You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
I think you are underestimating the non agriculture use of water in California. Some cites (LA) are using 100s of gallons of extra water per person day compared to others. Even at a gallon per almond, that's a lot of almonds.
Edit - and honestly, if the drought doesn't stop we have to build desalinization plants. Hopefully this year or next we'll have good snowfall this winter thanks to an el nino.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
I think you are underestimating the non agriculture use of water in California. Some cites (LA) are using 100s of gallons of extra water per person day compared to others. Even at a gallon per almond, that's a lot of almonds.
Edit - and honestly, if the drought doesn't stop we have to build desalinization plants. Hopefully this year or next we'll have good snowfall this winter thanks to an el nino.
No, you are vastly OVER-estimating the non-agricultural use of water in California. Agriculture is generally estimated to consume about 80% of California's water. Urban use is some part of the remaining 20%, along with industry and such. (though I believe urban is a large part of that 20%).
This isn't an urban issue. They don't use enough water for that to be the case.
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited July 2014
The Convo of the regional government made me remember this image. How about dividing California (and the rest of the country) this way:
Somehow I feel that redrawing all the state boundaries to fix the electoral college is, how should I put this, a suboptimal solution? Also I like their list of disadvantages:
Disadvantages
Some county names are duplicated in new states.
Some local governments would experience a shift in state laws and procedures.
Like really, that is your complete list of disadvantages to your totally insane proposal with zero chance of even being remotely considered for implementation? Also listing "States could be redistricted after each census - just like House seats are distributed now" as an advantage is just hilarious.
At least that site is good for a laugh, and proves it isn't just rich people in Silicon Valley that have crazy ideas.
-edit- Yeah I realize this isn't a serious proposal, but it's still insane and hilarious.
Somehow I feel that redrawing all the state boundaries to fix the electoral college is, how should I put this, a suboptimal solution? Also I like their list of disadvantages:
Disadvantages
Some county names are duplicated in new states.
Some local governments would experience a shift in state laws and procedures.
Like really, that is your complete list of disadvantages to your totally insane proposal with zero chance of even being remotely considered for implementation? Also listing "States could be redistricted after each census - just like House seats are distributed now" as an advantage is just hilarious.
At least that site is good for a laugh, and proves it isn't just rich people in Silicon Valley that have crazy ideas.
-edit- Yeah I realize this isn't a serious proposal, but it's still insane and hilarious.
The main thing to take from it is how hilariously over-represented the Mountain West and Upper Plains are in the Senate and Electoral College. But there are other ways to fix those problems that you'd get support for before redrawing all the state lines.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
It's not really the converse of my argument. I'm not pro-farmer or pro-city. I'm pro-finding-a-long-term-solution. Rationing water to the cities isn't going to solve anything just as rationing to the farmers wont solve anything. You are still left with a state that doesn't have the water resources to meet it's own needs. We need to come up with a way to meet those needs, and simply cutting people off until the "need" fits the diminishing resource isn't an effective long-term solution.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
It's not really the converse of my argument. I'm not pro-farmer or pro-city. I'm pro-finding-a-long-term-solution. Rationing water to the cities isn't going to solve anything just as rationing to the farmers wont solve anything. You are still left with a state that doesn't have the water resources to meet it's own needs. We need to come up with a way to meet those needs, and simply cutting people off until the "need" fits the diminishing resource isn't an effective long-term solution.
I think Morat is more saying that the farmer's water use is unsustainable. That they've set up their farming operations with the expectation of free or heavily subsidized water, and as such are growing particularly thirsty crops. If the thought is that all water sources are actually drying up then the thing to do is get the hell out of California. I was under the impressions that is more that usage rates are too high for droughts, but fine during normal times.
So if there are other, less water intensive crops to grow, then that would solve the problem.
Otherwise you're going to need to build desalinization plants. And something to power them.
Aioua on
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
It's not really the converse of my argument. I'm not pro-farmer or pro-city. I'm pro-finding-a-long-term-solution. Rationing water to the cities isn't going to solve anything just as rationing to the farmers wont solve anything. You are still left with a state that doesn't have the water resources to meet it's own needs. We need to come up with a way to meet those needs, and simply cutting people off until the "need" fits the diminishing resource isn't an effective long-term solution.
I think Morat is more saying that the farmer's water use is unsustainable. That they've set up their farming operations with the expectation of free or heavily subsidized water, and as such are growing particularly thirsty crops. If the thought is that all water sources are actually drying up then the thing to do is get the hell out of California. I was under the impressions that is more that usage rates are too high for droughts, but fine during normal times.
So if there are other, less water intensive crops to grow, then that would solve the problem.
Otherwise you're going to need to build desalinization plants. And something to power them.
Exactly. You either gotta find more water or CA's agriculture needs to drastically change. Saying one of those is the solution is not "last-ditch, survivalist theory", it's just stating the obvious.
Rationing to the farmers will very much solve the issue. Maybe not the way you would like, but cutting back on water usage to a sustainable level is certainly a viable possibility.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
It's not really the converse of my argument. I'm not pro-farmer or pro-city. I'm pro-finding-a-long-term-solution. Rationing water to the cities isn't going to solve anything just as rationing to the farmers wont solve anything. You are still left with a state that doesn't have the water resources to meet it's own needs. We need to come up with a way to meet those needs, and simply cutting people off until the "need" fits the diminishing resource isn't an effective long-term solution.
I think Morat is more saying that the farmer's water use is unsustainable. That they've set up their farming operations with the expectation of free or heavily subsidized water, and as such are growing particularly thirsty crops. If the thought is that all water sources are actually drying up then the thing to do is get the hell out of California. I was under the impressions that is more that usage rates are too high for droughts, but fine during normal times.
So if there are other, less water intensive crops to grow, then that would solve the problem.
Otherwise you're going to need to build desalinization plants. And something to power them.
Yeah the argument is that agriculture doesn't need that amount of water unless you go and classify growing thirsty crop sin the middle of a desert as a need. Which is silly. California can just import whatever crops it wants like everybody else does.
