NO PLACE TO STAND?

Just as we were adjusting to enviro warnings that the planet was about to be inundated with water from global warming, a new threat has arisen. Figure 2 is from "Gaining More Ground'' by Jonathan Tol-man published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1001 Connecti-cut Ave., Suite 1250, Washington, DC 20036, p 7, October (1994). The United States is losing dry land by over-saving wetlands.

Extrapolating this trend, we estimate that the entire United States will be under water in about 800 years. Now we realize that mitigating factors might arise and that our linear extrapolation is a compromise between various hypotheses (our more alarmed brethren argue for an exponential), but the "precautionary principle'' so elegantly provided to us by Greenpeace mandates that we err on the side of safety. We cannot wait for data before we act!

Remedial action must be multifaceted. A new program to build nuclear power plants along the Great Lakes would be a good place to start. Electric power from these plants can be used to reclaim land by pumping the Lakes dry. (They probably were not there at some better time in the past anyway.) This solves the Greenpeace concern about chlorine contamination of the Lakes as well.