Dead Cow Politics: Should We Pay Ranchers During Drought?
These days a “disaster” is just the new abnormal
How the West runs dry
Our west is heating up and drying out, water wars are beginning in the Southwest, The Colorado River is being drained, farms and ranches feel want, and even bodies are being exposed within the residue of major drying lakes.
The U.S. west (and globally elsewhere, we should note) is in a record drought. Life without water means thirst, suffering, overheating, and death.
As livestock struggles to find the water that means life, wildlife does too.
Choices must be made. We all need more information to make good decisions. I do not know if it is right to try to save forage and crop subsidies for the continued use for feed and water for livestock when the new “normal” is hotter droughts every year.
To continue to attempt farming and ranching at the scale we now have is not sustainable, but few people are providing alternatives. We should expect to have millions of animals fall over dead, which begs the question, should we breed animals we cannot feed?
Should we subsidize meat and dairy when they are contributing as much to global warming emissions as the entire nation of Germany? Of…