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited July 2014
This removes an item from the black side to Ca's ledger and puts it in the red. If agri is reduced, CA will need to find another industry to make up for the deficiency.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Yeah, while the water shortage is a huge issue, targeting farmers is not the answer. The idea that most farmers aren't already making a good faith effort to use their water efficiently just smacks of othering to me. Over-watering a crop is a thing, just like under-watering, and they already pay per volume on the water they receive, with greater precision than many non-farmers, so the incentive to just use water willy nilly doesn't really exist for them. So, whatever the solution to this problem is, it's not rationing farmers and it's not splitting California into 6 new states with 6 new sets of water regulations and agreements to create.
Yeah, while the water shortage is a huge issue, targeting farmers is not the answer. The idea that most farmers aren't already making a good faith effort to use their water efficiently just smacks of othering to me. Over-watering a crop is a thing, just like under-watering, and they already pay per volume on the water they receive, with greater precision than many non-farmers, so the incentive to just use water willy nilly doesn't really exist for them. So, whatever the solution to this problem is, it's not rationing farmers and it's not splitting California into 6 new states with 6 new sets of water regulations and agreements to create.
The main issue is they haven't switched to more efficient methods, such as those used in Israel and other places where water isn't subsidized. When water is cheap, you LOSE money by adopting more efficient methods, as the payback period is too long.
So, you ration the farmers, and when the reservoir levels continue to fall you cut them off entirely, and when they continue after that you ration the suburbs, ect, ect.
Essentially what that solution is doing is drawing a circle around the people in California and saying that only the people within the circle have sustainable practices. When the water continues to dry up and climate change continues to produce more droughts you draw a smaller circle and say that only the people in the new one have sustainable practices. It doesn't fix the problem, it just repeatedly redefines what "sustainable" is.
Are people missing the part that there are vastly more water efficient crops the farmers could be growing instead? The proposed solution isn't to stop farming, it's to farm different.
So, you ration the farmers, and when the reservoir levels continue to fall you cut them off entirely, and when they continue after that you ration the suburbs, ect, ect.
Essentially what that solution is doing is drawing a circle around the people in California and saying that only the people within the circle have sustainable practices. When the water continues to dry up and climate change continues to produce more droughts you draw a smaller circle and say that only the people in the new one have sustainable practices. It doesn't fix the problem, it just repeatedly redefines what "sustainable" is.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
It's not really the converse of my argument. I'm not pro-farmer or pro-city. I'm pro-finding-a-long-term-solution. Rationing water to the cities isn't going to solve anything just as rationing to the farmers wont solve anything. You are still left with a state that doesn't have the water resources to meet it's own needs. We need to come up with a way to meet those needs, and simply cutting people off until the "need" fits the diminishing resource isn't an effective long-term solution.
I think Morat is more saying that the farmer's water use is unsustainable. That they've set up their farming operations with the expectation of free or heavily subsidized water, and as such are growing particularly thirsty crops. If the thought is that all water sources are actually drying up then the thing to do is get the hell out of California. I was under the impressions that is more that usage rates are too high for droughts, but fine during normal times.
So if there are other, less water intensive crops to grow, then that would solve the problem.
Otherwise you're going to need to build desalinization plants. And something to power them.
You can actually make use of solar power VERY effectively to run desalinization plants. Since water doesn't care when you make it or when you pump it up to the groundwater resevoirs, so desalinization plants are a great way to use an excess in your solar supply vs demand profile (which california is close to).
While I'm a little surprised to see how much of CA water goes into agriculture, I still think the per capita use in the cities is more important in the short term and immediately fixable. With changing practices in urban areas we could cut CA water use 5-10%. That is a huge change, and would be the difference between us being tolerant of a 4 year drought and tolerant of a 5 year drought. It's a lot quicker and easier for 'you' to stop flushing the toilet 10 times a day and taking 30 minute showers than it is for a farmer to switch to drip irrigation from flood irrigation. And comparatively flood irrigation of crops is more useful than 'your' 10 toilet flushes. You can literally get decreased water use from cities immediately for no capital outlay and with no consequences if people just stop treating water as if it isn't a valuable resource.
So, you ration the farmers, and when the reservoir levels continue to fall you cut them off entirely, and when they continue after that you ration the suburbs, ect, ect.
Essentially what that solution is doing is drawing a circle around the people in California and saying that only the people within the circle have sustainable practices. When the water continues to dry up and climate change continues to produce more droughts you draw a smaller circle and say that only the people in the new one have sustainable practices. It doesn't fix the problem, it just repeatedly redefines what "sustainable" is.
If the climate is changing then, yes, sustainable is constantly being redefined.
Are people missing the part that there are vastly more water efficient crops the farmers could be growing instead? The proposed solution isn't to stop farming, it's to farm different.
Sure, except the decision farmers make about which crops to plant isn't based on which is most efficient water wise, it's which crop is going to bring the greatest ROI. If switching to more efficient crops produces a 50% reduction in their water bill, great, but if the demand for the more efficient crop in the marketplace is such that their revenue drops by an even greater amount, then the marginal farmer isn't going to switch. Now, if you want to suggest ending price-supports for over-planted, extra-thirsty crops, that's something I think might help and something that would be more easily implemented by 1 California instead of 6. Although, in the end, that particular policy might be more controlled at the Federal level, in which case 6 or 1 California's doesn't matter.
So, you ration the farmers, and when the reservoir levels continue to fall you cut them off entirely, and when they continue after that you ration the suburbs, ect, ect.
Essentially what that solution is doing is drawing a circle around the people in California and saying that only the people within the circle have sustainable practices. When the water continues to dry up and climate change continues to produce more droughts you draw a smaller circle and say that only the people in the new one have sustainable practices. It doesn't fix the problem, it just repeatedly redefines what "sustainable" is.
If the climate is changing then, yes, sustainable is constantly being redefined.
Are people missing the part that there are vastly more water efficient crops the farmers could be growing instead? The proposed solution isn't to stop farming, it's to farm different.
That doesn't solve the problem.
