Kim Kardashian, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Olivia Benson, fresh from her latest SVU, and Valerie Woods were sitting around my table the other night, drinking water from Baccarat Crystal goblets, eating Bristol Farms candied orange chicken bits, roasted vegetables and red rice with dates, blueberries, and pomegranate seeds.
The water deserved these crystal goblets far more than any other vintage substances, because water is rapidly becoming Earth's most precious treasure.
São Paolo will be out of usable water in sixty days. California's okay for a couple of years. Then we will all be digging deeper wells. In Lima many women cannot walk the distance to water sources to feed and bathe their children.
Farmers in many areas cannot predict what to plant; what seeds will be able to sprout. Northern farmers don't have to deal with these issues. They've been pushed off their lands by oil companies.
Kim had tears in her eyes, "Maybe we should donate all swimming pools."
I invited Kim because her name will grab your attention. Olivia was here because she's a resourceful detective who takes bold action, finds answers, and makes them work.
Then Valerie Woods is working on a series for Oprah about the destruction of a black neighborhood in Tulsa back in 1921. Valerie is an accomplished writer who can figure out the plot and structure we need before we get to dessert.
And Dianne knows how to change our attitudes, to get people involved - to have the drive that moves us forward. Thank you, Dianne Feinstein, Liberator.
First of all, Senator Feinstein, I watched the powerful position you took on CNN with Wolf Blitzer the other night. Right there I saw the face of moral courage we require. You are wise enough, have seen enough and are at the age I comprehend, where we say what we need to say. And what have we to lose? A few more years of despair? Age is not a time to cower. We may flinch at the aches and pains of the body, but we have the fortitude to stand upon principles we were trained to honor so long ago. Some of us also remember the "Keystone Kops," a crazy collection of comics. Also Silent, as most officials on the Keystone Pipeline which would provide construction jobs in Canada, but Bruce Hamilton of the Amalgamated Transit Union; the first to oppose the Not Funny Keystone Pipeline says far more jobs would be provided if funds for public transit were made available.
You have seen America's glory rise, and, now, we are standing, watching it collapse into an abyss of leaderless fury, flooding its own gut with tortures designed by prehistoric sodomites, greedy brainless oligarchs and corporate cozies.
I would have invited Senator Kerry to dinner, but he was speaking with stunning vigor at the UN Climate Change Conference. The targets, the conference agreed, would be NO CARBON BY 2050. And the total elimination of fossil fuel. Like just about everyone except Al Gore, Kerry did not come out against the Keystone Pipeline. Which will be built by cute little guys with derby hats and a lot of asthma.
I did not invite any other government officials because even though they have a wider inventory of facts, figures, offhand comments from Sony executives, they do not address this issue with the immediacy it demands. Can they really seriously, be talking about the...? It's time, for example, to stand up and demand that golf clubs, graveyards, parks and estates with lots of lawn pay a 50% tax on each piece of that green. That tax should go directly towards finding desalinization programs the Governor says we cannot afford.
Water use must be rationed. I hate this as much as you do: but at gyms, showers should be set up to last no more than three minutes, and leftover water, without particles, used for boiling food, can be saved for plants.
Water should not be served automatically at restaurants.
Don't leave water running when you brush your teeth. Use a half glass of water to rinse the brush and then your mouth.
And when you pee, let it be.
The main issue is attention:
One of my dinner guests mentioned that the new Prime Minister of India is focusing on jobs, not the environment.
But there will be no jobs if we do not attend to the environment. Particularly to the immediate impacts of drought.
This water shortage is not out there somewhere in a "Dust Bowl" newsreel filled with the aspects of tragedy we love in our literature and art.
Drought is not art. There is no romance in the smell of people who cannot wash, in animals dying of thirst. And, animal owners - who respond so well, "But what about my cat?" Yeah, there will be rations on how many pets you can maintain. How many children a family can sustain. Tough to take in a culture not sure about birth control. Really? Not yet?
Yet is here. Those cities which are not under dire threat must share in the relief, must contribute to the restrictions, so they can save the lives of communities whose wells have run dry.