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California has about one year of water left

latimes.com

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Re: California has about one year of water left

#361

Post by dragonwriter »

puredemo wrote: post #360
dragonwriter wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of climate change comes from Brazil destroying their rainforests, it has little to do with the US. Brazil's destruction of its rainforests to create land to raise beef for export actually has more to do with the US than you might think. I mean, why do you think that is a profitable (in the short run, anyway) thing to do?

Fair point, but we're not the only country that enjoys beef, many 1st and 2nd world country import it. Blaming the issues on the US is myopic and wrong-headed. We aren't over-populated. We protect our national parks. We have a functioning democracy. Etc. Capitalistic demand can be short-sighted and there can be negative externalities, none of that should be surprising. It's up to people who OWN the land (their most v…

> Capitalistic demand can be short-sighted and there can be negative externalities, none of that should be surprising. It's up to people who OWN the land (their most valuable asset) to come up with ways to make it sustainably productive.

But, as you note, there are negative externalities, which means that there is no incentive for the people that own the land to do so (because they are diffuse harms that also effect the landowners, there may be incentives for them to do so if it is in concert with mandatory restrictions on others taking actions that contribute to the same diffuse harms, but the nature of negative externalities is that the incentives to those involved in the transactions -- including those who own the land at issue -- are not sufficient for the optimal course of action, in terms of social utility, to be rational.)

Re: California has about one year of water left

#362

Post by dragonwriter »

malkia wrote: post #359
wes-k wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a fair point. http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Animal-products shows 10.19 litres/calorie beef vs 1.34 liters/calorie vegetables. Which is an even greater distance than the gallons per pound I mentioned. This obvioulsy can't be right. I will argue that theory wise it makes sense that a plant based diet would use less than a diet consisting of eating animals that ate the plant based diet. The anima…

As a meat-loving animal, this made me feeling a bit worse... What if meat is imported from areas/states/countries where there is no water problem. And with that, maybe California should open itself to import vegetables/fruits from other states, countries too?

> What if meat is imported from areas/states/countries where there is no water problem.

It often is.

> And with that, maybe California should open itself to import vegetables/fruits from other states, countries too?

California imports fruits and vegetables from other states and countries already.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#363

Post by the_watcher »

malkia wrote: post #333
declan wrote: post #321

80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. About 6 percent is industrial and commercial. That leaves 7 percent residential landscaping, and 7 percent residential non-landscaping (showers, washing machines, etc.). Source: http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/where-we-... Even if residential landscaping or non-landscaping water usage dropped by a quarter immediately, wh…

It looks like it won't help much, but landscaping should stop. Double stop. Triple stop. No need to waste water in there, and comply with neighbor whatever regulations.

There's pretty lucrative incentives for adjusting landscaping to reduce water consumption - I grew up in the Palm Springs area (which, ironically, is one of the few parts of California that can water itself - the golf courses have to buy their water from outside sources, but there is a large aquifer out there), and there's been a major move towards desert landscaping to take advantage of it.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#364

Post by the_watcher »

declan wrote: post #321

80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. About 6 percent is industrial and commercial. That leaves 7 percent residential landscaping, and 7 percent residential non-landscaping (showers, washing machines, etc.). Source: http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/where-we-... Even if residential landscaping or non-landscaping water usage dropped by a quarter immediately, wh…

Related to this: California is one of the largest producers of rice (one of the most water-intensive crops in the world) in the United States. Rice (and other water intensive crops) shouldn't be grown in places that have water issues.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#365

Post by BrainInAJar »

jonnathanson wrote: post #119
rjett wrote: post #72

Disclaimer: I have no clue if what I'm proposing is realistic or not, but: Perhaps the federal government should step in and gradually step down the level of subsidies given to farmers in California and gradually increase subsidies given to NEW farmers in other, more water rich parts of the country. This would have the effect of moving farms to more sustainable locations in the country. Sure, the types of crops produ…

My understanding is that California is so ideal for agriculture because of its climate (with the water scarcity being the big liability, the can we've been kicking down the road for decades). Other states, either individually or collectively, do not have the year-round, Mediterranean, relatively predictable climate to take on the load that California would drop. This includes not only total square acreage of arable,…

> (There are certainly wetter states, but they have seasonal extremes that make X, Y, Z crops very challenging.)