Alright, let's just get this straight. The problem isn't California, it's the entire western region of the US that is running out of water. Ever hear of the Ogallala Aquifer? It's where the majority of groundwater from Texas to South Dakota comes from, and it's gone from an average depth of 200ft to 80ft. If we continue to just redefine what we consider "sustainable" and remove everything that doesn't fit in the current sustainability plan then everyone is going to feel it's effects. Here in the US and across the world.
It's survivalist thinking in that it cuts off whatever is the current biggest drain on resources and then declares that the problem is "solved". But the problem wasn't that farmers are using too much water or being impractical with the water, it's that the supply of water is disappearing. It doesn't solve the supply issue it just removes the areas where it isn't being supplied enough and then declares victory. We don't need survivalist thinking, we need "thriveist" thinking. We need to actually address the problem of new sources of water.
The question here, though, is are the water sources being used faster then they are refilling, or are they not refilling?
Honestly I've not heard that the various aquifers are straight-up failing, but that we're draining them faster then they naturally refill.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
So, you ration the farmers, and when the reservoir levels continue to fall you cut them off entirely, and when they continue after that you ration the suburbs, ect, ect.
Essentially what that solution is doing is drawing a circle around the people in California and saying that only the people within the circle have sustainable practices. When the water continues to dry up and climate change continues to produce more droughts you draw a smaller circle and say that only the people in the new one have sustainable practices. It doesn't fix the problem, it just repeatedly redefines what "sustainable" is.
If the climate is changing then, yes, sustainable is constantly being redefined.
Are people missing the part that there are vastly more water efficient crops the farmers could be growing instead? The proposed solution isn't to stop farming, it's to farm different.
That doesn't solve the problem.
Alright, let's just get this straight. The problem isn't California, it's the entire western region of the US that is running out of water. Ever hear of the Ogallala Aquifer? It's where the majority of groundwater from Texas to South Dakota comes from, and it's gone from an average depth of 200ft to 80ft. If we continue to just redefine what we consider "sustainable" and remove everything that doesn't fit in the current sustainability plan then everyone is going to feel it's effects. Here in the US and across the world.
It's survivalist thinking in that it cuts off whatever is the current biggest drain on resources and then declares that the problem is "solved". But the problem wasn't that farmers are using too much water or being impractical with the water, it's that the supply of water is disappearing. It doesn't solve the supply issue it just removes the areas where it isn't being supplied enough and then declares victory. We don't need survivalist thinking, we need "thriveist" thinking. We need to actually address the problem of new sources of water.
You aren't even coherent anymore. You have the strangest assumptions about what people are saying that have nothing to do with anything that's been posted in this thread. And are also just not getting alot of very basic definitions.
Look:
If the aquifer is constantly loosing water because of human over-use, then current practices are by definition unsustainable. That's what the word sustainable MEANS.
If the aquifer is loosing water because of the changing climate, then the level of use that can be defined as sustainable is constantly changing. (specifically, it's going down)
At a large scale, there's only two solutions to this. Use less water (ie - change your practices) or get ahold of more water (ie - change the environment). There's tons of ways to achieve this, directly or indirectly. But something will have to change. And considering the water usage breakdown in California, it's gonna have to be agriculture for the most part.
Sure, but short of saying: "You guys, you 50% of farmers in the Western United States (or whatever the number is), you use too much water, so stop farming and find something else to do." You aren't going to have the impact you are looking for. Whether that is direct, by forcing the farmers to change jobs, or indirect, by forcing them to adopt practices for which they cannot afford the initial capital investment. There is no arguing that agriculture is the largest consumer of water, but any long term fix is going to need to address the problem from all sides. Residential and Commercial usage, usage and sourcing, but maybe this needs a Goddamn Separate Thread of it's own, since it's no longer a "6 Californias" specific discussion.
Well, CA's other problem around water is that they used to take way more than their allotment of the Colorado river, as the other states in the agreement (CO, AZ, NV, UT, WY and NM), used to be basically empty, so they didn't use their allotment. Now, all those states use their full allotment, so CA has access to less water. Couple that with CA residents basically never wanting to spend the money to fund their water infrastructure properly nor ration water, and it's a bad situation.
Sure, but short of saying: "You guys, you 50% of farmers in the Western United States (or whatever the number is), you use too much water, so stop farming and find something else to do." You aren't going to have the impact you are looking for. Whether that is direct, by forcing the farmers to change jobs, or indirect, by forcing them to adopt practices for which they cannot afford the initial capital investment. There is no arguing that agriculture is the largest consumer of water, but any long term fix is going to need to address the problem from all sides. Residential and Commercial usage, usage and sourcing, but maybe this needs a Goddamn Separate Thread of it's own, since it's no longer a "6 Californias" specific discussion.
It can't be addressed from the other side to any large degree. They don't use enough water.
No matter how much you whinge about how hard it would be, the water table DOES NOT CARE.
The question here, though, is are the water sources being used faster then they are refilling, or are they not refilling?
Honestly I've not heard that the various aquifers are straight-up failing, but that we're draining them faster then they naturally refill.
The assumptions are quite out there, but they back up each factoid in that article with articles from major news sources.
The question here, though, is are the water sources being used faster then they are refilling, or are they not refilling?
Honestly I've not heard that the various aquifers are straight-up failing, but that we're draining them faster then they naturally refill.
Little of column a, little of column b. I can't find the website at the moment, but I believe I read that once an aquifer is emptied, the ground settles and the capacity is reduced. In the case of California, the floor of the valley is now lower than it used to be.
But once more, don't have a source right now, so take with salt.
The only real solution is for CA to meter all the water(not just Ag or Urban) and jack the rate up until you hit an equilibrium.
If what amounts to 80% of the worlds almond crop is that big of a drain, people will either saddle up to paying $30/lb for almonds, or the farmers will stop growing them.*
I mean more efficiency is great and all. But to blame the farmers for growing Almonds at 1.1 gallons per, when someone in LA then goes out and buys a bag containing 1000 gallons of this super precious resource for $7.
*The problem with this is that their is a ton of capital invested in growing almonds. So once those trees die because they aren't watered, even if the drought ends they can't just be turned back on.
