There is no excuse to grow almonds in this drought to export them worldwide. And sending alfafa to China for their dairy in boxes. California has lost the plot long time ago.
Taking up as much land as possible is the point, and the water usage is secondary to that. It’s a mechanism to curtail population growth and overlaps with the comically inadequate housing supply, the troubles building transit (e.g. the fragmented mess of systems in the Bay Area, the HSR boondoggle), the freeway revolts, etc.
See also: ranching, areas now considered “conserved” (for whom?) despite being clear-cut once already, all the vineyards in Napa/Sonoma, cannabis in Mendo/Humboldt. Anything but housing.
It takes a lot for liveable cities. Mostly natural resources that aren’t renewable.
We are not food sustainable nor do we have a small food footprint. We need more trees and grassland to sequester carbon.
Lots of land doesn’t mean it’s all habitable. There is a reason the tropics are the most populated. Most of earth is not friendly to humans and are better suited to support environment and habitat and climate. It is futile imagination that makes us think that we have an abundance of resources.
In fact..everything runs on fossil fuels. Even food is fossil fuel turned into calories.
Population at half of today’s level is still above carrying a capacity of earth. I am a big proponent of E.O.Wilson’s Half Earth where half the planet must be returned to nature ti be rewilded and habitat must be restored.
This isn’t to say that procreation must be penalized. We need human beings to keeP our species from going extinct. What we need is an environment that nurtures all species. We rely on other species and habitat as we are a super apex predator and need them for our survival.
It’s overpopulation that is endangering our survival. The solution is simple. Women don’t want to be mothers because they are called birthing persons these days. Give women back their power.
This planet was formed by wise women… maiden, mother and crone held the power as life givers. Give it back to us. Women will nourish the species and the planet back to health. First we need to examine the reasons for over population that is unsustainable.
Start with getting rid of men and religious heads dictating what women can and should do with their bodies. Every woman has maternal instincts. No woman wants her body to be exploited by men. One of these instincts win. Right now, the latter is winning. Our species will perish. Unless women seize back the power over their own bodies.
Fun research game: whenever a politician or other self-styled luminary parrots this tired meme, look up how many children they have :)
Does that lend credence to his views?
Or are you arguing that any sort of hypocrisy is enough to reject a point?
When an anti-smoking luminary like Wayne McLaren - one of the "Marlboro Man" who died of died of smoking-related diseases - tells you that smoking is unhealthy, does his history of smoking make him a hypocrite, so you can ignore his advice?
Well, I don’t entirely have an explanation, just an observation. Coming up with an explanation any deeper than “random chance arrangement of related issues” would require speculating about other people’s intent, something I consider to be a complete waste of time as intent is fundamentally unknowable. The outcome is what matters, not the intent, so I’m fine with not knowing.
What I mean to say is that these types of discussions rarely achieve anything because we’re picking away at a single issue (in this case water shortage) which is conceptually interlocked with several other issues such that no progress can be made on any one component.
It’s a pattern that repeats all over the place once you know to look for it, but let’s stick with the example from this sub-thread: there is a water shortage, in part because of inefficient land use for crops, because that land doesn’t have the transportation or other infrastructure to be economically viable as anything else, because building infrastructure is very expensive or even legislatively impossible, because Environment™, because there is a water shortage (among many other things).
They’re interlocked such that none of them would be an issue if they weren’t all an issue. It’s a Hermetic Seal in the classical sense (not as in “air-tight”[0]). Does that make any sense? Not asking you to agree with me, just that you’re right that it is difficult to explain :)
California ag brings jobs and income that adds 350 billion to the state’s economy. That’s not trivial.
Having said that..putting up housing will lead to even more water shortages. People take up more water than trees and plants.
Water should be conserved and aquifers replenished.
Why should we have a limitless influx of population to California. Shouldn’t the number of people be in synch with available resources?
Which brings up the question..who can live here? Who can afford the resources of course. If everyone wants to live in the Bay Area because they want to and not because they can afford to..of course, there will be a resources crunch.
Also I’m fine with all these.
Agricultural water use is something like 4x urban water use in California. There just needs to be less of it, and exporting heavy water using crops needs to be carefully considered.
So you can have a big non-native lawn but it's going to cost you. Personally, I'm completely fine with that. Outright prohibition seems unnecessary.
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