CA: Gov. Brown orders mandatory water restrictions (25% reduction statewide)

[Simfan34]

Great political cartoon about the situation.

Except totally inaccurate and small minded.

[Ebsy]

Yeah, agriculture should take up much more of the cartoon.

[Simfan34]

And it's not like they need the water anyway, because who needs food? Or are we- gasp- supposed to care about farmers, the rural bumpkins? Apparently not, because it's the fault of "Big Ag" and not little Ag, since everyone knows Big Ag is just so much more wasteful and expensive than the good organic fair trade local artisanal growers.

Oh and fracking wasting so much water, 70 million gallons of it! It's not like there are solar plants that consume several times more water than the entire fracking industry.

In no way do the facts at hand contradict some people's forced-vegetarian, pro-depopulation, high-cost energy biases! Because that would be absurd.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Oh and fracking wasting so much water, 70 million gallons of it! It's not like there are solar plants that consume several times more water than the entire fracking industry.

The plant should've been dry cooled to save water, sure. But what do you suggest, that California stop generating electricity?

PS: The average 500MW coal plant uses 12 million gallons of water per hour.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Water_consumption_from_coal_plants

[Simfan34]

So the cartoon is even more inaccurate. Huh. Well guess we have to shut off the electricity too.

[Replicator]

Such a "free" state over there on the left. I mean really who the hell has ever needed water? Why not cut it off completely?

[Stockdale for Veep]

Random but, Cali will have like 20 electoral votes in 50 years.

[Replicator]

Following the ways of middle east dictators. Way to go Jerry Hussein Brown! No water for his subjects. Revolution anyone?

[Simfan34]

Following the ways of middle east dictators. Way to go Jerry Hussein Brown! No water for his subjects. Revolution anyone?

There isn't enough water.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just for information's sake, almonds were California's second highest valued ag commodity for 2013 at $5.8 billion. Only milk, at $7.6 billion, was more lucrative.

And California actually produces a majority (in most years an overwhelming majority) of the world's almonds. The wholesale price of almonds is rocketing, incidentally.

[Simfan34]

Well the progressive solution must be to ban almonds, then.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why not just ban all agriculture in the state? Problem solved!

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Soylent Water is the obvious solution

[Simfan34]

Why not just ban all agriculture in the state? Problem solved!

Exactly the kind of forward-thinking solutions we need!

Soylent Water is the obvious solution

Even better! People are, after all both an inefficient use of resources and harmful to the environment.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Why not just ban all agriculture in the state? Problem solved!

Exactly the kind of forward-thinking solutions we need! Preserve the environment and increase efficiency- no more of that wasteful meat, especially!

Tbf, would a decreased amount of meat be such a big ask? Especially as meat substitutes are getting much better nowadays...

[Simfan34]

Why not just ban all agriculture in the state? Problem solved!

Exactly the kind of forward-thinking solutions we need! Preserve the environment and increase efficiency- no more of that wasteful meat, especially!

Tbf, would a decreased amount of meat be such a big ask? Especially as meat substitutes are getting much better nowadays...

Yes, yes it would. This sort of "vegetarianism is an ecological necessity" thinking is what I was trying to get at in the first place. It is completely unnecessary.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not particularly (current rates of meat consumption are historically abnormal after all), though it would require lifestyle changes and that's not easy to induce. It would certainly be useful to make a distinction between 'reduction of meat consumption' and 'forcible vegetarianism'...

But I don't think we should lose sight of the simple and very inconient fact that, agriculture schmagriculture, California (and the entire South West actually) is overpopulated and that not only is it overpopulated but (and actually more importantly) its population largely lives lifestyles that are... um... more appropriate to temperate climates. And I don't just mean lawn sprinklers.

[Simfan34]

Well current income levels are also historically abnormal, unless you're measuring meat consumption by some other metric than consumption per capita or the like. And people, generally speaking, like meat; meat consumption goes up with income.