The second problem is that, were you to ever see a 'true price' level for a lot of foods Americans eat. Well lets just hope poor people don't like meat(1/4 lb burger-2900 gallons) or dairy(1 gallon of milk-2000 gallons of water). You are basically going to head back to the olden days of meat for the lord, veggies and maybe some offal & trotters for the peasants. Which may help with the whole obesity thing actually...
The whole, "we're going to tell farmers that have to stop growing certain crops," is incredibly short-sighted and lacks perspective off the overall picture. We have this thing we like to call an economy. Many people's livelihood are dependent on the current agriculture in CA, even if they aren't directly employed by a farm there. It's easy to say "just switch crops," except there are different demands in what crops people want and some of the more water efficient ones might not be profitable enough to keep some farms going, if they switch to them; especially, if that increase the total supply and further drives down the price those crops can be sold for. Finally, you're all missing that right now California is exporting food to other places because they grow that much, a major change in what they grow might not just mean that California has to find a place to import food from, it also means that those who import food from California will have to do the same, likely driving up prices on certain agricultural goods, which can have an overall negative impact on people already hurting.
I give zero fucks that it might be a trivial amount of water savings, to tell joe dumbfuck, "you can't wash your shitty ass car every week and when you do wash it, you have to take it too a car wash that makes the most efficient use of water possible because having you wash it on your driveway, with the hose, is incredibly inefficient. Nor do I care that Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks will get butthurt that he can't have a massive lawn of St. Augustine grass and that his precious country club's golf course is astroturf or some sort of ground cover that isn't water intensive. Those are incredibly wasteful practices and long term; especially, when we're talking tens of thousands of joe dumbfucks, and hundreds of Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks taking part, that's massive amounts of water being drained out of reservoirs and aquifers on a daily basis and that really adds up over time. It's easier to not draw that water than to hope that you get enough precipitation to offset such shitty, wasteful water usage and by telling them they can't, maybe that means your available water sources last for another year, allowing you to weather the current drought until it ends.
Then there is the issue that desalinization plants and the means to support them, costs money. Humans, are really bad about wanting things, but not wanting to pay for them. If you cut down on water usage, you cut down on the total price tag for keeping the infrastructure up to par to meet the current water needs and that makes continuing to fund it an easier sell. Plus, we all know that a fair chunk of joe dumbfucks and most of the Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks, will bitch about minorities wasting water and that they shouldn't have their money taken by taxes to fund the needed infrastructure. Once people are limited to primarily using water for agriculture (I'm not opposed to small gardens; especially, if they are ones geared towards growing food), bathing and drinking. Then it becomes really hard for people to make the argument about the "other" wasting precious water and it's even harder to oppose the infrastructure spending, when it's hard to bury the argument of "we need to do this so that the farms can continue producing food," with some shitty "no new taxes, to subsidize minorities" bullshit.
Now I can certainly agree that there are farmers who could find some ways to reduce water consumption, without changing crops. I can also agree that there are probably farmers who aren't making good use of their water rights, aka the ones that sell it to cities. Those issues are better addressed by actually solving them, as opposed to just telling them to grow different crops. The first group is still probably having water wasted and the second group is still making poor use of their water rights.
I'd also like to say, this isn't just an issue with California. It's and issue that extends well beyond California and splitting the state up won't solve any of those issues. Hell, I'd argue it would probably make some of them worse because a single state, particularly, one as liberal as CA could better crack down on shitty water wastage than six new states. Plus, one or two of those new states will probably go with the good old "fuck you, got mine" and "don't tell me what to do" shitty mindsets and make zero effort to fix the issue. Sure the federal government could shut the bs down, but right now, we have the "fuck you, got mines" ensuring that nothing happens.
The whole, "we're going to tell farmers that have to stop growing certain crops," is incredibly short-sighted and lacks perspective off the overall picture. We have this thing we like to call an economy. Many people's livelihood are dependent on the current agriculture in CA, even if they aren't directly employed by a farm there. It's easy to say "just switch crops," except there are different demands in what crops people want and some of the more water efficient ones might not be profitable enough to keep some farms going, if they switch to them; especially, if that increase the total supply and further drives down the price those crops can be sold for. Finally, you're all missing that right now California is exporting food to other places because they grow that much, a major change in what they grow might not just mean that California has to find a place to import food from, it also means that those who import food from California will have to do the same, likely driving up prices on certain agricultural goods, which can have an overall negative impact on people already hurting.
I give zero fucks that it might be a trivial amount of water savings, to tell joe dumbfuck, "you can't wash your shitty ass car every week and when you do wash it, you have to take it too a car wash that makes the most efficient use of water possible because having you wash it on your driveway, with the hose, is incredibly inefficient. Nor do I care that Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks will get butthurt that he can't have a massive lawn of St. Augustine grass and that his precious country club's golf course is astroturf or some sort of ground cover that isn't water intensive. Those are incredibly wasteful practices and long term; especially, when we're talking tens of thousands of joe dumbfucks, and hundreds of Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks taking part, that's massive amounts of water being drained out of reservoirs and aquifers on a daily basis and that really adds up over time. It's easier to not draw that water than to hope that you get enough precipitation to offset such shitty, wasteful water usage and by telling them they can't, maybe that means your available water sources last for another year, allowing you to weather the current drought until it ends.
Then there is the issue that desalinization plants and the means to support them, costs money. Humans, are really bad about wanting things, but not wanting to pay for them. If you cut down on water usage, you cut down on the total price tag for keeping the infrastructure up to par to meet the current water needs and that makes continuing to fund it an easier sell. Plus, we all know that a fair chunk of joe dumbfucks and most of the Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks, will bitch about minorities wasting water and that they shouldn't have their money taken by taxes to fund the needed infrastructure. Once people are limited to primarily using water for agriculture (I'm not opposed to small gardens; especially, if they are ones geared towards growing food), bathing and drinking. Then it becomes really hard for people to make the argument about the "other" wasting precious water and it's even harder to oppose the infrastructure spending, when it's hard to bury the argument of "we need to do this so that the farms can continue producing food," with some shitty "no new taxes, to subsidize minorities" bullshit.
