The joke provided some relief from the resentment felt by farmers and ranchers who believed that Californians were taking more than their fair share of Colorado\u2019s water. But although they believed they would prosper with more water, the Coloradans got by, partially by grumbling and joking.<\/p>\n
The situation is no longer funny. The western states have experienced droughts of varying severity for a decade or more, and now California, the biggest water user of them all, has plunged into the deepest drought in its recorded history. The media abounds with reports of the drought\u2019s severity. There is so little water flowing from the usual sources \u2013 winter rainfall and the Sierra snowpack \u2013 that farmers in the vast Central Valley are letting fields go fallow and depleting aquifers to water their remaining crops and livestock. (Once depleted, the aquifers collapse and cannot be refilled.) Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency.<\/p>\n
Less reported are three crucial aspects of developing crisis:<\/p>\n
It is connected to global warming and could be part a long-term (and long-predicted) climate pattern.<\/p>\n
Beginning just four years ago, the drought worsened quite rapidly in terms of our ability to respond to it.<\/p>\n
Its potential effects will reach far beyond the borders of California and the economic discomfort of having to pay a little more for produce.<\/p>\n
Setting aside the global-warming connection for the moment \u2013 while it\u2019s certain enough, the explanation is somewhat complex \u2013 it appears that the western U.S. drought, which began in Texas 15 years ago, is part of a long-term climate pattern. It\u2019s prudent to expect California to remain dry for at least several more years.<\/p>\n
The drought\u2019s unpredictable future makes adapting to this \u201cnew normal\u201d well nigh impossible. What should California do? Build a bunch of dams? Where is the money going to come from, and what if it doesn\u2019t rain and the dams don\u2019t fill up? Build desalinization plants? Again, an expensive solution that wouldn\u2019t produce nearly as much water as is needed.<\/p>\n
Steal water from elsewhere, as California has done in the past? Sorry, there ain\u2019t no more water to steal anywhere in the West \u2013 even Oregon and Washington are experiencing drought.<\/p>\n
Conservation measures, which we\u2019ll explore in forthcoming columns, could help \u2013 for a while. But Southern California\u2019s economy is dependent upon squandering our most precious resource on water-intensive crops such as cotton, and on thirsty livestock. (Agriculture consumes 80 percent of the state\u2019s water.) More water is wasted on unessential but profitable golf courses, swimming pools, lawns and other frivolities alien to an arid region. This is not readily changed. Can we anticipate a reverse Dust Bowl with Californians migrating to squalid camps near your ecological house?<\/p>\n
Philip S. Wenz, who grew up in Durango and Boulder, now lives in Corvallis, Ore., where he teaches and writes about environmental issues.<\/p>\n
Reach him via email through his website, www.your-ecological-house.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
joke provided some relief from the resentment felt by farmers and ranchers who believed that Californians were taking more than their fair share of Colorado\u2019s water. But although they believed they would prosper with more water, the Coloradans got by, partially by grumbling and joking. The situation is no longer funny. The western states […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6400],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-121648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-write-angles"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121648"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=121648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}