Wouldn't Trump's Wall Cede The Rio Grande To Mexico ?

The man pictured here is Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. Zinke made a rather interesting comment to the Public Lands Council the other day. He said:

"The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We're not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we're probably not going to put it in the middle of the river."

That may sound like he's suggesting the wall be built on Mexico's side of the river. Not true. That would amount to an invasion of Mexico, and the seizure of some of their territory -- and just like Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, they would never allow us to build it on their sovereign territory.

Zinke was pointing out just how complicated building a wall would be. If we built it on our side of the Rio Grande, then we would actually be ceding the river to Mexico (in effect, if not legally) -- because Mexicans would have free access to the river (right up to their side of the wall), while Americans would have their access to the river cut off.

Since the admission of Texas to the Union, the United States and Mexico have shared access to and water from the Rio Grande River. Trump's wall would fundamentally alter that. Is this what Americans want? Have the Washington politicians (other than Zinke) even thought about this?

After getting in trouble about repealing Obamacare, Trump stated that he didn't understand how complicated the issue was. I submit that building this silly wall is just as complicated an issue, and Trump has yet to understand that.

In addition to effectively ceding the river to Mexico, the wall would also affect border commerce, affect the region's environment, cost over $20 billion (at a time when we have trillions in debt), raise issues of eminent domain, and probably be ineffective in controlling the immigration of the undocumented. It's a simplistic idea that would create more problems than it would solve.

Climate Change Drying Up World's Rivers

The corporations and their right-wing friends are still denying that we are in the midst of a significant global climactic change (sometimes characterized as global warming). But as they deny it, we keep getting more and more bad news about how it is affecting the earth. The latest news concerns the world's rivers.

A new study has appeared in the Journal of Climate, published by the American Meteorological Society. Researchers have been studying 900 rivers over the last 50 years, and they have found that almost all of the world's rivers are drying up. There is less water flowing in the rivers, and they are emptying less water into the world's oceans.

The only rivers that are not showing significantly less flow are the Brahmaputra in South Asia and theYangtze in China. Scientists believe this is because they are being fed by the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, and once the glaciers are gone they will show significantly less flow also.

In the past, most of the discussion of global climactic change was centered on what it was doing to the poles and to the oceans, but this drying up of the world's rivers is even more frightening. Many millions of people depend on these rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture.

Some of the reduced flow is due to agriculture and the building of dams, but the scientists are convinced that now the global climactic change is significantly affecting the amount of water these rivers have. This is because the global climactic change has affected the world's rainfall patterns, and therefore, nature is feeding less water into the rivers.

How bad is it going to have to get before the world takes action to save its human population? The earth will be fine. The question is will its human population be able to survive.