Governor Jerry Brown officially admitted (in the form of a formal proclamation) that California is in a severe drought — possibly the worst in history. NO KIDDING! I am certainly no meteorologist but I could see this coming since last year. Why did he wait SO LONG to finally say something publicly about something that should be obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention? We should have been conserving water a year ago!
In a speech he gave this morning, Brown said, “The more water we use, the less water we have. The more water we save, the more water we have.” Wow! That is so deep Jerry! So, if I understand Gov. Brown, he thinks — by conserving water, we will have more water. What a concept!
My question is this. Why does our government always wait until we have a crisis to actually do something to fix it? Brown does not have the power to make it rain BUT, he and our elected representatives did have the power to make changes that caused the drought in the first place. Scientists have been warning us since forever that if we continue messing with our environment, Mother Nature will hit back.
I can already hear the naysayers now… “Climate change is a natural occurrence. It is not man-made. Droughts are normal.” And yes, I agree droughts are normal but we are now seeing them go to the extreme. Look at the extreme winter weather Back East and the Midwest.
We have been debating climate change, which used to be called “global warming” for decades and all we do is talk about it. If there are laws passed — it takes years before they go into effect. We still drive gas guzzlers. Nobody gets upset or thinks to maybe drive smaller, more gas efficient vehicles until the price of gas goes over $4.00. I’m betting the people whose homes and businesses were destroyed from Hurricane Sandy never thought about the consequences of our collective actions until they lost everything they own. We don’t get hurricanes in California but wildfires can destroy lives just as much.
My prediction is that not only will we have the worst drought in history, we will have some major fires to contend with. We will also see “water wars.” Or will we become a reality show … added to other shows like, Cupcake Wars or Storage Wars? Farmers need water to irrigate their fields. We need drinking water. Who will win that battle? And then there is the question of fracking. Fracking requires huge amounts of water and you can bet the oil companies aren’t about to back off to help Californians with their water problem. They are concerned with their bottom-line, not if little Susie can get a drink of water from her home faucet… that’s where Nestle comes in. They will be more than happy to sell their over-priced bottled water, to a thirsty state.
Will the endless debates over climate change continue? Will we continue to complain to our neighbors and social media about the skyrocketing price of food (it takes a lot of water to grow food and raise cattle) instead of taking a look at how we collectively, contributed to this mess?
If you think its warm outside now, just wait until summer…
Inge, I think many people prefer to deny climate change because its comfortable and comforting to think it will all just go away if we ignore it long enough. Why else would the GOP House leadership make David Schweikert , an outspoken skeptic of human-caused global warming, the head of the House’s environment sub-committee? Politics is about finding the most acceptable solutions to problems–not necessarily the best ones. Its also about blame. So, while we can rightly blame the Bush Administration for the dismal response to the Katrina disaster , or Obama for problems with responding to Sandy, how many of us questioned what humanity has done to make storms like that the norm rather than the freak exceptions?
The body politic has never been proactive. It took a Civil War to end the depravity of slavery. It took a world-wide depression to place some reasonable regulations on the financial community. I really don’t know what it would take to shock the majority of people into demanding action on the environment. For every recent natural disaster, there has been someone able to explain it away, and most people are, unfortunately, all too willing to believe that, simply because they can’t wrap their heads around the enormity of the climate calamity.
Sounds like a good reason to cut the state run monopoly on the water supply.
we have a huge reservoir of water right off our coastline. perhaps desalinate a little of it?
I suppose that you can make a sense for the government coming up with the best and least expensive technology for doing so without mandating obscene profits for an untrustworthy private company, so long as steps are taken to prevent what may be significant environmental damage.
In other words, your brief for desalination is not a brief for the Poseidon project in particular — which is what you intended it to be, right?
Is it better to restrict the water supply and mandating obscene profits for an untrustworthy public agency?
When it comes to profits generally, I’m anti-obscenity. I believe that they should be tasteful. Beyond that, I have little idea of what you’re talking about.
By the way, for those of you who say the above post in our “Recent Comments” list, “cook on DROUGHT!” not only lacks a comma, but is contrary to the official position of the Orange Juice Blog.
Poseidon is fine with me. Just someone please desalt the ocean- like they do all over the world.
since there seems to be some against desal, perhaps we could call it a seasalt factory whose byproduct is pure water?
Who here is “against desal,” deadwhitemale?
Do you need us to go over for the hundredth time all the reasons that POSEIDON sucks?
Were that at all true, would it dump its ‘product’ back in the ocean?
yes, Vern I do need you to go over it again. Little “soaky” told so many lies I quit reading half way through.
It’s the same thing that most of us do with our health. We wait until we have been diagnosed with a disorder or disease before finally doing something about it. Had we lived live preventing these things, they might never have occurred.
Where did the picture of the dead cattle come from? Are their deaths as a direct result of this drought?