Now I can certainly agree that there are farmers who could find some ways to reduce water consumption, without changing crops. I can also agree that there are probably farmers who aren't making good use of their water rights, aka the ones that sell it to cities. Those issues are better addressed by actually solving them, as opposed to just telling them to grow different crops. The first group is still probably having water wasted and the second group is still making poor use of their water rights.
I'd also like to say, this isn't just an issue with California. It's and issue that extends well beyond California and splitting the state up won't solve any of those issues. Hell, I'd argue it would probably make some of them worse because a single state, particularly, one as liberal as CA could better crack down on shitty water wastage than six new states. Plus, one or two of those new states will probably go with the good old "fuck you, got mine" and "don't tell me what to do" shitty mindsets and make zero effort to fix the issue. Sure the federal government could shut the bs down, but right now, we have the "fuck you, got mines" ensuring that nothing happens.
Yet, if the farmers are using 80% of the water, and supplies of water are under that, then by definition the farmers must change what they're doing. Getting farmers to use 10% less water is pretty close in effect to getting the cities to cut usage in half. The easy gains come from the cities, but overall the farmers need to change
The whole, "we're going to tell farmers that have to stop growing certain crops," is incredibly short-sighted and lacks perspective off the overall picture. We have this thing we like to call an economy. Many people's livelihood are dependent on the current agriculture in CA, even if they aren't directly employed by a farm there. It's easy to say "just switch crops," except there are different demands in what crops people want and some of the more water efficient ones might not be profitable enough to keep some farms going, if they switch to them; especially, if that increase the total supply and further drives down the price those crops can be sold for. Finally, you're all missing that right now California is exporting food to other places because they grow that much, a major change in what they grow might not just mean that California has to find a place to import food from, it also means that those who import food from California will have to do the same, likely driving up prices on certain agricultural goods, which can have an overall negative impact on people already hurting.
I give zero fucks that it might be a trivial amount of water savings, to tell joe dumbfuck, "you can't wash your shitty ass car every week and when you do wash it, you have to take it too a car wash that makes the most efficient use of water possible because having you wash it on your driveway, with the hose, is incredibly inefficient. Nor do I care that Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks will get butthurt that he can't have a massive lawn of St. Augustine grass and that his precious country club's golf course is astroturf or some sort of ground cover that isn't water intensive. Those are incredibly wasteful practices and long term; especially, when we're talking tens of thousands of joe dumbfucks, and hundreds of Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks taking part, that's massive amounts of water being drained out of reservoirs and aquifers on a daily basis and that really adds up over time. It's easier to not draw that water than to hope that you get enough precipitation to offset such shitty, wasteful water usage and by telling them they can't, maybe that means your available water sources last for another year, allowing you to weather the current drought until it ends.
tl;dr: "I don't care if my proposed solution doesn't actually have any effect, as long as it suitably inconveniences people I don't like."
I really don't get the aversion to incentivizing farmers to grow less thirsty crops, especially when those crops are non-essential. Almonds are not exactly a staple food. Alfalfa is not a staple food unless you are a cow. If we grow fewer almonds and less alfalfa, we will not suffer specifically from the lack of almonds and alfalfa. If we're concerned about the economic ramifications of disincentivizing those crops, okay, let's work with that. Offer subsidies for growing non-wasteful crops.
Which isn't to say encouraging less wasteful behavior in the citizenry is a bad idea. It's a great idea! But you can't hang your fucking hat on that if (taking the claims in this thread at face value) the combined water usage of all non-agricultural areas amounts to only 20% of our water usage.
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Now I can certainly agree that there are farmers who could find some ways to reduce water consumption, without changing crops. I can also agree that there are probably farmers who aren't making good use of their water rights, aka the ones that sell it to cities. Those issues are better addressed by actually solving them, as opposed to just telling them to grow different crops. The first group is still probably having water wasted and the second group is still making poor use of their water rights.
As you said the easy gains are in the city. Much easier to pass ordinances that fine people for washing their cars with a hose, in the driveway. Much easier to tell Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks, that he has to pull up his multi-acre St. Augustine lawn and replace it with something less water intensive (fucker should be able to afford it anyways). Much easier to tell the gold courses they need to pull up all the water sucking grass and run with something less water intensive. Much easier to pass ordinances against private home pools (probably won't be popular, but I think that's an easy fix).
With farming it gets harder. Save for Uncle Ratfucker Money bucks and his country club, they do have some clout to stonewall stuff they don't like. Even once you get them on board that they should look into water savings, that's probably going to take both time and money. Maybe it comes down to changing how their irrigation setup works, but that isn't a quick fix, like not washing a car every weekend. I also suspect with farmers not making wise use of their water rights, that that may require dealing with some Byzantine legal BS labyrinth of paperwork.
Looking at it from a "we need to make sure that the water we're drawing from natural sources, and not from desalinization plants, is offset by precipitation." Every drop saved adds up. Doesn't matter if you get out of the drought, if you're still drawing 0.1% more than what is replaced because you'll never recover and will start out with even less water than you had, at the end of the last drought.
Edit: Also pretty sure California grows more than almonds and alfalfa. Exactly how much of that 80% of water use is made up of both of those crops combined? I can't help but feel that there is a little, "well if we grow less almonds and alfalfa, that mostly solve the issue." Hell, how much possible food production both indirectly (animal feed) and directly from alfalfa (alfalfa sprouts comes to mind here) and almonds can be offset by other crops.
Then there is the whole point that plants can be really fucking picky great, you found something that can grow in California's climate and uses less water. Now you want to plant there in the old almond farm (will ignore that it might not be the great carbon sink that trees are), only problem is that crop likes a much different soil pH than almonds, so unless you sink the money and time, into changing the soil pH there, that crop is a no go because it will not do well at all in the soil as is.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Okay, given you have insufficient water to continue to even just grow the existing crops, ignore the cities completely, I'm not sure what you're proposing to be done beyond "innovative thinking" (note, humanity's history has far more examples of survivalist thinking than anything else). Apparently we can't require them to use less water. You can't magic water from the ground. You can from the oceans, but that's expensive (much more than planting different fields) and wouldn't have any effect for several years at best
California could solve it's water crisis completely and have water to spare for the future through a combination of conservation, metering, and reclamation (not to mention storm water capture and desalinization).
