BetterMost, Wyoming & Brokeback Mountain Forum
The World Beyond BetterMost => Anything Goes => Topic started by: brokeplex on April 19, 2015, 06:10:01 pm
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as a Trekker, I just love Shatner more and more every year.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/exclusive-william-shatners-30-billion-116672789084.html (https://www.yahoo.com/tech/exclusive-william-shatners-30-billion-116672789084.html)
Exclusive: William Shatner’s $30 Billion Kickstarter Campaign to Save California
William Shatner. Wow. He’s 84 years old, looks 65, and juggles a schedule that would exhaust a team of 10. Book projects, TV projects, tech projects, horse-riding projects, charity projects. And his willingness to embrace the tech world is impressive; he’s got YouTube channels, he’s conducted Kickstarter projects, and he has a huge Twitter presence: more than 2 million followers. (He’s tweeted 30,000 times so far — and yes, it’s really him.)
The hour he spent with me in a Yahoo Tech Mix interview wasn’t even enough to scratch the surface.
“You’re gonna get a scoop here,” Shatner told me. This is it.
“California’s in the midst of a 4-year-old drought,” he said. “They tell us there’s a year’s supply of water left. If it doesn’t rain next year, what do 20 million people in the breadbasket of the world do? In a place that’s the fifth-largest GDP — if California were a country, it’d be fifth in line — we’re about to be arid! What do you do about it?”
Here’s the plan:
“So I’m starting a Kickstarter campaign. I want $30 billion … to build a pipeline like the Alaska pipeline. Say, from Seattle — a place where there’s a lot of water. There’s too much water. How bad would it be to get a large, 4-foot pipeline, keep it aboveground — because if it leaks, you’re irrigating!”
And where would this water pipeline go?
“Bring it down here and fill one of our lakes! Lake Mead!”
I was a little skeptical. It didn’t sound doable. The political hassles, the fights with local towns, the environmental impact…
“No, it’s simple,” Shatner replied. “They did it in Alaska — why can’t they do it along Highway 5? This whole area’s about to go under!”
Shatner conceded that even if he’s not able to raise the money, the effort will at least raise consciousness about the severity of California’s drought.
“If I don’t make 30 billion, I’ll give the money to a politician who says, ‘I’ll build it.’ Obviously, it’s to raise awareness that something more than just closing your tap … so why not a pipeline?”
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I've often wondered about something like this.