A Drop of Rain

Amazing stuff. I can’t confirm if this suicide was all at once or if it happened over a period of time, but that’s just nitpicking details.

This is part of the larger global story of drought and corresponding drop in food production (read that article, it contains links to more specific articles about different parts of the planet’s food and water situation) which is fast proving the fantasy that human population will keep expanding to 9 billion is just that, a fantasy. 6 billion was already probably 6 times more than the long term maximum carrying capacity of the planet. Also check out the recent PBS report on glaciers and climate change (one hour episode of NOW, flash video).

Thank god this isn’t an ideological matter, no matter how people try to paint it.

Here’s the original article on the Indian farmer’s mass suicide:

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

“Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.”

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

To put this into a context, the BBC reported that 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.

So this is an ongoing situation, not some new thing, but it’s a sign of serious over-development, and over use of water resources.

But this isn’t just about India, it’s the same all over, droughts, excessive consumption of slow or never recharging ground water from ancient aquifers.

Read about the situation in Australia, which is especially dire as well.
What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia

And so the story goes, it’s here, now, and we won’t be buying or borrowing our way out of this particular mess I’m sad to say.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 20:30 and is filed under Currents of the Peak. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.