California could solve it's water crisis completely and have water to spare for the future through a combination of conservation, metering, and reclamation (not to mention storm water capture and desalinization).
And while lacking citation, here's an article from earlier this year that posits that 43% of agriculture irrigation is done via a form of flood irrigation.
Yeah, direct democracy pretty much fucks over most solutions because people want stuff, but they don't want to pay for it. Also too many people want things now, now, now and many good solutions tend not to materialize gains immediately. The Southwest's water issues come down to requiring both money (either directly spending or possible not making as much during the transition) and time to solve.
Hell, with genetic engineering, could probably make some of those thirsty crops less thirsty, but in the case of something like almonds, it's going to take time for that super almond tree, that doesn't need as much water, to mature into something that can keep pace with it's thirstier cousins. Plus, that super almond is probably going to be more expensive than it's thirstier cousins, so when Bob the Farmer needs to replace some almond trees, he might not be too keen to shell out the extra money; especially, when he's thinking short term and there currently isn't a drought.
Yes, I'm in favor of metering. I'm in favor of using pricing schemes, if necessary, to provide financial incentives for people to implement ways to cut down on consumption. Don't care if farmers achieve that reduced water consumption by getting less water intensive varieties of what they are used to growing, fixing/upgrading their irrigation systems or diversifying what they grow (maybe cut back on the number of acres for alfalfa, for a few acres of something else or just go with having more fallow land than normal each growing season).
I think reclamation is a must. Even in areas that don't have drought issues. I'd rather see any water used in way that results in it going into the sewers or a septic system reprocessed into something usable reasonable quickly and efficiently because even if you aren't dealing with a water deficit. I see waste water sitting around being a very bad thing. It just kind of floors me that there isn't more water treatment in areas with limited water. I suspect some of that comes down to the "ick factor," but as I tell people that use that excuse for opposing water treatment, that essentially any water they've consumed ever, has been part of a waste product out of an organism at some point, guaranteed that is was many, many more than one.
A random sampling of ballot initiative signatures from all 58 counties found that just 66 percent were projected to be valid, and that it would fall more than 500,000 signatures short of the number needed to make the ballot.
e: Wait, fuck, I'm an idiot, and a friend of mine on facebook is an idiot. They posted the article, it said 2016 ballot, and I thought it was a July 2015 article, not 2014. NEVERMIND.
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I think you are underestimating the non agriculture use of water in California. Some cites (LA) are using 100s of gallons of extra water per person day compared to others. Even at a gallon per almond, that's a lot of almonds.
Edit - and honestly, if the drought doesn't stop we have to build desalinization plants. Hopefully this year or next we'll have good snowfall this winter thanks to an el nino.
No, you are vastly OVER-estimating the non-agricultural use of water in California. Agriculture is generally estimated to consume about 80% of California's water. Urban use is some part of the remaining 20%, along with industry and such. (though I believe urban is a large part of that 20%).
This isn't an urban issue. They don't use enough water for that to be the case.
http://fakeisthenewreal.org/reform/
I know nothing of the website as I found it via google search for a description of the image.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Disadvantages
Some county names are duplicated in new states.
Some local governments would experience a shift in state laws and procedures.
Like really, that is your complete list of disadvantages to your totally insane proposal with zero chance of even being remotely considered for implementation? Also listing "States could be redistricted after each census - just like House seats are distributed now" as an advantage is just hilarious.
At least that site is good for a laugh, and proves it isn't just rich people in Silicon Valley that have crazy ideas.
-edit- Yeah I realize this isn't a serious proposal, but it's still insane and hilarious.
The main thing to take from it is how hilariously over-represented the Mountain West and Upper Plains are in the Senate and Electoral College. But there are other ways to fix those problems that you'd get support for before redrawing all the state lines.
It's not really the converse of my argument. I'm not pro-farmer or pro-city. I'm pro-finding-a-long-term-solution. Rationing water to the cities isn't going to solve anything just as rationing to the farmers wont solve anything. You are still left with a state that doesn't have the water resources to meet it's own needs. We need to come up with a way to meet those needs, and simply cutting people off until the "need" fits the diminishing resource isn't an effective long-term solution.
I think Morat is more saying that the farmer's water use is unsustainable. That they've set up their farming operations with the expectation of free or heavily subsidized water, and as such are growing particularly thirsty crops. If the thought is that all water sources are actually drying up then the thing to do is get the hell out of California. I was under the impressions that is more that usage rates are too high for droughts, but fine during normal times.
So if there are other, less water intensive crops to grow, then that would solve the problem.
Otherwise you're going to need to build desalinization plants. And something to power them.
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Exactly. You either gotta find more water or CA's agriculture needs to drastically change. Saying one of those is the solution is not "last-ditch, survivalist theory", it's just stating the obvious.
Rationing to the farmers will very much solve the issue. Maybe not the way you would like, but cutting back on water usage to a sustainable level is certainly a viable possibility.
Yeah the argument is that agriculture doesn't need that amount of water unless you go and classify growing thirsty crop sin the middle of a desert as a need. Which is silly. California can just import whatever crops it wants like everybody else does.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
The main issue is they haven't switched to more efficient methods, such as those used in Israel and other places where water isn't subsidized. When water is cheap, you LOSE money by adopting more efficient methods, as the payback period is too long.
Essentially what that solution is doing is drawing a circle around the people in California and saying that only the people within the circle have sustainable practices. When the water continues to dry up and climate change continues to produce more droughts you draw a smaller circle and say that only the people in the new one have sustainable practices. It doesn't fix the problem, it just repeatedly redefines what "sustainable" is.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
You can actually make use of solar power VERY effectively to run desalinization plants. Since water doesn't care when you make it or when you pump it up to the groundwater resevoirs, so desalinization plants are a great way to use an excess in your solar supply vs demand profile (which california is close to).
