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" The ongoing drought remains our most thoroughly ignored environmental story, and it is ignored even as an adjunct to the coverage of the Great Climate Change Hoax, but, boy howdy, religious fervor will get you in the newspapers. From the heart of New Mexico to West Texas and Oklahoma, the pressures of drought have resulted in a resurgence of faith - from Christian preachers and Catholic priests encouraging prayer processions to American Indian tribes using their closely guarded traditions in an effort to coax Mother Nature to deliver some much needed rain. On Sunday, congregations across eastern New Mexico and West Texas are planning a day of prayer for moisture and rain. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re worried, but we&amp;#039;re maintaining our traditional ways and cultural ways. Together we pray, and individually we pray,&amp;quot; said Peter Pino, administrator of Zia Pueblo. &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t lost hope in the spiritual world, that they&amp;#039;ll be able to provide us resources throughout the year. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not giving up. That&amp;#039;s pretty much all we can do at this point.&amp;quot; OK, so it can&amp;#039;t hurt but, within the story of the appeals to Heaven, there are a number of factoids and observations that give you some idea what a hard pull these farmers and the Almighty have these days. In its wake, the drought has left farmland idle, herds of cattle have been decimated, the threat of wildfire has intensified and cities are thinking twice about the sustainability of their water supplies. In New Mexico, the renewed interest in the divine and the tension with Mother Nature stems from nearly three years of hot, dry weather. There are spots around the state that have fallen behind in rainfall by as much as 24 inches, causing rivers to run dry and reservoirs to dip to record low levels. In neighboring Texas and Oklahoma, the story is no different. Also, too: The simple act of digging a new post hole in eastern New Mexico tells the story of how dry it is. Moist dirt used to turn up several inches below the surface. Now, Skabelund said, someone can dig several feet and not run into any moisture.  And even the clergy out west are quite cognizant of the fact that, in this area, as in many others, faith without works is dead. Church leaders are urging their parishioners to conserve water and use better land-management practices like rotating crops. &amp;quot;We have to play our part,&amp;quot; said The Rev. William Tabbernee, head of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches. &amp;quot;Prayer puts us in touch with God, but it also helps us to focus on the fact that it is a partnership that we&amp;#039;re involved in. We need to cooperate with God and all of humanity to be responsible stewards of the gifts God has given us through nature.&amp;quot; And it remains possible that it will become increasingly impossible to ignore this, ah, burning issue. But I wouldn&amp;#039;t count on it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18378/the-drought-and-religion-050213/>