How The West Was Lost

In the early spring of 1987, as Gary Hart was making plans to announce his ill-fated candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, he surveyed the rugged terrain near his home in Colorado where he planned to make the announcement - perhaps, not coincidentally, on April 13, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, the President who sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Pacific.  He wanted to emphasize that, as a resident of a Western state, he believed that the West was the future.

Uh, not exactly.  And not because Hart's campaign bit the dust soon thereafter (you know the story; I won't repeat it), and not because it wasn't until 2020 that Kamala Harris became the first Democrat from the West to be nominated for and win national office (which was the least of her firsts). 

It's because the West has no future.

That became apparent as the drought in the West, which had been worsening for years, led to horrendous wildfires in California.  More wildfires have burned in Colorado and New Mexico.  There have been unprecedented heat waves in Washington and Oregon.  The Colorado River, a major source of water for numerous states, is drying up and causing water shortages in Nevada and Arizona.  The Great Salt Lake is drying up so fast in the Mormon homeland of Utah that another miracle will be needed to save Salt Lake City from being suffocated by toxic alkaline dust blown from the lake bed.  And in Montana and Wyoming, the problem is actually too much rain.

Look what happened to this building in Montana along the flooded Yellowstone River.

Climate change is obviously affecting the West in ways any idiot could have seen coming simply because water has been an issue in the region from the moment the first white settlers arrived.  It's just plain dry out there.  Los Angeles and Las Vegas rely on river water just to survive.  Phoenix was so named because it was founded on the remains of a Native American city that disappeared for the same reason Arizona is in trouble now - lack of water. Too many arid areas are being overpopulated - Las Vegas is literally in the middle of a freakin' desert - and too many famers are growing heavily water-dependent crops in these same areas.  The West is actually more urbanized than the East despite its more limited water resources.  I mean, didn't those folks out there get it?  Seems it never rains in southern California, and there's a reason for that. 

The only way the West survives is if fewer people populate it.  And though most people in the region have no intention of leaving - except for many California residents, who are feeling the state's high taxes and high cost of living - Mother Nature, God's bratty kid sister, may eventually force them to leave.

See this?

This is the infamous "bathtub ring" on Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam.  The white deposits on the cliffs are from the minerals left by the water that once rose higher, before the drought.  This is Mother Nature's way of telling Westerners, "Take a hint!"