While I'm a little surprised to see how much of CA water goes into agriculture, I still think the per capita use in the cities is more important in the short term and immediately fixable. With changing practices in urban areas we could cut CA water use 5-10%. That is a huge change, and would be the difference between us being tolerant of a 4 year drought and tolerant of a 5 year drought. It's a lot quicker and easier for 'you' to stop flushing the toilet 10 times a day and taking 30 minute showers than it is for a farmer to switch to drip irrigation from flood irrigation. And comparatively flood irrigation of crops is more useful than 'your' 10 toilet flushes. You can literally get decreased water use from cities immediately for no capital outlay and with no consequences if people just stop treating water as if it isn't a valuable resource.
If the climate is changing then, yes, sustainable is constantly being redefined.
That's what change involves.
Sure, except the decision farmers make about which crops to plant isn't based on which is most efficient water wise, it's which crop is going to bring the greatest ROI. If switching to more efficient crops produces a 50% reduction in their water bill, great, but if the demand for the more efficient crop in the marketplace is such that their revenue drops by an even greater amount, then the marginal farmer isn't going to switch. Now, if you want to suggest ending price-supports for over-planted, extra-thirsty crops, that's something I think might help and something that would be more easily implemented by 1 California instead of 6. Although, in the end, that particular policy might be more controlled at the Federal level, in which case 6 or 1 California's doesn't matter.
That doesn't solve the problem.
Alright, let's just get this straight. The problem isn't California, it's the entire western region of the US that is running out of water. Ever hear of the Ogallala Aquifer? It's where the majority of groundwater from Texas to South Dakota comes from, and it's gone from an average depth of 200ft to 80ft. If we continue to just redefine what we consider "sustainable" and remove everything that doesn't fit in the current sustainability plan then everyone is going to feel it's effects. Here in the US and across the world.
It's survivalist thinking in that it cuts off whatever is the current biggest drain on resources and then declares that the problem is "solved". But the problem wasn't that farmers are using too much water or being impractical with the water, it's that the supply of water is disappearing. It doesn't solve the supply issue it just removes the areas where it isn't being supplied enough and then declares victory. We don't need survivalist thinking, we need "thriveist" thinking. We need to actually address the problem of new sources of water.
The question here, though, is are the water sources being used faster then they are refilling, or are they not refilling?
Honestly I've not heard that the various aquifers are straight-up failing, but that we're draining them faster then they naturally refill.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
You aren't even coherent anymore. You have the strangest assumptions about what people are saying that have nothing to do with anything that's been posted in this thread. And are also just not getting alot of very basic definitions.
Look:
If the aquifer is constantly loosing water because of human over-use, then current practices are by definition unsustainable. That's what the word sustainable MEANS.
If the aquifer is loosing water because of the changing climate, then the level of use that can be defined as sustainable is constantly changing. (specifically, it's going down)
At a large scale, there's only two solutions to this. Use less water (ie - change your practices) or get ahold of more water (ie - change the environment). There's tons of ways to achieve this, directly or indirectly. But something will have to change. And considering the water usage breakdown in California, it's gonna have to be agriculture for the most part.
It can't be addressed from the other side to any large degree. They don't use enough water.
No matter how much you whinge about how hard it would be, the water table DOES NOT CARE.
The assumptions are quite out there, but they back up each factoid in that article with articles from major news sources.
Little of column a, little of column b. I can't find the website at the moment, but I believe I read that once an aquifer is emptied, the ground settles and the capacity is reduced. In the case of California, the floor of the valley is now lower than it used to be.
But once more, don't have a source right now, so take with salt.
If what amounts to 80% of the worlds almond crop is that big of a drain, people will either saddle up to paying $30/lb for almonds, or the farmers will stop growing them.*
I mean more efficiency is great and all. But to blame the farmers for growing Almonds at 1.1 gallons per, when someone in LA then goes out and buys a bag containing 1000 gallons of this super precious resource for $7.
*The problem with this is that their is a ton of capital invested in growing almonds. So once those trees die because they aren't watered, even if the drought ends they can't just be turned back on.
The second problem is that, were you to ever see a 'true price' level for a lot of foods Americans eat. Well lets just hope poor people don't like meat(1/4 lb burger-2900 gallons) or dairy(1 gallon of milk-2000 gallons of water). You are basically going to head back to the olden days of meat for the lord, veggies and maybe some offal & trotters for the peasants. Which may help with the whole obesity thing actually...
I give zero fucks that it might be a trivial amount of water savings, to tell joe dumbfuck, "you can't wash your shitty ass car every week and when you do wash it, you have to take it too a car wash that makes the most efficient use of water possible because having you wash it on your driveway, with the hose, is incredibly inefficient. Nor do I care that Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks will get butthurt that he can't have a massive lawn of St. Augustine grass and that his precious country club's golf course is astroturf or some sort of ground cover that isn't water intensive. Those are incredibly wasteful practices and long term; especially, when we're talking tens of thousands of joe dumbfucks, and hundreds of Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks taking part, that's massive amounts of water being drained out of reservoirs and aquifers on a daily basis and that really adds up over time. It's easier to not draw that water than to hope that you get enough precipitation to offset such shitty, wasteful water usage and by telling them they can't, maybe that means your available water sources last for another year, allowing you to weather the current drought until it ends.
Then there is the issue that desalinization plants and the means to support them, costs money. Humans, are really bad about wanting things, but not wanting to pay for them. If you cut down on water usage, you cut down on the total price tag for keeping the infrastructure up to par to meet the current water needs and that makes continuing to fund it an easier sell. Plus, we all know that a fair chunk of joe dumbfucks and most of the Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks, will bitch about minorities wasting water and that they shouldn't have their money taken by taxes to fund the needed infrastructure. Once people are limited to primarily using water for agriculture (I'm not opposed to small gardens; especially, if they are ones geared towards growing food), bathing and drinking. Then it becomes really hard for people to make the argument about the "other" wasting precious water and it's even harder to oppose the infrastructure spending, when it's hard to bury the argument of "we need to do this so that the farms can continue producing food," with some shitty "no new taxes, to subsidize minorities" bullshit.
