My obligation

It seems that with all the flooding in Wisconsin and Iowa and the fact that I'm closely connected to both places AND have a MS in Water Resources Management I should feel obligated to say something about them, right? Right. Well, here goes...

I cringe every time I hear the flooding called a "natural disaster" because I don't really think it is. I'm glad others agree. I figured shortly after the flooding started to go down the media would start to pick up on this, and they did. I even prompted my father in law (a newspaper editor in an Iowa Mississippi River town) to look into this a few days back, with an emphasis on the climate change angle. I guess he got "scooped" by the WaPo...

Sure, some of the flooding is due to lots of heavy rains. But I think that the man-made changes - land use and climate change - play a significant role, and it's the land use decisions, especially the decision to build in flood plains, that drive up the cost of the devastation. Should my tax dollars fund the clean up effort in communities that have made poor decisions? Well, a heck of a lot more of my tax dollars are funding another poor decision - the Iraq war - so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.