smells of those agrichemicals. To put it another way, the smell is vaguely like the "produced water" that's becoming an ever-bigger part of the modern oil business, with the additional smell here and there of dead fish, to the degree the Salton still supports any.

Some nutters may still talk of swimming in the Salton Sea. Would you jump in this schlag?

Not me.

The talk of, if not restoring, at least arresting the decline, of the Salton Sea has been going on 15 years or more.

Not happening. Let's be blunt. 

Not happening.

First, having more direct experience with the Army Corps of Engineers and Texas A&M-Galveston and their proposal for an "Ike Dike," as well as remembering the basics of the proposed initial cost vs finality of the Venentian lagoon gates, I know that cost estimates for such massive environmental engineering projects are always massively understated, and often the work involved is lied about. (That's true here in Tex-ass, where Ike Dike proponents lyingly compare it to work done in New Orleans and to its south around the mouth of the Mississippi and the Louisiana coast.)

Usually, all "stakeholders" in such plans have vested interests in lying about the costs. And, yes, they usually know better at the start, so they're lying. 

ANY time the Corps of Engineers bigfoots into something, it's gonna lie.

With the Salton Sea, the state of California has a vested interest in lying so it can pretend it's really interested in doing something and can pretend that its bits of around the edges nibbling work really are doing something.

Largely upper-crust White environmental groups have a vested interest in lying about the cost of fixing the Salton Sea, as it lets them show their concern for the poor Hispanics who can't leave places like Bombay Beach and Brawley, along with the various bands of Cahuilla Indian nations who surround the sea and won't leave.

In addition, has anybody asked the portion of these neoliberal-type environmentalists who live in Palm Springs, or LA itself, if they're willing to SERIOUSLY change their way of water life (or move) to help get serious about rounding up enough water to stave off the Salton's ongoing decline?

The reality, contra this sign:

Is that the sea is indeed sinking and that won't be reversed. It may be moderately slowed, but no more.

So, do we pay people to leave Bombay Beach if they want to? A lot of the neo-hipsters at not just it, but other places for which it's a stand-in, like Slab City, don't want to leave. 

They just want a fix that fixes them.

Fuck em. No matter your artsy-fartsyness at Bombay Beach (which it was fun photographing and photo-editing in detail):

That's the best thing we can say to them. Go back to Quartzsite if you're a snowbirder. Get back to where you once belonged, per the Beatles or try it elsewhere, if you're trying to semi-permanently live in the area. Or accept the consequences.

Otherwise, as a city? In my opinion, the present of Bombay Beach:

Is as good as it gets.

Nature bats last.

Climate change book starts well, then goes WAY off the rails

This is an expanded version of my Goodreads review of "Nomad Century" by Gaia Vince.

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

An interesting book. No, a disappointing book, with a mixed 4/1.5 star rating.

First, Vince is rightly “hardheaded” that we’re likely to hit 4C by 2100, then reminds us that this is overall global temperature, including the slower-rising ocean temperature. Land temps will surely be higher yet.

From there, it’s into a long history of migration. Next comes a list of benefits of immigration, as noted by international development organizations, etc. Some might be overstated, but not bad overall. But, hold on to that to near the bottom of this.

Then, after an earlier basic discussion, comes info on details of climate change and how it’s going to force migration out of tropical and near tropical areas, and the reasons why — desertification, floods, extreme weather events, and unliveable wet-bulb temperatures.

Then, the clunkers. NO, not clunkers. Just downhill, first mildly, then badly.

Clunker? She talks about how climate change will allow more development of northern latitudes, noting it’s already allowing for more oil exploration in and near Greenland. True. Russia’s already eyeballing massive new offshore in its Arctic. Shell and others may revisit the Alaskan Arctic.

We CAN’T HAVE THAT!!!! And, she nowhere says that.

Then there’s the issue of modern migration necessitating entire new cities. If these are all Westernized cities, there’s more climate-change-inducing energy expenditure. (She even talks about the possibility of building cities in Antarctica.) And, there’s the techno-optimism about how easily this will be done. There’s also the techno-optimism that the economic boosts of relatively small-scale immigration today would come even close to translating to mass migration.

She also has little discussion of climate denialism and minimalism, which is prevalent across the developed world, not just the US. Ditto for climate action minimalism, which is prevalent across the neoliberal “consensus” of non-deniers in the developed world.

Disconnects like this make this a weird book.

But, here, we go from clunkers to straight downhill.

But wait. The techno-optimism gets worse.

She assumes that we can somehow, within just decades, make the global migration much easier when she notes that, in the “developing” world, the rural to urban migration there is fraught and problematic.

But wait. The techno-optimism gets worse.

From there, it’s on to meat replacement. She doesn’t discuss how much energy it takes to make a veggie burger, nor ask if this will scale up. (She also doesn’t note that veggie burgers are higher in sodium than actual meat, and otherwise not totally the bee’s knees on being healthier.) She then goes to lab meat, and assumes, laughably given its many push-back dates, that it’s going to be commercially in play by 2025 or so. I quote: “The next generation of lab-grown meats will reach mass market later this decade.” Having read plenty about delayed launches, and also knowing the humongous amounts of energy it will require to go commercial, I laugh.

But wait. The techno-optimism gets worse.

Next, she calls for an expansion of nuclear fusion. She doesn’t talk about long-term waste. She doesn’t talk about how France, with a top-down national government, used a mix of bullying and bribes to foist that issue on rural eastern France. Nor does she ask about more and more difficulty in mining and refining uranium ore.

But wait. The techno-optimism gets worse.

She believes the British government’s claim to have fusion plants by 2040 and even says, I quote, “The first fusion reactors could start entering grids by 2030.”

Sadly, this techno-optimism would be standard for the modern West, Gang Green type environmentalists, etc. It's no wonder that a Bill McKibben burbles in his blurb. And, that reference to the modern West is the whole point.

For the reality, it's more like this is a version of climate colonialism combined with tech-neoliberalism. For more on that, we go to Nathan J. Robinson's Current Affairs and a piece on just that issue, climate colonialism, by Jag Bhalla. It's a long read, but, the first half-dozen grafs will get you the basics. By 2050, IPCC models and other issues envision none of the Global South catching up with today's Global North on standards of living. To tie to this book? If migration boosts developed nations precisely because those better able to move do so, what about the left behind? Gaia Vince nowhere addresses issues like that. Nor does she discuss the equivalent of reparations for climate colonialism. Assuming many rural migrants in the developing world cannot get themselves moved to the developed world, what is the developed world going to do to help them in their home countries? Again, not discussed.

As for the benefits of migration? There's been many more destructive migrations. Like Europeans coming to the "New World." Or, when more directly done at the point of a spear or the barrel of a gun, invasive war. She mentions Genghis Khan and how a fair chunk of today's world is his progeny. She never talks about how he destroyed thriving civilizations of China, various states of Central Asia and Kievan Rus.

We’re at the point of either willful ignorance or self-delusion, and I grokked the last 30 pages before the conclusion.

It’s no wonder a neoliberal environmentalist like Bill McKibben favorably blurbs this book.

And, now, the mixed rating should be clearer. It’s 4.5 for the climate honesty, 4 for the migration impact honesty, and 1.5 for everything else. Scratch that; I combined the first and second into a single 4-star rating, as while it’s “nice” that she’s that firm on 4C, she’s far from alone. This will get a 2.5 at the StoryGraph, but couldn't go to 3 here.

And, with that, I’ll offer a “recommend against” further reading of Gaia Vince. And, how she got to a position like news editor of Nature, I have no idea.


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