I would hesitate to call the region, or indeed most regions in general, "overpopulated". Carrying capacity of course is determined not just by the quality of the land and climate but is also a factor of human inputs- and I'd say California has tied itself into a position where it essentially has imposed an artificially low carrying capacity relative to what is realistically feasible (and even desirable) with present technical levels. In other words, this could be avoided if not for California (and American, to an extent) politics.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that building all these houses in the desert is an absolutely daft idea.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I would of course be a massive hhypocrite if I wanted mandatory vegetarianism. But I hardly feel the current Western expectation to have meat every single day is very sustainable - especially with the meats chosen. I'm a still a bio student at the end of the day :/

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Random but, Cali will have like 20 electoral votes in 50 years.

This drought has totally hurt population growth in the bay area. Houses in San Francisco are dirt cheap.

[Simfan34]

Well then these "grown meats" may very well prove the be the next great workaround. Or we can treat it like GMOs and and attempt to prevent it from being adopted, in which case, yes, we will hit a wall.   We can elect to continue to increase the amount of food we able to produce and feed many more mouths than we already can, or we can make self-fulfilling prophecies about overpopulation and prevent anything from being done, and it is far more California's "style" to do the latter.

I'd also caution against proclaiming certain places "good" or "bad" places for human settlement. I mean, yes, Las Vegas is probably not a good idea. But in the long run- in terms of centuries- regional environmental conditions can be highly variable. Part of my point in saying this is in response to people going around saying the drought is a result of- or somehow meaningfully connected to- human-created climate change. Sometimes I wonder if people have forgotten that the climate is perfectly capable of changing on its own and has for, well, forever. But my main point is that it has been established that California, like other places, can see and has seen significant and sudden changes in its local environment and climate; the time when most of interior California was turned into a lake for two months in 1862 is a rather good example of this. (The disappearance of Lake Cahuilla in the Salton Sink ~400 years ago being another.)

I suppose when you throw in earthquakes and all that you could say that maintaining present levels of human settlement in California is more trouble than it's worth, but, again, in the long run one can make the case for more or less every part of the planet, particularly coastal regions. I doubt the "sensible" thing to do is to abandon such regions or to start treating urban areas like temporary settlements, but rather trying to work around whatever problems we can expect and, yes, minimise human impact on the climate (where that is desirable- I daresay we would like to prevent another Ice Age if that were to happen), while being conscious that the climate will change all the same on its accord and in it will often not be in ways we like.

So, in short, the solution to this drought and recurring droughts in California is not to declare that we need to abandon this industry or that sector, or that we shouldn't live in the state, or such. The solution lies in technical measures to mitigate these events, and those manmade factors that have a deleterious effect on the the climate or exacerbate adverse conditions.

EDIT: This is a useful chart-


http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-09

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Once it becomes more cost-effective than farming, most meat (or at least the cheaper stuff, like what's used in dog food and Slim Jims) will probably be replaced with grown meat if that technology progresses beyond its current state.

State-built desalination plants are another solution, though thanks to their cost and building time they're not a solution for the immediate crisis.

[Simfan34]

Once it becomes more cost-effective than farming, most meat (or at least the cheaper stuff, like what's used in dog food and Slim Jims) will probably be replaced with grown meat if that technology progresses beyond its current state.

State-built desalination plants are another solution, though thanks to their cost and building time they're not a solution for the immediate crisis.

Desalination plants, especially using nuclear power, are definitely a potential solution. Why they would need to be state-owned is beyond me. Either way, like I said, California's political culture will ensure it never happens any time soon.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Jfern has a green avatar because this is what "progressive" governors do.  They sacrifice Californians for the greater good.  Just like Jfern wants to do to poor people the world over...sacrifice their long lives for the greater good!  He uses eco friendly plastikware made from oranges so they can just eat the plate when he's done eating his super vegan organic eco friendly salad.

This sounds very familiar (if you know the origin of the dinner plate in French mythology)

Who needs food if you can eat the ecoreligisists wisdom off his plate?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yes, sacrificing a few coal mining jobs to the cost of vast reams of people in the developing world is clearly extremely hypocritical of greens...