Vote Progressive for the Lakes

Voters in Alaska, if you need a reason to elect a progressive President in 2008, consider what right wing politics has done to the landscape of your state. The right wing’s refusal to do anything about global warming has put Alaska out to dry, literally.

Scientists engaged in a survey of lakes in nine different regions of Alaska have discovered that, over 20 years, both the number of lakes and the size of lakes has been dramatically reduced. The number of lakes declined by as much as 54 percent, and the size of the remaining lakes by as much as 31 percent, depending on the region surveyed. The reason? Global warming, which progressives have been working to confront for years, but right wingers have refused to acknowledge until reality became so clear they were forced to accept it.

It may not seem like a big deal to some people to see our landscape radically transformed by forces out of our control, but some of us are disturbed by the idea that places where there were lakes a generation ago are now bone dry. If you can’t count on a lake to remain a lake, what can you count on?

For more on this research, see the Samplings section of the February edition of Natural History Magazine.

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