Word: drought
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...becomes five years old. And many of those who survive are mentally and physically retarded because of malnutrition. These people are not part of a disaster famine that captures the attention of the news media; they die of slow starvation in India, Latin America, and Africa. And when drought robs their crops of water, disastrous famine quickly sets in because, having been weakened by malnutrition, they have no defense against starvation. In the African Sahel, Bangladesh, and India, millions have perished under these famine conditions...
...Kings haven't lost all hope though. As the result of a question from a 13-year old California listener of Ask the President, President Carter has ordered that all the snow remaining in Buffalo be packed into boxcars and transported to California to alleviate the severe drought. The President also ordered that snow be flown in from Oregon as a temporary measure...
...idea sounded beguiling. In a letter to President Carter, California's Representative John Burton wondered whether his drought-stricken state could import snow or runoff water-perhaps by pipeline or railroad-from inundated Eastern areas like Buffalo. But empty pipelines are not available, and state officials, after some reckoning on their calculators, found that 182 million railroad carloads of water or snow would be required to make up for California's water shortage alone. Estimated cost of such an operation: $437 billion...
Other well-meaning if farfetched schemes have been suggested as instant solutions to the Great Western Drought. California's Governor Jerry Brown received one proposal from a correspondent urging a statewide "psychic day," during which California's entire populace would join in a spiritual summons for rain. Another suggested a state give-away of disposable diapers, presumably to cut down on use of washing machines. Still another writer, offering to come to California and display his rainmaking skills, insisted: "The only thing I require is air fare and faith...
Perhaps the most intriguing scheme came from an imaginative scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. After an earlier drought in the 1950s, John Isaacs proposed towing giant, flat-topped icebergs from Antarctica (those from the Arctic would not be big enough) to the California coast; as they melted, fresh water could be siphoned out of the lakes that would form on top of them. The idea has impressed at least one country: petroleum-rich, water-poor Saudi Arabia. A French engineering firm hired by the Saudis is studying whether or not the plan is practical. Towed by six tugs...