221–230 of 385 posts
In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group
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I wonder what it will take for people to start leaving the state. And it's going to be the wealthy who leave first.
California has the largest economy in the U.S. and (if it were its own nation) the fifth largest in the world, with agricultural production/processing representing under 3% of total state GDP. There's lots of money and lots of strategies for mitigating water problems, including things like desalinization on a scale never seen before. In contrast, Arizona is relatively poor and landlocked. It seems like they're far mo…
Desalination doesn't work for California.
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How many of the 13 million people in, say, the greater LA area do you think the term "elite" can plausibly encompass? Edit: If LA (or SF, or SD, or Phoenix, or literally any other city) runs out of water, it's not going to be the elites who have a hard time dealing with it or moving somewhere else.
All the ones at the levers of power that matter. It is utterly ridiculous to build a giant city in the middle of a desert, and then to cry bully everyone else into giving up their water so that the ridiculous city can continue its unsustainable path.
Meanwhile, would you seriously argue that it's not ridiculous, and in any way sustainable, to build agriculture in the central valley? Look at the numbers above: agriculture uses far more water than the cities so less water being available is going to hit it far harder than it'll hit the cities.
Los Angeles (or other cities) finding other sources of water isn't going to save central valley agriculture, so what's the obsession with the vast majority of the population who are using (And if we're calling the land where Los Angeles was built a "desert" instead of a Mediteranean climate we really should do the same for the central valley, after all. Drive through that land for three quarters of the year and it's immediately obvious that maybe it's not a great idea to farm there...)
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They barely pay for it. Most of the people holding these rights pay an absurd fraction of what a city-dweller would pay for the same amount. That's the only reason it's profitable for the farmer.
They use different water systems. There is no single ‘water system’ or water source in the state. A senior rights holder has rights on a specific source of water . Water itself is ‘free’ until there is no more - minus the infrastructure costs to get it where you want of course, which can be zero to insanely expensive depending on the source of water. City dwellers are paying for the infrastructure to get clean, drink…
We as a society are paying for it, they get it far cheaper than cost.
They are very comparable: both are water, being provided from a very finite source.
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I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no g…
> I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. I understand these figures may not mean anything because private individuals consume relatively imperceptible amounts of water compared to (the agriculture) industry. But reflect for a moment that Kim Kardashian blew through over one quarter million gal…
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I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no g…
> I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. I understand these figures may not mean anything because private individuals consume relatively imperceptible amounts of water compared to (the agriculture) industry. But reflect for a moment that Kim Kardashian blew through over one quarter million gal…
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What does "you don't take away rights" even mean? And why say such a thing? Of course rights can, and should, be taken away, if they don't make sense anymore. And these particular rights clearly don't make sense anymore.
The Colorado River is the source of water for a huge chunk of Southern California, six other states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming), and Mexico. You're not going to change that unilaterally without causing an international incident.
There is no international incident if everyone understands why the water is not there.
And that is not a reason for the states to avoid collectively reconsidering what they are using the water for. We all need to look for ways to cut usage, including passing the true costs on to agriculture.
In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group
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That's likely true, but what change has been made in the total volume of plastic waste produced in the area? Possibly/probably very little. It's an example of doing something easy and visibly noticable, but ultimately inconsequential, to create the illusion of solving a problem.
In Australia, when they did a plastic bag ban, the total volume of plastic waste actually went up. Instead of using flimsy grocery bags for their household trash, people were now using thicker dedicated trash bags. Those thin bags are some of the most re-used plastic out there.
However, urban plastic pollution has definitely decreased. We do often now have an excess of paper bags in our house as people tend to forget their reusable bags and we don't have as many uses for the paper ones. At least they can be recycled.