> “We are facing the growing reality that water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry and cities are no longer stable due to climate change,” Trujillo said.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. See Figure 2 (page 10) [1]. This is a decades-long trend of outflows increasing based on estimates of inflows that were unrealistic from a particularly wet period.
In some ways this is just like the mass shooting problem: people look around for all sorts of reasons that aren't the obvious, which is the easy access to firearms. Here too people look around for any reason but the obvious: agriculture is using too much water.
Agriculture is simply going to have to transition to using less water-intensive crops. We're still "exporting water" to China in the form of alfalfa [2] in addition to other water intensive crops like almonds.
We don't need desalination. We don't need cities to cut back on water. agriculture will have to take the hit on this one.
[1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...