Quasimodo wrote:No. The crisis is caused by the lack of precipitation. It has nothing to do with increased population.
honorentheos wrote:That's not entirely true. While climate change predictions show the southwest growing more and more at risk for long term droughts, population sizes and especially population behavior play a meaningful role in water security. California's unfortunate condition is a combination of all of these factors.
Nah, our crisis is due to drought. 80% of the water used in California is consumed by agriculture. The amount of land under irrigation in CA hasn't grown much in many years.
Any increase in urban and suburban populations is of little consequence to the water shortage problem. We just need more precipitation and it's not coming.
Drought is certainly the significant factor, but in some ways an inevitable one. It isn't the only factor, and water security isn't accomplished by praying for rain. Or shopping at Whole Foods and raising chickens on one's mini-ranch.
Arizona, where I live and also work on related issues in a very close way, has a similarly high agricultural demand for water. But when urban and suburban residents toss around the idea that water scarcity is a function of factors outside of the space they occupy in the equations, they do damage to the ability to make meaningful impacts to water security improvements. I'd heard recently here in Arizona a water manager discussing California's situation and claim that part of the issue in California was that larger percentages of surface water supplies are tied up by environmental protections than any other demand. I looked it up and it appeared to be true - environmental water demand was listed in the state water resources departments stats at around 50% of the water allocation for the state overall. The point the state data source made about this was that much of this water isn't available for repurposing. But even still, if it were and it becomes a choice of where to send that water and for what purposes, what would you choose to do with it? What is lost by that decision?
The point being, California has poor water security. Sources are tied up and there is little to no redundancies when traditional sources are hit by factors essentially beyond anyone's control. Demand in most counties has gone up over the last 20 years even as per capita use has often decreased. It's an issue involving a lot of factors, including the drought of course, but also population size and location, public behaviors, opportunities for behavior change, and the scale of said changes- all on top of bigger questions that are really going to come down to what Californians are willing to give up, and how well we understand what it means when those opportunities costs have been spent. When you're debating whether or not to replace your turf lawn with more xeric and native-adapted plant material, you're debating the right things in your own behavior model. But it's not particularly better than the person debating whether it matters if they drive a compact or hybrid versus an SUV, eat tons of beef or more sustainable foods, etc., etc., etc. when it comes to the climate change discussion.
Please don't "Nah" that crap again. That's damned ignorant.
