141–150 of 222 posts
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Water is a scarce resource in this case. You don't exactly let the "wealthy" buy off everything they can just because. Scarce resources need to be regulated my friend.
Scarce resources need to be exposed to market forces. The purpose of markets is to allocate scarce resources and price them appropriately.
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The point is watering your lawn is a drop in the giant reservoir. If only 20% of the water is being used by residents (in reality, it's a bit less) and you pass super aggressive water conservation laws targeting residential use such that it's reduced by 50% then you've conserved a whopping..... 10% In contrast, a mere 12% increase in agriculture efficiency gets you the same win. Targeting residents to curb the water…
While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn. And the response of "cities" like Los Angeles is to subsidize people's servants completely redoing their yards! Implementing water restrictions is incredibly easy - you declare "no outdoor water usage except on these two days of the week after 5pm" and issue fines to people who don't comp…
People seek out natural things such as plants. They put them in their homes, they hang paintings of them on their walls, and they decorate their cubicles with them. I don't think it is surprising that people want green lawns. It is depressing to live in a brown world.
The answer seems to be to design _better_ lawns: plant grasses, shrubs, and trees which grow naturally in the area, do not require huge amounts of water, and are drought-resistant. I don't know about LA, but, in my area, this transition has been underway for years.
But rather than reducing, even a little, the giant water subsidy that agriculture gets (senior members of the agribusiness establishment pay pennies on the dollar), it sounds like we're just telling some unlucky farmers they now have a cap on their usage. This is not an economically-optimal approach.
A free market fix is not a right-now fix, right? The market is a powerful force but usually takes a little while to adapt. The optimal fix would probably involve short-term regulation and long-term market solutions?
The problem is that all this "short-term regulation" has caused increasing and cumulative lopsidedness in all sorts of relatively harmless areas of the market. That if we were to now "resort to the free market approach", we'd have a huge swath of population up in arms while the market self-corrects.
I.e. Farmers lose profits, forced to reduce water costs or close down. Then you'd have have all the consumers complaining about the rising costs of X,Y,Z. Then, you get the farm-workers unions (farms closing, jobs lost, etc) complaining. Then the politicians who want to cry-foul and make a campaign out of yet-more-free-stuff.
It's a snow-ball effect, and I exaggerate a little for effect above. Point being, there is no such thing as a "short-term regulation" fix without long-term dependency and momentum.
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We're literally running out of water [1]. As in no more. There are entire counties who get nothing when they turn on their faucets. Nothing. No more. Not to mention the ground is sinking. [1] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-droug...
Which entire counties get nothing when they turn on their faucets?
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Do you seriously think the answer isn't "produce more, and stop using so much until we do"?
I seriously have no faith that a group of people can regulate things efficiently. It sounds hopeful of course. I have more faith in desalination or some other engineering solution.
Well, I'm convinced. I'll burn my house down this winter to keep warm, too.
Can someone explain to me why we don't just build a pipeline from Seattle or some rich water source up north down to California?
a) they're also experiencing less water b) it'd be crazy expensive... like billions and billions and billions. c) they don't necessarily have all this extra water to feed the nation with
About time. Agriculture is using 80% of the water, but accounts for a mere 2% of the GDP (4% of employment)[1]. There's no reason we should be squeezing our rural and suburban centers that fuel the overwhelming majority of our economy while giving farmer's a free pass to suck the state dry of usable water which is mainly used for exported profits and not sustaining local industries. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A free market fix is not a right-now fix, right? The market is a powerful force but usually takes a little while to adapt. The optimal fix would probably involve short-term regulation and long-term market solutions?
In this case, the market will very quickly adapt. Because not adapting (increasing prices, reducing usage/costs, etc), will cause businesses to fail. And no one likes losing money or closing businesses, but they don't mind reduced profit. The problem is that all this "short-term regulation" has caused increasing and cumulative lopsidedness in all sorts of relatively harmless areas of the market. That if we were to no…
I dunno about the wisdom some times of people expressing "markets solve problems best."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP. What does watering one's lawn contribute to?
The point is watering your lawn is a drop in the giant reservoir. If only 20% of the water is being used by residents (in reality, it's a bit less) and you pass super aggressive water conservation laws targeting residential use such that it's reduced by 50% then you've conserved a whopping..... 10% In contrast, a mere 12% increase in agriculture efficiency gets you the same win. Targeting residents to curb the water…
I recently read East of Eden, and even though it was written about 19th century California, some topics resonated very well today. This quote, in particular: "And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way."