Now I can certainly agree that there are farmers who could find some ways to reduce water consumption, without changing crops. I can also agree that there are probably farmers who aren't making good use of their water rights, aka the ones that sell it to cities. Those issues are better addressed by actually solving them, as opposed to just telling them to grow different crops. The first group is still probably having water wasted and the second group is still making poor use of their water rights.
I'd also like to say, this isn't just an issue with California. It's and issue that extends well beyond California and splitting the state up won't solve any of those issues. Hell, I'd argue it would probably make some of them worse because a single state, particularly, one as liberal as CA could better crack down on shitty water wastage than six new states. Plus, one or two of those new states will probably go with the good old "fuck you, got mine" and "don't tell me what to do" shitty mindsets and make zero effort to fix the issue. Sure the federal government could shut the bs down, but right now, we have the "fuck you, got mines" ensuring that nothing happens.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Yet, if the farmers are using 80% of the water, and supplies of water are under that, then by definition the farmers must change what they're doing. Getting farmers to use 10% less water is pretty close in effect to getting the cities to cut usage in half. The easy gains come from the cities, but overall the farmers need to change
tl;dr: "I don't care if my proposed solution doesn't actually have any effect, as long as it suitably inconveniences people I don't like."
I really don't get the aversion to incentivizing farmers to grow less thirsty crops, especially when those crops are non-essential. Almonds are not exactly a staple food. Alfalfa is not a staple food unless you are a cow. If we grow fewer almonds and less alfalfa, we will not suffer specifically from the lack of almonds and alfalfa. If we're concerned about the economic ramifications of disincentivizing those crops, okay, let's work with that. Offer subsidies for growing non-wasteful crops.
Which isn't to say encouraging less wasteful behavior in the citizenry is a bad idea. It's a great idea! But you can't hang your fucking hat on that if (taking the claims in this thread at face value) the combined water usage of all non-agricultural areas amounts to only 20% of our water usage.
As you said the easy gains are in the city. Much easier to pass ordinances that fine people for washing their cars with a hose, in the driveway. Much easier to tell Uncle Ratfucker Moneybucks, that he has to pull up his multi-acre St. Augustine lawn and replace it with something less water intensive (fucker should be able to afford it anyways). Much easier to tell the gold courses they need to pull up all the water sucking grass and run with something less water intensive. Much easier to pass ordinances against private home pools (probably won't be popular, but I think that's an easy fix).
With farming it gets harder. Save for Uncle Ratfucker Money bucks and his country club, they do have some clout to stonewall stuff they don't like. Even once you get them on board that they should look into water savings, that's probably going to take both time and money. Maybe it comes down to changing how their irrigation setup works, but that isn't a quick fix, like not washing a car every weekend. I also suspect with farmers not making wise use of their water rights, that that may require dealing with some Byzantine legal BS labyrinth of paperwork.
Looking at it from a "we need to make sure that the water we're drawing from natural sources, and not from desalinization plants, is offset by precipitation." Every drop saved adds up. Doesn't matter if you get out of the drought, if you're still drawing 0.1% more than what is replaced because you'll never recover and will start out with even less water than you had, at the end of the last drought.
Edit: Also pretty sure California grows more than almonds and alfalfa. Exactly how much of that 80% of water use is made up of both of those crops combined? I can't help but feel that there is a little, "well if we grow less almonds and alfalfa, that mostly solve the issue." Hell, how much possible food production both indirectly (animal feed) and directly from alfalfa (alfalfa sprouts comes to mind here) and almonds can be offset by other crops.
Then there is the whole point that plants can be really fucking picky great, you found something that can grow in California's climate and uses less water. Now you want to plant there in the old almond farm (will ignore that it might not be the great carbon sink that trees are), only problem is that crop likes a much different soil pH than almonds, so unless you sink the money and time, into changing the soil pH there, that crop is a no go because it will not do well at all in the soil as is.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Okay, given you have insufficient water to continue to even just grow the existing crops, ignore the cities completely, I'm not sure what you're proposing to be done beyond "innovative thinking" (note, humanity's history has far more examples of survivalist thinking than anything else). Apparently we can't require them to use less water. You can't magic water from the ground. You can from the oceans, but that's expensive (much more than planting different fields) and wouldn't have any effect for several years at best
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-10/california-has-potential-to-turn-water-deficit-to-surplus.html
So why don't we? The answer is, as always, California's broken political system. Specifically, we've direct-democracy'd ourselves into a hole.
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_314EHR.pdf
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
California's prop system is the perfect example of why everyone should be scared of / against pure direct democracy.
http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article4870.html
And while lacking citation, here's an article from earlier this year that posits that 43% of agriculture irrigation is done via a form of flood irrigation.
http://www.mullerranch.com/making_news/sacbee_drip_2_2014.html
Hell, with genetic engineering, could probably make some of those thirsty crops less thirsty, but in the case of something like almonds, it's going to take time for that super almond tree, that doesn't need as much water, to mature into something that can keep pace with it's thirstier cousins. Plus, that super almond is probably going to be more expensive than it's thirstier cousins, so when Bob the Farmer needs to replace some almond trees, he might not be too keen to shell out the extra money; especially, when he's thinking short term and there currently isn't a drought.
Yes, I'm in favor of metering. I'm in favor of using pricing schemes, if necessary, to provide financial incentives for people to implement ways to cut down on consumption. Don't care if farmers achieve that reduced water consumption by getting less water intensive varieties of what they are used to growing, fixing/upgrading their irrigation systems or diversifying what they grow (maybe cut back on the number of acres for alfalfa, for a few acres of something else or just go with having more fallow land than normal each growing season).
I think reclamation is a must. Even in areas that don't have drought issues. I'd rather see any water used in way that results in it going into the sewers or a septic system reprocessed into something usable reasonable quickly and efficiently because even if you aren't dealing with a water deficit. I see waste water sitting around being a very bad thing. It just kind of floors me that there isn't more water treatment in areas with limited water. I suspect some of that comes down to the "ick factor," but as I tell people that use that excuse for opposing water treatment, that essentially any water they've consumed ever, has been part of a waste product out of an organism at some point, guaranteed that is was many, many more than one.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.