Ditat Deus

Ditat Deus is the state motto of Arizona & can be roughly translated as "God Provides". I have always found this strange: Arizona is primarily a desert state, a place that was sparsely inhabited before the arrival of the Spanish and the Americans. The Native American tribes who lived here lived off the land and cultivated crops. As much as their survival depended on the natural world, it was also ensured by their own ingenuity & construction. The Hohokam, for one, constructed an extensive system of irrigation canals that the modern canals of Phoenix are based on. It seems to me that it is human intervention in the natural world, rather than the world or God that provides for us these days, that allows us to survive out here, or at least in the style to which we have become accustomed. The motto probably refers to the fact that Arizona is (or was) rich in mineral resources. Copper has always been the most important, indeed, Arizona is referred to as 'the Copper State'.

Yet, it has been acknowledged that our mining practices are not ecologically sound (the copper isn't exactly just laying around out in the desert, after all). We've built a great city, Phoenix, in the midst of 'nothing', in the middle of the desert. We've rangled huge amounts of resources to make this paradise possible. The water we've redirected from the Colorado river has made lawns, golf courses & waterparks possible, things that God did not see fit to put in the middle of a desert. It is becoming more clear by the day (at least to me) how completely unsustainable this is. What will the face of our desert city look like in 50 years, if the drought doesn't let up, if we can't find the water to fuel the matastic growth of the far-flung suburbs, where there was scarcely a house 10 years ago? Our motto may soon be "Man Proposes, God Disposes", if we don't become more sensible very fast.