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So reading about it I don't really see an environmental catastrophe. The basin has been filled 3 times in the last 1200 years, fills intermittently as the cours

So reading about it I don't really see an environmental catastrophe. The basin has been filled 3 times in the last 1200 years, fills intermittently as the course of the Colorado river changes, and has no outlet which means it's ecology is unstable. It last filled around 1900 which is when it appears the current story began. My reading is that people settled it only to find that it is naturally an unstable environment, and now want to create a "restoration plan" to reduce it's natural instability because of economic dependency on it's continued existence.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
The filling in 1900 was due to a manmade accident, which I think could rightly be considered an environmental catastrophe. A poorly designed canal inlet catastrophically failed, diverting the entirety of the Colorado river to the dry lake for two years. It was so much water that it is still drying out. The catastrophe was the filling, not the drying.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  Then why is the restoration projects and various government acts focusing on restoring the water level and salinity?
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Misguided environmental sentiment based on the status quo after the flood but not before? The flood was part of an irrigation project to bring water to the desert. Irrigation of the imperial valley from the Colorado river continues today. For decades after the flood, excess water from farms would trickle into the slowly drying lake, and people got used to it being there. They also got used to the lack of dust from the dry lakebed. Now that it is going back to it's "natural" state, people don't like the prospect.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      Most people who know about John Muir love him... Except for people who have studied any history of the indigenous peoples of California. Then he's a figurehead who tried to erase the natural and cultural history of California in an effort to further his own pastoralist agenda. That's the charitable way to interpret that. Much worse things are said about him. As someone else pointed out with the Salton Sea, Utah doesn't have a monopoly in the west on dumb myopic views on the natural world. And we are really bad with respect to caring about how things were when our grandparents were kids. Or their grandparents. Or the colonists, or the people they displaced.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        I care very little about how things were when my grandparent were kids, or 1000 years ago. I do however care what things will be like for my grandchildren, and perhaps 1000 years from now.
        hinkley 4y ago
        You have no way of knowing how things will be 1000 years from now. The best you can do is know how the trends are going and try to be cognizant of them. But we also have cultural complexes that managed not to destroy the land for tens of thousands of years prior to industrial agriculture, and boy wouldn't it be handy if we could learn from them instead of having to derive the same things they did from first principles, but within a culture that is fundamentally extractive in nature and hence is poorly equipped to see the forest for the trees, real or proverbial.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        I dont think modern culture is any more extractive than those that preceded it, we just have greater technology and capability. I think people have a bit a of a noble savage ideation for earlier times. I agree that we have no idea what things will be like 1000 years from now. Verry little damage is irreversible on those timescales

s1artibartfast 4y ago

The filling in 1900 was due to a manmade accident, which I think could rightly be considered an environmental catastrophe. A poorly designed canal inlet catastrophically failed, diverting the entirety of the Colorado river to the dry lake for two years. It was so much water that it is still drying out. The catastrophe was the filling, not the drying.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
Then why is the restoration projects and various government acts focusing on restoring the water level and salinity?
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Misguided environmental sentiment based on the status quo after the flood but not before? The flood was part of an irrigation project to bring water to the desert. Irrigation of the imperial valley from the Colorado river continues today. For decades after the flood, excess water from farms would trickle into the slowly drying lake, and people got used to it being there. They also got used to the lack of dust from the dry lakebed. Now that it is going back to it's "natural" state, people don't like the prospect.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Most people who know about John Muir love him... Except for people who have studied any history of the indigenous peoples of California. Then he's a figurehead who tried to erase the natural and cultural history of California in an effort to further his own pastoralist agenda. That's the charitable way to interpret that. Much worse things are said about him. As someone else pointed out with the Salton Sea, Utah doesn't have a monopoly in the west on dumb myopic views on the natural world. And we are really bad with respect to caring about how things were when our grandparents were kids. Or their grandparents. Or the colonists, or the people they displaced.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      I care very little about how things were when my grandparent were kids, or 1000 years ago. I do however care what things will be like for my grandchildren, and perhaps 1000 years from now.
      - hinkley 4y ago
        You have no way of knowing how things will be 1000 years from now. The best you can do is know how the trends are going and try to be cognizant of them. But we also have cultural complexes that managed not to destroy the land for tens of thousands of years prior to industrial agriculture, and boy wouldn't it be handy if we could learn from them instead of having to derive the same things they did from first principles, but within a culture that is fundamentally extractive in nature and hence is poorly equipped to see the forest for the trees, real or proverbial.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        I dont think modern culture is any more extractive than those that preceded it, we just have greater technology and capability. I think people have a bit a of a noble savage ideation for earlier times. I agree that we have no idea what things will be like 1000 years from now. Verry little damage is irreversible on those timescales