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The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

cnn.com

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price for the water is also several orders of magnitude different. Farms pay 100-1000x less. It's not drinkable so some difference is expected, but this is too much. Raising their price would ultimately increase food prices across the country - but that's the reality. Right now CA urban water users subsidize food prices across the nation.

If only 5% of CA water is urban use, then surely the subsidy is minimal. Also - driving the Central Valley I see no end of “Congress stole our water” signs, so clearly some change is happening. Why can’t agriculture in more rain prone areas compete?

The rain prone areas are too cold for much of the year.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#33

Maybe we should stop using water for agriculture in Cali? 5% of the water in California is for urban use[1]. It always drove me up the wall when the state issued rules reducing water usage for people when they give plenty of water to all the farms ... IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT ... [1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ There's plenty of water for the cities, just not the agriculture. It's part…

Well, something like 1/3rd of all the vegetables and 2/3rds of all the fruit in the US is grown in California. Where do you propose this gets grown instead?

Humans managed to scrape along for ten thousand years without the ability to eat fresh fruit and vegetables at any time of the year. I think doubling the price of an apple in exchange for Los Angeles to continue to exist is an okay tradeoff.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price for the water is also several orders of magnitude different. Farms pay 100-1000x less. It's not drinkable so some difference is expected, but this is too much. Raising their price would ultimately increase food prices across the country - but that's the reality. Right now CA urban water users subsidize food prices across the nation.

If only 5% of CA water is urban use, then surely the subsidy is minimal. Also - driving the Central Valley I see no end of “Congress stole our water” signs, so clearly some change is happening. Why can’t agriculture in more rain prone areas compete?

Just a guess: probably a combination of weather/soil and cheap labor. California is always sunny, the central valley is very fertile, and the state is very friendly to illegal immigration.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, something like 1/3rd of all the vegetables and 2/3rds of all the fruit in the US is grown in California. Where do you propose this gets grown instead?

Humans managed to scrape along for ten thousand years without the ability to eat fresh fruit and vegetables at any time of the year. I think doubling the price of an apple in exchange for Los Angeles to continue to exist is an okay tradeoff.

Yes but there weren't this many people for the last ten thousand years.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#36
post #2

Well, those photos of Lake Mead are terrifying. Maybe severe water shortages this summer will wake people up that climate change isn't some liberal fetish.

> climate change isn't some liberal fetish It's not and I'm pretty sure most people agree. But the activists are focusing their efforts in all the wrong places. We have Extinction Rebellion extremists gluing themselves to electric trains in London. Electric. In the mean while, the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializ…

> the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializing. The growing number of people is the main problem.

Bullshit. The western ignorance and entitlement is unreal. Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. If someone is to be blamed for climate change, it's them.

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

What gives you the right to stop the rest of the world from industrializing?

Look at the obscene CO2 emissions caused due to over-consumption in western countries:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

Poor countries are going through the standard demographic transition model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition. You cannot blame them for having high birth rates, even Europe and America had high birth rates when they were poor.

Birth rates in India and China are already below replacement, Africa's will also be later in the century.

Do you think people in America are more entitled to have babies than in the rest of the world?

The problem is not growing population, correlation is not causation. The root problem is lack of renewable tech that can sustain the modern quality of life for all humanity.

I suggest watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

It's high time people stopped the tiresome and senseless bitching about India/China/Africa having too many babies, and focused on renewable energy research instead.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#37
post #2

Well, those photos of Lake Mead are terrifying. Maybe severe water shortages this summer will wake people up that climate change isn't some liberal fetish.

> climate change isn't some liberal fetish It's not and I'm pretty sure most people agree. But the activists are focusing their efforts in all the wrong places. We have Extinction Rebellion extremists gluing themselves to electric trains in London. Electric. In the mean while, the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializ…

>getting Americans to swap their trucks for Teslas is not going to change anything.

That's like saying Americans buying iPhones in the late 2000s won't do anything for poor people in India and Africa, but they revolutionized communication and a lot of other things.

Battery research isn't cheap.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#38

For anyone interested in what this may look like, I highly recommend the book “The Water Knife”. It focuses on the water rights disputes of a future dystopian US where states fight proxy wars with each other to secure access to water. It’s set in Los Vegas and Arizona as they are coping with a refugee crisis of Floridians and Texans fleeing the impact of climate change. The author Paola Bacigalupi also wrote “The Win…

Windup Girl is not exactly diamond-hard science fiction, since the biopunk genre waves a wand and makes electronics largely go away. Energy storage is done by winding springs with working animals, genetic engineering features prominently, but for aesthetic reasons you never see the words "solar" or "electric motor".

This was plausible-ish in 2009, (At the time the only EV on the road was the obscure and blisteringly expensive Tesla Roadster) but lithium batteries and PV solar are dozens of times cheaper now. Even with oil gone, it would be hard to imagine a Windup Girl future in 2050.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#39
post #2

Well, those photos of Lake Mead are terrifying. Maybe severe water shortages this summer will wake people up that climate change isn't some liberal fetish.

> climate change isn't some liberal fetish It's not and I'm pretty sure most people agree. But the activists are focusing their efforts in all the wrong places. We have Extinction Rebellion extremists gluing themselves to electric trains in London. Electric. In the mean while, the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializ…

It would seem the solution here is to use our wealth to demonstrate how to do this sustainably on a per capita basis.

We have no high ground until we are lower per capita than these growing economies.

Re: The American West is drying out. Things will get ugly

#40
post #2

Well, those photos of Lake Mead are terrifying. Maybe severe water shortages this summer will wake people up that climate change isn't some liberal fetish.

They appear to be at least a little exaggerated as the bottom portion of the image is scaled larger in the “before” photo.
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