Federal lawmakers need to get over the history of water rights here. The system was built on assumptions that just don't hold (more water was apportioned than ever flows).
You can give each state an amount and let them figure it out, or take all existing rights and re allocate them federally.
But it needs to happen, and urgently.
"But people will lose their income!" - Thats a symptom of requiring these people to work so wastefully to survive. UBI and other safety nets reduce the need to do this specific work for profit.
"But my luxuries will be more expensive!" - No, your luxuries are just being priced at what they cost, and the burden of the environmental damage is no longer hidden from you
"Big government bad!" - I get it, I'm an anarchist. But when you have to protect a massive river, it's clear we cannot rely on all the individuals to do the right thing.
Also, UBI is often the cheapest and most efficient way to prop people out of poverty and (surprised?) to support their ambitions in education, starting business etc.
UBI has long-term challenges in that organizations will try everything they can to siphon off the money ("rent seeking") until they succeed. UBI needs to deal with this reality to succeed even in the medium term.
I've also never seen anyone address the high chance that post UBI the #1 issue for every politician will become "I will raise the UBI" and if they don't their opposition will. How will we deal with an ever increasing UBI and where will that every increasing source of money come from?
I think the solution is to both problems is that you "de-dollarize" major parts of the economy.
Instead of UBI as a bag of dollars, which landlords and merchants will immediately seek to plunder, you deliver highly-subsidized food, shelter, and rich public services. This is much harder to capture, and also has less of a ratchet factor.
Consider, for example, a universal health care component. The interest in more services and coverage wanes once it reaches a level of "good enough for most people." There may be some niche voters pulled in by "we'll also cover leeches", but most people will find those arguments uncompelling.
In the worst case, benefits do escalate, and you end up with more and more economic activity under government control, either as a direct UBI delivery system, or through ever growing tax rates to finance the subsidized programs. Which in and of itself may not be so bad. I know the entrpeneurship/free markets/self-directed mindset is very big in this community, but if the goal is maximizing quality-of-life metrics, this might be a viable way to deliver it. Ideally, we're all healthy, securely housed, and well fed, and our cultural-economic question becomes "how much of a discretionary hobby budget is $job_title worth?"
I don't get it; why would it be _more_ of a problem than with current tax & benefits systems? Politicians can already make the "increase $benefit"/"decrease $tax" their #1 policy.
But they can play a constant shell game with those, distracting you with this one while backtracking on this other one. UBI, IMO, would unify these various systems and eliminate the distractions that allow them to make these promises while not really keeping them.
If you think this will force politicians to keep their promises, as opposed to breaking them in broad daylight, you need to pay more attention to politics.
UBI making shell games like that harder is a good thing if you ask me.
Land Value Tax is probably the best way, the LTV can be tied to rent, so that if your rent is lower than the average in your area then your LTV overall goes down, etc. LVT can also go up based on how much is NEEDED to ensure everybody can afford a roof, no matter which part of the country they live in, and it should be more focused I think on just giving a set amount based on rent costs in your area, because the costs of living vary considerably, but people born/raised in SF shouldn't be forced to move to detroit just because it's cheaper when all their friends/family live back in SF.
People need to get over the ... but but X got more than me.... if you're worried about that then move to SF and you'll get as much as they get, because it all goes to landlords anyways.
Also much bigger restrictions on housing is needed with an airbnb or hospitality tax for any short-term rentals. Something that makes it almost worth just converting to a long-term instead.
The fact that subsidies provided to improve affordability of rents generally increases those rent costs is long-recognised. Winston Churchill in 1906:
Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!
Providing a subsidy sounds appealing to economically-naive voters and is appealing to economically-sophisticated rentiers. