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In the interest of looking for other minds of environmental, planetary concerns and, perhaps, with an opportunity to make an occasional contribution with my own personal thoughts, I am pleased to join your forum.
I'm a public information specialist in a grantee role with the Environmental Protection Agency Region 8 in the Denver office. I began this work just eight months ago after leaving a history of various jobs in the computer and I/T industry spanning 35+ years. It was a major career change for me, but was in concert with completing a graduate degree in environmental policy and management at the University of Denver this past June. The change was also a way for me to refocus my remaining working years on issues that I find much more meaningful than the utilitarian exercises of so many computer positions. This is not to discount the significance and vitality of so many computer and I/T accomplishments in the world; it's just me.
My capstone paper at DU was on the sustainability of water (or lack thereof) in the American West. I have no particular knowledge or skills in the fields of hydrology or geology; but it's no rocket science that unsustainable uses of water abound across our western communities with, what I consider to be, unconsciousable ignorance of the urgency at hand. Continued development in industrial, commercial, and residential sectors require exponential increases of fresh water. Surface water and associated alluvial aquifers are drying out. Ancient groundwater stocks are being pumped up, out, and into oblivion. The doctrine of prior appropriation has outlived its usefulness in the context of ever-larger populations.
But problems of water in the American West are not unique to nor have any particular ownership for redress for the U.S. Critical societal elements throughout the entire North American continent, and the entire planet, are out of balance in ways for which such balance was not so paramount prior to the 21st century. Economic and political considerations override social and environmental exigencies. In the shadow of Dana Meadows et al, such direction promulgated by our "leaders" forebodes possibilities for serious and possibly unrecoverable collapse of the accepted ways of life in the more developed countries.
Regards,
Craig from Colorado
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