Sure, let's ignore the simple solution - stop consuming so much water - and jump to a high-tech, unknown impact, expensive, complex, expensive solution. What could go wrong?
There are no solutions. Those who can will use what they can, those who can't will be left high and dry. This is expected when supply rapidly declines when demand remains constant or increases over time. The watershed will change faster than human behavior and policy will adapt.
There was already not enough water for the rights distributed in the 1922 Colorado River Compact [1]:
> The delegates figured allocations on hydrologic data from the Reclamation Bureau that indicated annual Colorado River flow at Lees Ferry to be 16.4 maf. In truth, however, Colorado River flow is a good deal less than that. Data from three centuries indicate an average flow of about 13.5 maf. Also, flows are highly erratic, ranging from 4.4 maf to over 22 maf.
> Built into the compact then, between what it promised and what the river was prepared to deliver, was water scarcity. There is not enough water to go around. As a result, water scarcity is the root of most of the disputes and problems subsequently arising over the compact and the Law of the River. It is a situation that links past and present Colorado River issues and will be an abiding concern in the future.
EDIT: You personally can make the choice to not live somewhere that will eventually face water scarcity [2].
There are solutions, but they are not simple. You could relocate the main users, like agriculture and industrial users, to areas that are not as arid. This would also cause some migration of individuals. I mean, that is the driver of the scarcity - building cities in the desert.
My apologies. "The solutions are untenable and no amount of realistic effort would enable their implementation." would've been a more accurate statement.
It's hard to call something untenable if the alternative is failed agriculture, unsustainable industry, and people being rationed water. The federal government could eminent domain water rights in the region and exert controls that would force out / buy out the largest users and influence population migrations.
It might not be palatable, but it will look better the worse things get.
Dumping energy into desalination (and water transport) to continue farming in the desert will only increase our massive global warming problems. Again a bad, risky solution.
> solar panels aren't going to have a massive impact on that
Solar panel production, like all industrial activity, is pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, not to mention other pollutants - from mining, factories, transport.
Besides, we need to replace all fossil fuel energy generation as quickly as possible with renewable energy generation. Adding any extra energy consumption makes this vital goal more remote.
Perhaps once 100% of energy is produced from renewable sources with 0 carbon emissions, we could think about starting to grow energy consumption again. Before that, thinking about huge new industries like this is completely irresponsible.
While austerity as a solution to monetary crises is completely counter-productive and a non-solution, it is unfortunately mandatory to avert the worse effects of the climate crisis. We have run out of time entirely, unfortunately, ignoring and hiding this crisis for the past 50 years. Stagnating and even reducing consumption is the only possible response today that can prevent the worse effects of global warming.
It is interesting how there are no people willing to save capitalism but there is an endless quantity of people trying to keep 20th century capitalism alive just a tiny bit longer.
Some of them are. Like we could stop making how green your lawn is into some kind of class marker.
The first step would be defanging whatever legal machinery HOA's use to ensure that you keep up with the Joneses re: how much water you can afford to waste.
Large federal grants/subsidies to stimulate farming in the Northern states, coupled with a progressive/tiered taxes on using more than [edit] xx million gallons of water in places like California and Colorado?
...I could see how the residents of those latter states would not be too happy with that solution, though. But it's not like the Federal Government isn't already constantly picking favorites for subsidies (see ethanol, oil, etc.).
Why punish individuals for their water consumption? That's not exactly the low hanging fruit, the vast majority of water in California is used for farming.
I wasn't suggesting taxing individuals but large-scale farming. That's why I said x thousand gallons, though I guess I ought to have said xx million gallons. Edited.
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I read the thousand gallons combined with the following 'won't make residents too happy' and assumed you were thinking of individuals.
They are "simple", but hard to implement. You stop farming and in arid areas (and also stop high water consumption industries in those same areas) - simple. Also simple to achieve: either tax industrial water usage, or outright ration water for industrial use. Hard to do - people don't want to move, local food shortages may happen, people hate taxes and price hikes etc.
With the proposed implementation, its merely a concept and not a solution. As they say, the devil is in the details. The n-order impacts of such a systemic change would not be simple. So as a concept, it's simple. As a solution, it's complex.
For example, many people will fight the industrial and agricultural water use tax because their jobs depend on it. It would force people out of that area when those jobs dry up, just as the mandatory changes would.
There is no shortage of fresh water in the US. The water is simply not near where the farms are because we're unbelievably irresponsible with where we do farming.
All of those things are likely to increase our global warming issues, as they are highly energy consuming in several ways.
If we want any semblance of current society to keep chugging along 50-100 years from now, we need to reduce our production of almost everything, energy most of all. There is simply no other solution to stop catastrophic global warming.
I have to say it's vanishingly rare to see someone else advocate for net reduction in energy usage. In so many similar discussions it seems to be as much a taboo as topics like population control or not being able to freely buy tat products from china.
But it seems one way or the other these shifts are inevitable, either by choice or it left unaddressed the other way as a natural consequence and with much greater suffering. Same with water use in arid areas, it's either restricted today or ultimately gone tomorrow.
I guess the approach of burying our heads in the sand can be at least assured of an increasing sand supply to support it.
Energy consumption is not a problem, provided it comes from the sun. The sun is going to burn and blast the earth with energy, whether we harness it or not.
Harnessing the sun's energy and applying it towards water desalination and distribution would allow us to grow all sort of plants (including trees) in areas that would otherwise be unable to sustain plant growth.
Plants are composed largely of carbon that is extracted from the air, so the more plants you can grow, the closer we get to solving global warming.
> Energy consumption is not a problem, provided it comes from the sun. The sun is going to burn and blast the earth with energy, whether we harness it or not.
Harnessing solar energy is not free - you still need to build solar panels or other kinds of solar plants. Producing these requires metals that need to be mined, forged and transported. Solar energy only works for half the day, and is only plentiful part of the year.
Not to mention, today we need to decommission all fossil fuels in the world and replace them with renewables, also covering the energy needs of emerging countries. So while in some distant future of 100% renewables we could contemplate desalination, we can't spare any energy today towards new industries.
Even so, it is unlikely that we could replace all of our current energy consumption with renewables, given the huge problems with variability, in the foreseeable future.
