Here's a novel idea: Don't live in the desert. Don't grow baby spinach in the desert. Let water prices rise to the extremes they need to discourage people from doing stupid stuff with essentially free water.
Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
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Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#42It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…
CA water use is 50% environment, 40% agriculture, 10% residential. Maybe we should focus on reducing that 50%? It was nice and all when we had plenty of water to waste but it’s time to revisit those policies. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
Is this a joke comment? Or is this really what the average American thinks?
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#43It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…
Yep. You can look at this from an economics standpoint as well.
We have run out of FREE water.
If all water use in CA cost anywhere close to residential water rates ($8 / 100 cubic feet) there would be no shortage.
Even a small tax of $0.01 per gallon would be a start in this space.
We have exploded population and if you look at water projects (that actually deal with supply) have not done the same over 50 years or whatever. Think grey water use and recycle / desal / dams etc etc.
It's the perfect trifecta+.
Ridiculous water use (afalfa for china) in a desert, free water (water "rights"), limited projects to increase supply for enviro and other reasons (inability of govt to do things).
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#44In Iowa we have the opposite problem too much rain. We are in the last week to plant corn before seeing reduced yields.
We need the transcontinental pipeline to push water to where it needs to be. Or agriculture needs to move to where the water is.
This makes sense to me. Water is the most abundant substance on Earth. Build aqueducts and move the water around. If the Romans could do it we can handle it too.
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#45Hasn't drought in the American west been a constant for at least the past 1500 years? Like, that's the origin story of most of the native groups - "everything died so we traveled through the hellish lands of death until we reached a place with water". Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons, but it's pretty sure that they lived without most…
> Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons, Humans have lived in the basin where I live for at least 4000 years, and many parts of it are filled with thousands of bits of their pottery as evidence of their presence. I suspect that the Tewa/Pueblo people in general would be a little troubled by the idea that they "left almost no history" behin…
> I'm not sure what you think the "obvious reasons" would be for this, were it to be true?
I would assume this means, "because a genocide occurred in which indigenous cultures were deliberately destroyed by settlers".
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#46Semi-related, but last night I watched City Beautiful's video on YT [1] that explains the troubled relationship between poor fire management practices in the western USA and poor development practices - meaning intermingling of houses and forest so controlled burns become impossible. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJiepXtXRX8
I think forestry management is only a part of the story.
New England has houses intermingled with forest, and we make very limited use of controlled burns. Yet, we don't have forest fires like the west coast. There are two big reasons for this:
1) It rains here. The forest floor is perpetually damp, which makes the risk of a fire starting and spreading much lower.
2) We have mature, native forests. The invasive Eucalyptus tree in CA makes their forest fire problem much worse than it otherwise would be.
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#47> "We knew climate change would stress our water supplies and we've been preparing for it but we did not know it would happen this fast," said Gloria Gray, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Water District Board of Directors. Seems a little disingenuous
The “did not know it would happen” means “did not know for certain it would happen and were hoping it would not”.
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#48Like others mentioned the current drought/dry period is how the west has always been. What is an abnormality is the last 150 years and how wet it was. Multiple scientists are saying the same thing but nobody in politics/media are listening. Given no desalinization plants are being built or efforts made to trap more water runoff expect things to get alot worse. Also expect current CA politicans to blame everything on residents "wasting water".
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1327...
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
CA water use is 50% environment, 40% agriculture, 10% residential. Maybe we should focus on reducing that 50%? It was nice and all when we had plenty of water to waste but it’s time to revisit those policies. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
Is this a joke comment? Or is this really what the average American thinks?
No post body was provided.
Re: Nearly all of the Western USA is in drought and it's not even summer yet
#50It's not unprecedented. It's been a steady state that they have pretended was not a steady state. They are not "in a drought". They say drought in a way that implies that it is a temporary state that may return to a different, normal state. But it will not. They have reached a new normal of a lower water level. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-06/editorial-t... was a great editorial on this from last yea…
Isn't there a third option that involves building serious infrastructure to pipe water down from the Northwest? Of course you can't build things in America anymore so that's probably off the table.
Ecologically devastate the Pacific Northwest so we can continue to be wasteful with water is a heck of a take.