It finally rained today...and that made me think of revolution.

I've been working here for over two months now, here in Naples FL, and until today there has been rain on only 3 or 4 occasions, and all of it quite minimal. This is apparently one of the driest springs on record. As a result, there have been endless forest fires, including in the Picayune Strand Forest where I am working. Today I worked in an area that had burned only a few weeks ago. When the wind blew, it still smelled like a barbecue.






It looks like an alien landscape. Despite their trunks being burned severely – some of them so much that they are bound to blow over during hurricane season – the trees are all still alive, and sprouting green leaves. The underbrush was mostly burned away, and already new sprouts are coming up. And, as one walks through this burned forest, there are green oases, small wetlands and ponds that didn’t burn during the fire.




Some of these fires have been so large and damaging that they have made the national news, and in a way I feel bad. The whole crew down here wants the rain to hold off because A) we can't work on rain days B) with the rain comes the flooding of the forest we work in potentially ending our work sooner than we hope and C) No rain = no mosquitoes and, conversely, rain = mosquitoes. And, according to the guys on this year's crew who worked last year, we've all been lucky bastards that there hasn't been any bugs just yet. Apparently, by this time last year, one had to work wearing a mosquito net and all day long all one ever heard was the hum of bugs. Lunch was taken in the trucks to get out of the bugs for 30 minutes a day. So, while I am glad that the rain has held off, for all the above reasons, the drought down here was starting to get a little unnerving and I always am curious as to what the power of intenstion can create. All the reading I've done about "magic" always warns that before you ask the universe for anythng, consdier the repercussions. Now I'm not trying to say that my crew's wishes has led to Florida's drought, only that I've been forced to refelct on a very simple lesson about the environment that needs to be repeated: what's good for a few humans, is not always good for nature as a whole.

The local NPR station ran an interview today with folks from the state water department and they touched on several of interesting points about how much water is consumed just watering lawns – millions of gallons a day. There have been a number of lawn watering bans of various types in SW Florida, but no matter how many brown dry lawns one might see in front of houses, the golf courses are all still immaculate. The swimming pools here where I am living is always full, and the grass is always green around here, It’s a little unnerving. I don’t know if these types of businesses pay a special surcharges, tax, what have you for the right to use so much water to service so few people, but it reeks the type of short-sighted thinking that gives me grave concern about the future of the human race.

All of this water talk around here along with catching an HBO documentary on the environment last night, got me to thinking about two things regarding water shortages. The first is how much water it takes to produce meat. Several sources differ on just how much water it takes to raise cattle, ranging from 4000 to 12000 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. The number varies between whether you count just the water used by the steer for drinking (lower end) or also include all the water it takes a to produce all the grain that is also fed to the animal (high end). If there was one single argument to reduce meat consumption, I think the environmental one is the strongest.

But this also made me think of the movie Life and Debt (Netflix users can rent it). This documentary takes a scathing look at how the US, IMF and World Bank have encouraged Caribbean islands, in this film, Jamaica, to squander away natural resources, prime land, and the very labor of it’s people for short term gains that ultimately leak most of the profit out of the island. Hotel developers have been handed over prime coastal lands to develop resorts that hire locals for low wages while consuming massive amounts of natural resources. Much fo the land handed over had been prime fishing and living space for indigenous people. Furthermore, with fewer people now working farms and many people converted to a dollar economy from low wages supplied by the tourism industries, agriculture has all but stopped on the island and almost all the foods available to locals are foreign goods. I can’t do the movie justice, but water is big part of the problem. These islands have limited access to clean water being tropical islands and all, and the tourism industry both consumes massive amounts of water and produces far more waste than the island’s ecosystem can handle. I have to admit, before watching this movie I was never quite clear on what Bob Marley was singing about, after seeing this film, I can’t help but see him as a passionate revolutionary poet.

Check out this flick.