# Can America shake off its defeatist attitude before its too late? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 22, 2015, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268 "2015-04-22T07:53:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/41 "2015-04-22T16:59:34Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Instead of seeing Shatner’s proposal as a way of opening up a dialog it’s just dismissed out of hand. \* It won’t work.\* Ok, fine the first idea from one eighty year old actor won’t work. That’s a big surprise. :rolleyes: Why not figure out something that will work? Get the experts together. Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a hydraulic engineer! Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/42 "2015-04-22T17:11:09Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > No other Western US state is going to let CA take any more of its water. Not one bit. > > The politics of this is firm and long standing. Hopefully they don’t think they can look further afield. I’ve spent most of my life in a state bordering one of the Great Lakes. A big chunk of that was Michigan, “The Great Lakes State,” surrounded by 1/5th of the world’s surface fresh water. Michigan already has water conservation activism. A giant pipeline to the Midwest wouldn’t just be expensive and difficult. CA can have our water when you pry the snow shovels from our cold fingers…and clear off one of our major forms of precipitation. Don’t forget the roof! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/43 "2015-04-22T17:17:59Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Why do you think the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, etc. built the railroads, etc? It wasn’t because the government deemed it so. Well in the case of the transcontinental railroads, [it pretty much was](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts). ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/44 "2015-04-22T17:25:57Z")
TLDR version of the OP: “Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it. I’m tired of this defeatism!” ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/45 "2015-04-22T17:38:39Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The people who suggest a pipeline to Washington or even Alaska (!) are so incredibly clueless about the reality of the situation that they should be laughed down. OK, say you want to have a pipeline sending water from Seattle to California. What’s in it for Seattle? Even if they have enough water that they want to get rid of some of it ([which, incidentally, they don’t](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/04/seattle-doesnt-get-that-much-rain/)), why shouldn’t they send it elsewhere in their own state, somewhere that can be taxed to benefit Seattle? What benefit for Seattle or Washington state as a whole does William Shatner propose in this deal? Wouldn’t the powers that be in Washington state rather have some of the farmers and residents relocate from California to Washington? It’s not always bad to say something can’t or shouldn’t be done. Maybe Japan would be better off if someone had said, “hey, maybe this place that gets 9.0 earthquakes isn’t the best site for a nuclear power plant”. Maybe Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus would be better off if someone had said, “maybe we shouldn’t run this experiment on this nuclear reactor”. Maybe the US would be better off if someone had said, “[maybe we shouldn’t be growing these crops here with these farming techniques](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl)” before the Dust Bowl happened in the Great Plains. Maybe the town of [Aberfan, Wales](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster) would be better off if someone had said, “you can’t just stack that mining debris right next to a town, in a place that gets a lot of rain”. A can-do attitude isn’t always a good thing, if it leads to doing something stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/46 "2015-04-22T17:40:29Z")
> [@pbbth](#): > > [Hydraulic fracking](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/05/fracking-water-america-drought-oil-gas) **is using billions of gallons of water in California** and other desert states and turns potable water into toxic waste but the companies that are making money from fracking have so much money and political clout it will take monumental effort to shut them down. [http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0MU01M20150403](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0MU01M20150403) “Billions” is false unless you’re talking about over decades. It’s truly a miniscule amount, resulting in significant economic output. The industry produces more water than it uses. However, that water is nasty. The produced water can be treated to the point where it’s too pure to drink. At a cost. Some of it already is used beneficially. Maybe they’d use more if people paid a market rate for water in CA. We can pick on the uses that we, personally, don’t value. It’s even easier if we are utterly ignorant about a particular industry. Or we can let the market do what it does best. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/47 "2015-04-22T18:04:16Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > … The produced water can be treated to the point where it’s **too pure to drink**. At a cost. … Is the part I bolded some weird typo or autocorrect? 😕 I’m confuzzled. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/48 "2015-04-22T18:17:41Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > … Kirk may have grand ideas, but in this case you’ll need Scotty to actually execute them. I’m giving 'er all she’s fuckin got, Captain! ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/49 "2015-04-22T18:52:28Z")