Then perhaps we as a culture should stop eating X, Y and Z so much.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#366

Post by eveningcoffee »

civilian wrote: post #350
ffn wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to remind you that we, as mere lowly humans, require food grown on a farm to survive a lot more so than we need software or music. If we collapse our agricultural backbone and just willy-nilly decide to depend upon a foreign nation for food, then be prepared to fight a lot more "oil wars" (except for human fuel and not just car fuel). Furthermore, we'd be putting our trust into the governments and politicians…

You wrote some jingoist 19th-century bullshit. You're ready to fight in World War 1. The idea that we need to protect strategic resources is outdated. We continue to do so, at our own detriment. Our sugar costs something like 5x what it costs in the rest of the world, because we place tariffs to keep it from coming in from the Caribbean. We are DESTROYING WEALTH CREATION with this market engineering. It is a tax that…

Loosing control over rare earth metals played out very well. For China.

Not being able to produce enough wood tanked Soviet Union.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#367

Post by DougWebb »

refurb wrote: post #286
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled at the down votes you're receiving. I think you have a valid point and I generally have a similar perspective, but, in this case, it overlooks a significant externality: the destruction of the environment as rivers are pumped dry and (albeit, artificial) reservoirs run dry. Further, your solution could make the additional extraction of water quite profitable, which would further the destruction. The strai…

it overlooks a significant externality: the destruction of the environment as rivers are pumped dry and (albeit, artificial) reservoirs run dry Not sure I understand. The rivers would run dry because of no rain, not because we're taking water from them. Remember all this water we're using for irrigation was just ending up in the ocean anyways.

Is the California produce you buy bone-dry? Probably not. It's full of that precious water. A lot may wind up in the ocean as runoff, but a lot gets exported from CA too. It eventually winds up back in the ecosystem, but the point is that it will take eons to get back into the acquifers.

Re: California has about one year of water left

#368

Post by pimlottc »

smacktoward wrote: post #255
rjett wrote: post #72

Disclaimer: I have no clue if what I'm proposing is realistic or not, but: Perhaps the federal government should step in and gradually step down the level of subsidies given to farmers in California and gradually increase subsidies given to NEW farmers in other, more water rich parts of the country. This would have the effect of moving farms to more sustainable locations in the country. Sure, the types of crops produ…

This reminds me of a conversation I had a while back with some other folks like me who had grown up in Ohio. We were talking about what sort of program would help turn around Ohio's brain drain to the states of the South and West, which has been going on in various degrees since the collapse of the industrial Rust Belt. My thought was that, in a few decades, you won't need a program to make living in Ohio attractive;…

Access to enormous amounts of fresh water in the form of the Great Lakes may very well be the Rust Belt's ace in the hole in the coming decades...

Re: California has about one year of water left

#369

Post by kibwen »

rhino369 wrote: post #326
ffn wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to remind you that we, as mere lowly humans, require food grown on a farm to survive a lot more so than we need software or music. If we collapse our agricultural backbone and just willy-nilly decide to depend upon a foreign nation for food, then be prepared to fight a lot more "oil wars" (except for human fuel and not just car fuel). Furthermore, we'd be putting our trust into the governments and politicians…

The Midwest grows enough crops to feed the whole country if some major disaster or famine happened.

The Midwest is rapidly depleting its own water supply as well.

"About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies the aquifer, which yields about 30 percent of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Depletion is accelerating, with 2% lost between 2001 and 2009 alone. Once depleted, the aquifer will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

Re: California has about one year of water left

#370

Post by civilian »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #366
civilian wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote some jingoist 19th-century bullshit. You're ready to fight in World War 1. The idea that we need to protect strategic resources is outdated. We continue to do so, at our own detriment. Our sugar costs something like 5x what it costs in the rest of the world, because we place tariffs to keep it from coming in from the Caribbean. We are DESTROYING WEALTH CREATION with this market engineering. It is a tax that…

Loosing control over rare earth metals played out very well. For China. Not being able to produce enough wood tanked Soviet Union.

I'm not familiar with the wood theory of the downfall of the Soviet Union. Link? I figured it was their centrally planned economy.

Yeah, so China has most rare earth metals. Are you advocating imperialism and occupation? Do we have evidence that they are managing their resource in an abusive way? (After a bit of reading, it appears that China does have large export restrictions. That market inefficiency is being solved by smuggling. :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_industry_in_China#Hi... )

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