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It seems that the general public truly believes that Big Brother is going to take care of them. No worries about water because the government will figure it out and take care of their water needs. Big Brother will make sure there is always water coming out of the wall whenever the faucet is turned.
Yeah, pretty much that's how it works unless you have a well.
It seems that the general public truly believes that Big Brother is going to take care of them. No worries about water because the government will figure it out and take care of their water needs. Big Brother will make sure there is always water coming out of the wall whenever the faucet is turned.
It's a combination of that along with the mentality of "I only have 30-40 years left, it will be someone else's issue."
Yeah, pretty much that's how it works unless you have a well.
And it's hardly just water. It's electricity, it's road maintenance, it's waste disposal, it's emergency and law enforcement coverage. And in a way the resident of a city is a customer who has a contract with those providers for that service provision that's either paid for with taxes or direct fees (as in the case of utilities).
It's a form of sophisticated social cooperation and kind of the foundation of modernity that people don't have to take care of those things on their own. The systems involved are so complex and large in scale that it requires skilled workers and experts to deal with them.
And it's hardly just water. It's electricity, it's road maintenance, it's waste disposal, it's emergency and law enforcement coverage. And in a way the resident of a city is a customer who has a contract with those providers for that service provision that's either paid for with taxes or direct fees (as in the case of utilities).
It's a form of sophisticated social cooperation and kind of the foundation of modernity that people don't have to take care of those things on their own. The systems involved are so complex and large in scale that it requires skilled workers and experts to deal with them.
True, but water is kinda the most basic need of all of those. If we go all Mad Max, people gonna be fighting for water before those other "luxuries".
Correct; people assume that it'll be there. And why not?
Water is required for human life, but the actual quantity that's required for civilization is really quite low in the grand scheme of things. Actual in-home water usage isn't high: roughly 200 gallons per day per household in metro Las Vegas. The average flow of the Colorado River alone could sustain 75M households at that rate -- over half the US population.
Prices would have to be unrealistically higher to dissuade population growth. For a family that doesn't irrigate outdoors, the spread in monthly water bills from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt is absolutely negligible. In 2010, a monthly water bill for a family in Las Vegas cost $1 more than in Chicago. San Diego had much pricier water ($16 more each month), but that was just 0.5% of a median family's budget.
And consider that San Diego already gets much of its water from high-cost desalination, so its water rates are pretty much as high as they get. At such prices, it makes a lot of sense to do desalination, water recycling (Las Vegas recycles 99% of indoor water use), extreme water conservation measures (like those that have cut metro Las Vegas' water use substantially despite population growth), diverting water from irrigation and agriculture (80% of Colorado River water!), or shipping water from far away.
Heavy industrial clusters formed around bodies of water like the Great Lakes and the Mississippi/Missouri and Ohio river systems because availability of large quantities of water was one of the main requirements when choosing a place to build a plant. Services and new technologies don't have this requirement, so job creation is no longer tied to water availability at industrial quantities.
Correct. The Great Lakes cities don't exist because the population needed that much water, but rather ports and factories needed water -- and technology didn't exist to clean and recycle that water.
Yeah, pretty much that's how it works unless you have a well.
It doesn't matter what the social contract with the government is. If there is no water, then no one will be getting any water. But people move to low water areas because they believe there will always be water. Maybe there will be water, maybe there won't, but they don't consider the issue when making moving plans.
Electricity seems to be curtailed due to water shortage before drinking water, but there are certainly places where water is already being rationed.
Correct; people assume that it'll be there. And why not?
Water is required for human life, but the actual quantity that's required for civilization is really quite low in the grand scheme of things. Actual in-home water usage isn't high: roughly 200 gallons per day per household in metro Las Vegas. The average flow of the Colorado River alone could sustain 75M households at that rate -- over half the US population.
.
But how much water is used to do what they do to earn their lifestyle of 200 gallons/day in household also need to be taken into consideration.
A place like LV is mostly tourism. I wonder how much those mega resort/casinos, restaurants, and entertainment use and how much was needed to build and maintain them. Plus all the other items like Cars, road maintenance/construction. Even residential construction need to be taken into consideration.
And just because the Colorado River can sustain half the US population's homes, does not mean we should push the river to its brink. The surrounding nature, flora/fauna also needs water.
The majority of people don't know where water comes from, beyond that it comes out of the wall when you turn the faucet handle. If they move to a new area and there are faucets in the new house, well then, there is water.
There are more people who don't know where water comes from than there are people who don't know where food comes from before it hits the supermarket.
And then there are people, for example in California, who don't know where electricity comes from and think it will always be there whenever the light switch is flipped to the on position.
Guilty on all counts and never lost any sleep over it.
And if for some reason the water and electricity shuts down for some time, well I've got plenty of vodka to keep me warm and in a lovely, liquid haze.
It seems that the general public truly believes that Big Brother is going to take care of them. No worries about water because the government will figure it out and take care of their water needs. Big Brother will make sure there is always water coming out of the wall whenever the faucet is turned.
Water issues are made up.
The only places that have water issues (like California, Flint, whatever) are only due to dysfunctional governance that can't sort out basic water infrastructure. With current water management technology we can make it available in pretty much any place on Earth. Even Israel is a net drinking water exporter now, and the country is pretty much an extremely densely populated Arizona.
If California wanted to sort out their water problems, just spending a few billion to cover the agricultural irrigation canals to prevent evaporation and building a few desal plants on the coast would fix most of their water issues for decades. Instead of actually upgrading infrastructure, they prefer rationing like degrowth hippies.
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