California water is a complex issue. I hope the right people and resources are brought together to come up with solutions. I get frustrated with the lack of clear direction. Malaise best describes it. Its so much different from my childhood when anything seemed possible. Science was at the forefront and no problem was too big to solve. I know now the optimism of the 60’s was a bit over blown. But I still prefer it to defeatism. We’ll stumble and bumble our way through life’s challenges somehow. Water is too essential to ignore forever. We’ll have to figure out something. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/50 "2015-04-22T19:04:05Z")
I’m in the actual office today, and have a ton of work, so I haven’t read the whole thread. > [@aceplace57](#): > > The US has been coasting along for too damn long. Nearly all our infrastructure was built by the sweat and blood of our great-great-grandfathers and great grandfathers. Giants of industry built the railroads. Refined oil, built the dams, the bridges and the roads. Men of vision designed and built the TVA and all the nation’s power plants. That infrastructure is crumbling and our country is too impotent and lazy to do anything about it. > [@aceplace57](#): > > I was just using them as an example of movers and shakers in industries that can get things done. Remember that those robber barons you mentioned built things like railroads, dams, and bridges using government money that was raised with taxes. Are you suggesting a massive increase in federal taxes to fund future projects like the ones in the past? Of course, as you say in your OP the multiplier effect of these large projects would certainly boost the economy. But the Right will not agree to raise taxes; which is ironic, because these projects would put more money into their pockets. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/51 "2015-04-22T19:04:47Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Water is too essential to ignore forever. We’ll have to figure out something. Are you even reading the thread? Why does using all available water in the west to produce agriculture in California seem like an essential thing? You’re focused on one specific solution that supports the status quo without considering whether the status quo is good or even sustainable. You are mistaking practical for defeatism; short term thinking for optimism. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/52 "2015-04-22T19:06:50Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Is the part I bolded some weird typo or autocorrect? No. Ultrapure water is not good for drinking. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/53 "2015-04-22T19:14:30Z")
Why not? It’s not like it’s going to suck the life out of you. Sure, some trace minerals and a little flouride to ward off tooth decay is a good thing, but it’s not like “ultrapure water” is Hollywood Acid or the like. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/54 "2015-04-22T19:19:16Z")
It tastes icky. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/55 "2015-04-22T19:22:42Z")
The biggest problem is that maintenance isn’t sexy. A hundred years ago, some of those projects were cutting edge technology. The railroads, in particular, were going out beyond the reach of civilization (shudder). Now we’re not boldly going where city folks have never gone before, with wonders of engineering never before seen. We’re not stretching our horizons and claiming new territory. Now we’re usually alleviating an irritation. We need a new airport - - - because the old ones are crowded. We’ve done airports. Yawn. And whose houses are we going to condemn in order to build it? > [@up\_the\_junction](#): > > No joined up thinking. Every special interest is pulling in a different direction, Politicians need money from a bunch of them so of course you can never get anything done. . . Politicians also need a crisis in order to rally support. Maintenance isn’t sexy. Planning isn’t sexy. There’s a crisis - I must save the world! That’s sexy. You can raise money on that. You can get the political will to forge compromises with that. I love John Oliver’s take on it. He thinks we need a [blockbuster action movie about infrastructure maintenance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CikxgZCGgnI), to make maintenance sexy. Here’s[his take (rant) on it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8). > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > . . . When Obama took office he passed a huge stimulus package which was supposedly going to put millions to work on “shovel-ready projects”, just like FDR did in the Depression. But unlike in FDR’s time, the projects never materialized. . . . I’m not sure where you get that. I know we got to spend a chunk of it on street projects. And there’s a [website](http://www.recovery.gov/arra/Pages/default.aspx) that’s supposed to list where it all went. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > . . . If the Hoover Dam were being built today, the companies would have to: > [ul] > [li]Produce an extremely lengthy and complicated environmental impact statement.[/li][li]Pay employees the official “prevailing wage”, which might be double the actual prevailing wage.[/li][li]Show that Lake Meade would not block access to any traditional Native American burial grounds.[/li][li]Prove that every ounce of concrete and steel being used was made in the USA by a unionized company.[/li][li]Give every employee sensitivity training so that no one makes an insensitive joke about transsexuals.