

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/one-key-to-wisdom-never-let-a-good-crisis-go-to-waste

======
recondite
This story has gotten a lot of play over the past year, but one aspect I
haven't really seen covered are what, if any, longer-term plans are being
proposed to mitigate future water supply issues for the state as a whole. This
article mentions efforts by a couple small municipalities to fill reservoirs
and provide incentives to conserve, and while this is the right spirit, is
orders of magnitude less than what the state needs.

The prevailing thought seems to be that the issue is eventually going to take
care of itself because (1) at some point this drought will end - which is
technically true, and (2) even if it continues on for a while longer market
forces will moderate consumption - also true; but both of these come at a very
high long-term expense for everybody in California via higher water bills,
taxes, and most importantly the permanent loss of agricultural production.
These efforts also do _nothing_ to address the next time a drought hits
California. The state expects to grow 40% in population by 2060 (not a unique
trend worldwide).

To me, it's a reflection of how fractured the state is: northern vs Bay area
vs southern, blue vs red counties, farmers vs everybody else, etc... And while
I will argue for distributed over centralized authority any day, the current
path the state is on seems insane. For example, San Diego is building its own
multi-billion dollar desalination plant:
[http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-
large...](http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-largest-
ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near)

certain other communities within California continue to expend 2-4x more water
than average - mostly to fill swimming pools and water golf courses - because
there is no incentive for either consumers or the water district to conserve
at all: [http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25090363/california-
dr...](http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25090363/california-drought-
water-use-varies-widely-around-state)

and just a couple years ago the state voted to approve construction of an
obvious 11-digit pork barrel project, which ironic to my original point, would
connect northern and southern California (and Las Vegas, really...)

But the point remains, for the supposed "8th largest economy in the world"
there is very little in my mind that holds the state together other than
tradition. As an anecdote, I used to live in Michigan where our monthly water
bill was ~$100/month, and now where I live in the California high desert, I
pay only $20 per month more. That's only 20% more coming from a state that is
literally surrounded by fresh water, to an arid/desert land which primarily
gets its water from mountain runoff and other states. This just doesn't seem
right to me.

I guess the potential glimmer in all this, is at some point, it will become
economically feasible to ferry icebergs from Antarctica into Long Beach
harbor. I've always thought that would be an awesome sight to see.

