Water is a powerful thing.
It gives life and it takes it away. We can’t live without it but we can be killed by it.
The water that has been pounding the Caribbean, Florida and Texas this hurricane season is certifying the worries of climate scientists who long ago predicted stronger storms and coastal flooding. It will only get worse and so any business that is thinking ahead will want to think twice about locating in a coastal city. (Hint for you, Amazon.)
Advantage: Midwest. We’re experiencing more rain, flooding and stronger storms due to human-caused global warming, but our cities are not at risk of being totally destroyed and we don’t need to spend billions of dollars, as Miami is, on raising our streets in what will probably be a vain hope of staving off the inevitable.
We’re also not experiencing the drought, wildfires and mudslides that are the direct and indirect result of climate change in the western part of our country. Again, the advantage goes to the heartland.
On the other hand, we have an abundant supply of fresh water that we can put to work. It’s access to Lake Michigan that was a key ingredient in Foxconn’s decision to locate near the lake in southeast Wisconsin. While I believe that the record amount of corporate welfare doled out to the Taiwanese company will prove disastrous for our state, the positive lesson we can take from this misadventure is that our proximity to clean, fresh water is a huge economic development advantage.
This forces the question of why Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the Legislature want to degrade that water. Foxconn itself will be exempt from state regulations protecting wetlands and streams and exempt from even considering impacts in the kind of environmental analysis any other business would have to write. The Legislature has also allowed high capacity wells, which degrade streams, and it has loosened regulations on mining, an historic polluting industry.
If our state leaders really cared about jobs and really understood our primary advantages — relative climate change security and clean water — they would be working to strengthen protections for our water, not eliminate them.
Water wrapped up in a gigantic storm and driven by powerful winds is an incredibly destructive force. But Midwest water is a relatively gentle and controlled affair. Historically, water has driven our economy. It has run mills used to cut logs and grind grain, floated logs to those saw mills, ferried grain and iron ore to the east, made dairy farming and cheese production possible, been used as a necessary ingredient in paper making and heavy industries and been the very center of our tourism economy.
It drives me up a wall when I hear the Great Lakes states and the Midwest referred to as the “Rust Belt.” No other region would accept that kind of pejorative description of itself.
But there is one advantage here. Things rust because they get wet. And it’s that very wetness, in the right amounts, that might be key to our economic renaissance.