[/li][/ul] . . . - I’m going to skip commenting on NEPA. You could add a bullet for needing a hazardous materials clearance for any land acquired by the project. The Barons didn’t have to bother with that. Now you have to check to see if there have been known chemical spills that might affect the construction workers and you have to remove any underground fuel tanks that were abandoned in your construction area. - You also have to pay someone to check the certified payrolls that are submitted monthly and pay an Inspector to randomly interview employees, to be sure that they’re not being rotated out to another job where they work equal hours for no pay. Because that’s been done. - The burial grounds thing is covered in NEPA. No need to state it twice. - The feds (FHWA) only require iron and steel to be “Buy America”. That’s if there’s more than $2,500 worth of iron and steel, which any big project will surpass. Unionized is not a part of it. Your State may have other requirements. Oh, and this is only a requirement if you’re using federal funds. - Make the last bullet safety training. That’s required. Also, if there are fenced off areas due to, say Swainson’s hawk nests, and the biologist sees construction guys moving the fences, the job will be stopped and there will be environmental sensitivity training sessions, with threats of fines. > [@mack](#): > > Well in the case of the transcontinental railroads, [it pretty much was](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts). Oh, yeah. I heard one story that said that since they got paid extra for mountain slopes, the Barons submitted bills stating that the grade for the Sierras started at Sacramento’s city limit. And that Lincoln chuckled when he saw the invoice. Regarding the drought, California has a drought cycle. Everyone remembers at least two prior droughts, so it’s hard to get a full-on political crisis going. We’ll be in the stakeholder finger pointing stage for a good while because that’s what’s always worked in the past. You dig in your heels and point and yell and in three to five years the rain increases and it’s over until the next drought. Do you think that everyone is going to drop out of finger pointing mode because someone did a study? A study? Or posted pictures of low reservoirs on the internet? Our finger-pointers are made of sterner stuff. They remember when the same pictures were mimeographed for newsletters. One thing that California did do is require all cities to prepare a [Climate Action Plan](http://www.ca-ilg.org/climate-action-plans). The CAPs required studies of greenhouse gas emissions, current and forecast for twenty years. They also required plans to reduce those emissions, the idea being that climate change would not do good things to the drought cycle (and other things), so we should find ways to contribute less to climate change. Not very sexy, right? ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/56 "2015-04-22T19:29:19Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Are you even reading the thread? Why does using all available water in the west to produce agriculture in California seem like an essential thing? You’re focused on one specific solution that supports the status quo without considering whether the status quo is good or even sustainable. > > You are mistaking practical for defeatism; short term thinking for optimism. You do realize who started this thread, don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/57 "2015-04-22T19:57:54Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I get frustrated with the lack of clear direction. Malaise best describes it. If you think water is, or ever has been, a back-burner issue in California, you’re just dead wrong. Aside from the current drought, water use has been a very hot and divisive topic in California for literally decades. I have friends from Southern California who call people from Northern California “water hoarders” because of the intense politics involved. It is a political issue of great interest in the state, and very few people outside of California care at all. Now that I live in DC, it is somewhat like DC’s quixotic quest to gain a voting representative in Congress: it’s an important issue in this city, and very few people in the rest of the country either care about it or have even heard about it. So if you think that the use of water in California has been an issue of nobody caring about it, thinking about it, or trying to do something about it, that is just incorrect. It is a very, very contentious issue because, for the most part, it is a zero-sum game: for farmers to win more water means someone else is giving up water, whether that’s people in Northern California, Colorado, or somewhere else. It is really hard to find an easily solution to problems where for every winner there is a loser. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/58 "2015-04-22T20:04:35Z")
> [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > You do realize who started this thread, don’t you? Yes, and he’s ignoring everything that’s been written in response to his argument. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/59 "2015-04-22T20:05:19Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I get frustrated with the lack of clear direction. Malaise best describes it. Its so much different from my childhood when anything seemed possible. Science was at the forefront and no problem was too big to solve. I know now the optimism of the 60’s was a bit over blown. But I still prefer it to defeatism. At times, it (and the related fifties optimism) led to things like thalidomide, above-ground nuclear testing, and the Vietnam War. Sometimes some caution is called for. Asking if having water-intensive industries in areas that don’t get a lot of rainfall is really a good idea isn’t defeatism. Just because something has been done that way for a while doesn’t mean that’s necessarily the best way to do it. Was it defeatism to encourage farmers in dry parts of the Great Plains to change their farming methods after the methods they had been using led to the Dust Bowl? That seems to me to have been a sensible response to a change in conditions or a change in our understanding of conditions. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/60 "2015-04-22T20:07:26Z")
Ravenman thank you for a local’s perspective. You make some very interesting points that I wasn’t aware of… The rest of the country still has much to learn about this issue. I’m already realizing its much more complex than I first thought. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268.md?page=4)