Atlanta and our Shared Future

Gov. Sonny Perdue wasn't the least bit discouraged Tuesday after his hourlong state Capitol prayer vigil for rain ended with the sun shining through what had been a somewhat cloudy morning.

"God can make it rain tomorrow, he can make it rain next week or next month," Perdue told reporters who asked him if a miracle was on the way. More than 250 faithful Georgians joined Perdue outside the Capitol to ask for divine intervention to end the historic drought. "We come here very reverently and respectfully to pray up a storm," Perdue told those in attendance.

-- from "GEORGIA'S WATER CRISIS: 'God can make it rain tomorrow'" in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Have you ever heard the religious story-joke about a man in the path of an elephant. Rather than move, he prayed to God. Twice the elephant ran at him and then swerved at the last moment. The third time the elephant ran over the man. The man cried out to God asking why. God replied "I warned you twice to get out of the way..."

Governor Perdue also initiated a temporary elimination of state tax on gasoline, when gas prices first shot up after the Iraq War changed the conditions of the energy market (along with increased demand from Asian countries). See "Georgia announces moratorium on state motor fuel tax - Sep. 2, 2005" from CNN.


Proposed expansion, I-75, Cobb County, Georgia. Atlanta Journal-Constitution graphic. The freeway will be 25+ lanes wide.

From "Horizon: Atlanta in 2057: We face serious choices for future," in the AJC:

The "we blew it" scenario is believing the "myth that the current drought won't happen again in our lifetime, and it's back to business as usual." It would ignore the evidence of global warming and not altering our behavior. "There would be endless, automobile-dependent sprawl," he said. And while we might develop some "livable communities," most new development would be traditional suburban growth.

Hiemstra believes the gasoline-powered automobile will be obsolete 50 years from now, so that an economy dependent on cars running on cheap gas will fall behind other areas that have invested in alternatives. He believes $100 a barrel oil will become the floor price, and the actual price will be much higher.

The third part of the "we blew it" scenario is assuming that we can continue to have an economy dependent on population growth as our engine of prosperity. "This is a very construction-oriented economy," Hiemstra said, adding that metro Atlanta's economy must diversify because it can't keep up this rate of growth. ...

The other possible scenario that Hiemstra envisions for metro Atlanta is the one where we just "muddle through." Unfortunately, he believes the "muddle through" scenario is the most likely outcome for our region "because there's so much inertia in the system." We might be able to have isolated incidences of strategic development because he believes "it's unlikely that you will be totally stupid."

But Hiemstra said the opportunity we have is to strive for the "more ambitious scenario." Metro Atlanta can be more dynamic than other metro areas because "there's an attitude in this region that we can do something rather than we can't," Hiemstra said.

Turner Field, Atlanta. Image from Ballparks.com.

Also see "GEORGIA'S WATER CRISIS: Atlanta, DeKalb fail to cut use 10%" and "GEORGIA'S WATER CRISIS: Lawmakers: State plan probable," about the possibility that the State of Georgia will regulate water usage on a statewide basis, both from the AJC.

And I don't know what to make of this, exactly, about how Atlanta Kids View the Future – Video
Children describe their postcards to the future in this 2007 video produced by the Atlanta Regional Commission.