City of Scottsdale cuts suburb off from water supply

A community outside of Phoenix is furious after being cut off from its municipal water supply. NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard has more on how residents in the Rio Verde Foothills are doing everything to bring water back to their homes as others question why developers continue to build on dry land.

‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate

So much is happening, both wonderful and terrible – and it matters how we tell it. We can’t erase the bad news, but to ignore the good is the route to indifference or despair

‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climateLINK: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/12/rebecca-solnit-climate-crisis-popular-imagination-why-we-need-new-storiesLINK: 

The Savage Reservation

Refusing the Total SystemThe Savage Reservation

Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?’ asked Bernard.

The Savage nodded. ‘I ate civilisation.’

The Machine is like an exotic gemstone unveiled before us, laid out on a cloth of black velvet. At first we gasp, then we wonder. What is this miracle? Where did it come from? Who made it? It glisters in the daylight in ways which our best artists cannot capture. The Machine glisters and it makes promises.

I will save you, it says. And then: I will become you. Entwined, we will go forward together. We have always been together. You need me.

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A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River

A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River
The Colorado River in Fruita, Colorado. The river system is in a state of collapse hastened by climate change and a crisis of management. Credit:Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

I came to this place because the Colorado River system is in a state of collapse. It is a collapse hastened by climate change but also a crisis of management. In 1922, the seven states in the river basin signed a compact splitting the Colorado equally between its upper and lower halves; later, they promised additional water to Mexico, too. Near the middle, they put Lake Powell, a reserve for the northern states, and Lake Mead, a storage node for the south. Over time, as an overheating environment has collided with overuse, the lower half — primarily Arizona and California — has taken its water as if everything were normal, straining both the logic and the legal interpretations of the compact. They have also drawn extra releases from Lake Powell, effectively borrowing straight out of whatever meager reserves the Upper Basin has managed to save there.

LINK: https://www.propublica.org/article/colorado-river-water-uncompahgre-california-arizona

Think the Energy Crisis Is Bad? Wait Until Next Winter

Added from a friend’s recommendation.

This picture taken on October 5, 2022 shows the lignite-fired power station operated by German energy giant RWE in Neurath, western Germany. - German energy provider RWE brought forward its exit from coal power to 2030 on October 4, 2022 amid fears the country's plans to abandon fossil fuels are wobbling following the energy crisis caused by Russia's war in Ukraine. INA FASSBENDER-AFP
Jayanti is an Eastern Europe energy policy expert. She served for ten years as a U.S. diplomat, including as the Energy Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine (2018-2020), and as international energy counsel at the U.S. Department of Commerce (2020-2021). She is currently the Managing Director of Eney, a U.S.-Ukrainian decarbonization company.

LINK: https://time.com/6226587/energy-crisis-next-winter/?fbclid=IwAR1cuqq-beVyokDiBDiGBpy_1EMRfw7BwPJSQ0D2LDqYNoxVTw5CZSg07t0

Xen The Zen Of The Other – The Audio Drama, Free Version

As is my custom, after a year of commercially making Xen: The Zen of the Other audio drama commercially available, I am releasing the entire bundle for free on Archive.org and Youtube. It is released with a Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International. You may download and listen to it, share it, or post it, as long as it is not for commercial purposes, with no changes and full attribution to the source. Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ezra-buckley-xen-the-zen-of-the-other-audio
Youtube: A personal downloadable version

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