California has about one year of water left

LATimes has an article from last year on high and low residential per capita water usage (http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1105-californi...). Using that, let's estimate a .5kgal/person/day usage for San Diego and Orange counties, and a .05kgal/person/day usage for the San Francisco region. (The difference in those numbers was surprising.)

The most recent census numbers estimated the Orange County population to be ~3.1 million people, Los Angeles county to be ~10 million people, and San Diego county to be ~3.2 million. San Francisco county is about .8 million. Let's add in Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin, Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties at roughly the same per capita usage, with populations of ~1.1 million, ~.8 million, ~.3 million, ~1.6 million, ~.8 million, and ~1.9 million people respectively. At this point, we've accounted for ~23.6 million of California's ~38.3 million residents.

Crunching the numbers, this works out to ~8.2Mgal/day for the southern California region's residential water usage, and ~.4Mgal/day for the Bay Area region's residential water usage. (Check my math, but I don't think I screwed it up.)

According to an article from Slate (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...), almond farming alone in California uses roughly 3Ggal (that's three giga-gallons, or three billion gallons) of water per day.

Or, to put it yet another way, if we decided instead that about 23.6 million people were worth some almond farms, we could balance their entire water usage by reducing California's almond farms by less than 1 percent.

So, no, there would not be enough water if those metroplexes simply vanished.

Furthermore, we'd be putting our trust into the governments and politicians of foreign nations. And, quite honestly, despite all the shit we see about our politicians being corrupt, cheating on their wives, embezzling thousands of dollars a year, letting the rich get away with billions in tax loopholes, being stupid in congress, being radical not-born-in-murica communists, etc., at least keep in mind we at least see them in all their human imperfections (and sometimes less-than-human vices), whereas we have absolutely no idea what the hell goes on behind the closed doors and smokescreens at a foreign government. Politics and power is inherently a very difficult game of balancing flexible compromises and hardline stoicism, not a place for cults of personalities and naive idealism.

As for me, I'd much rather trust the politician who is getting publicly crucified for having told a racist joke 10 years ago, flirted a little too much with some girl not his wife, is a closest homosexual, tweeted something dumb like "#killasians lolwat", or committed some other sensationalist-media-breaking-news-but-realistically-inconsequential-to-his-character "sin" than the perfect politician who has never commit any sin and who no one dares to speak ill against (e.g. today's chairman Xi).

The US will never need to rely on other nations for their corn, rice, wheat, apples, barley, etc. But if the choice is between destroying our own land and infrastructure or relying on other countries for our kiwis, artichokes, avocados and almonds, then I might actually be okay with eating Mexican avocados (and I think the Mexican farmers might appreciate that too).

By this the Sahara or Arabian peninsula are some of the best farmland on the planet. I mean, all you have to do is bring in the key ingredient of life.

This is not a new problem for California. It's been ignored for so long because it used to be cheap. It was always stupid to farm in a desert, it doesn't matter how cheap it used to be to bring water in.

It turns out, large parts of California are arid for a reason, and the reason isn't recent climate change. But we as a species can't think past right now. California was populated when we didn't think we were ruled by nature anymore and our new found genius would meld nature to bend to our will. It's biting us in the ass now.