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The problem is (I think) that people get (intentionally) told that there won't be enough water, air, land, fuel, etc, and everyone from real estate investors to the cap n trade profiteers exacerbates this to their own profit.
I agree.
Quote:
... Lots of folks want to live in places where there is simply not enough available water access to support them. ...
Consider the Mohave desert, where they see less than 13 inches of water/year. The region includes Las Vegas and Death Valley.
Over 850,000 people live in area of the Mojave attached to the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area> This includes Palmdale and Lancaster (Antelope Valley), Victorville, Apple Valley and Hesperia (Victor Valley).
In 1970 the Western region of the Mohave did not have enough water to support anything but a few ghost towns with populations of less than 10 each.
'Apple Valley' was one residence with a 300 acre apple orchard planted in 1905 the trees mostly died in the 1940s, the last remaining tree died from drought in 1986.
Shady developers and crooked zoning / planning officials have allowed the "Inland Empire metropolitan area" to grow in an area that can not support a human population into the 14th largest population in the nation.
Enough water to support maybe a 1,000 people tops, now has nearly a million people living there.
Water is flooding the upper Midwest and West from Montana to Missouri and all the way down the Mississippi. When water is pouring out of reservoirs at 130,000 cfs (over 1 million gallons per second) to keep it from pouring over the top of dams along the Missouri River I'm really not worried about my 1941 toilet's 5 gallon flush being a waste of water.
When golf courses are forced to stop watering weeks/months before residential areas are forced to limit usage and when irrigation to grow crops or fill residential lake communities in the desert is ended, I'll take those who promote saving water seriously. Until then, not so much. Why should I go out and buy a "green" toilet when T. Boone Pickens is draining the Ogallala Aquifer so he can sell water to the City of Houston?
Water is flooding the upper Midwest and West from Montana to Missouri and all the way down the Mississippi. When water is pouring out of reservoirs at 130,000 cfs (over 1 million gallons per second) to keep it from pouring over the top of dams along the Missouri River I'm really not worried about my 1941 toilet's 5 gallon flush being a waste of water.
When golf courses are forced to stop watering weeks/months before residential areas are forced to limit usage and when irrigation to grow crops or fill residential lake communities in the desert is ended, I'll take those who promote saving water seriously.
You just have to remember that the idea of 'conservation' has more than one purpose. It's not always about being "green," or 'conservation' in a broader sense. Sometimes people just need to do it because of the unique environment they might live in - for example, people who choose to live "off the grid," but this also very much applies to people who choose to live in RV/motorhomes that like traveling the country, or people who might choose to live in dry and desert areas of the southwest (I have no idea why the southwest appeals to people - but to each their own).
While an off-grid resident might have ready access to water if they live in a good location, sometimes they don't live in the optimal location (though it may be fairly optimal property in other regards). When their off-grid property doesn't have the best water access, they have to work within the parameters of how they have their system set-up. They might have a cistern that collects water, and they might have 200, 500, 1,500... or even 2,000 gallons (as cisterns come in many sizes) of it before the tanks need to be refilled via various means .... but you still have to use the water somewhat judiciously when you are living that kind of off-grid lifestyle.
MOD: I don't know where to put this thread, because the subject matter is really no longer debatable. Hope this is OK.
I found this article, which is yet another study on our impending water crisis. Granted a lot of us will be gone by the 2070s, but this is a fascinating study on the progression of where we will be in another few decades.
Farmers used to be my hero. Now they are just agrarian factories where "food" fits into a narrow window of requirements. Its also water hogging.
1. Must mature all at once for ideal mechanical harvesting(ergo good bye pole bean, hello bush bean).
2. Must ship well.
3. Must store well.
4. Must have chemical resistance.
5. Must be available year round.
6. Best if fast growing annual crop
7. Best if grown privately. Bye bye field of hopniss, hello potato bug farm.
8. Best if not grown where lawns should be.
9. Best if nothing else will eat it.
Bye bye tender strawberries. Buy buy the hard, under ripe, subsidized and over watered from the fumigated fields.
Bye Bye space efficient and water conserving pole beans with consistent yield.
Bye bye soft skinned summer squash like Round de Nice.
Bye Bye water efficient native grass, efficient buffalo forage, and the Ogallala aquifer. We hardly knew ya. Hello geometric beauty of irrigation circles. http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/ima...03_img0398.jpg
Bye Bye Salmon fisheries. Hello evaporating fields of cattle fodder.
If it tastes bad with no nutritional value but ships, it can make it to the shelf. If it is a salubrious cornucopia, but does not fit in the check list, its not food.
hoe it
mow it
gas it
spray it
pack it
ship it
stack it
shelve it
Water is flooding the upper Midwest and West from Montana to Missouri and all the way down the Mississippi. When water is pouring out of reservoirs at 130,000 cfs (over 1 million gallons per second) to keep it from pouring over the top of dams along the Missouri River I'm really not worried about my 1941 toilet's 5 gallon flush being a waste of water.
When golf courses are forced to stop watering weeks/months before residential areas are forced to limit usage and when irrigation to grow crops or fill residential lake communities in the desert is ended, I'll take those who promote saving water seriously. Until then, not so much. Why should I go out and buy a "green" toilet when T. Boone Pickens is draining the Ogallala Aquifer so he can sell water to the City of Houston?
Where do you get your information that T. Boone is draining the Ogallala to sell water to Houston? This is the first I've heard of this; will you provide some links or citations to back that up? T. Boone does a lot of things, but I hadn't heard this one.
It is well known that the Ogallala is being drawn for crop irrigation, and it's being the rate of withdrawal far outweighs the recharge.
I don't buy the idea that we are running out but we can certainly manage it better. Using potable water to flush toilets and water lawns while laundry waste goes down the sewer doesn't make sense.
Where do you get your information that T. Boone is draining the Ogallala to sell water to Houston? This is the first I've heard of this; will you provide some links or citations to back that up? T. Boone does a lot of things, but I hadn't heard this one.
It is well known that the Ogallala is being drawn for crop irrigation, and it's being the rate of withdrawal far outweighs the recharge.
A good book on it is Cadillac Desert. Its not that we don't have enough; its that its a mismanaged scam with the worst kind of political favoritism. Fortunes were lost and made by diverting water. Hydroelectric subsidized completely inefficient irrigation projects that whimsically created millionaires with water "rights". Tax payers were robbed. Some of the best salmon fisheries in the world(then considered cat food) were ruined to irrigate cattle fodder. We could have nearly had salmon on every table but now we subsidize water and corn for nutritionally imbalanced beef. What a joke water is in the Western US.
Where do you get your information that T. Boone is draining the Ogallala to sell water to Houston? This is the first I've heard of this; will you provide some links or citations to back that up? T. Boone does a lot of things, but I hadn't heard this one.
It is well known that the Ogallala is being drawn for crop irrigation, and it's being the rate of withdrawal far outweighs the recharge.
There are few honest big water projects. While they can certainly be useful in theory, the water usually flows towards money. Bribe a politician to bring it to your valley or even just get inside information about where it will go so you can buy up the land. Its all happened and will again.
I don't buy the idea that we are running out but we can certainly manage it better. Using potable water to flush toilets and water lawns while laundry waste goes down the sewer doesn't make sense.
It depends a great deal on who the 'we' are.
If you are one homeowner in a desert that never had enough water to support more than 1,000 people, and your desert is now home to a million people; then your 'we' does not have enough water.
If 'we' is worldwide, then there is plenty water for everyone.
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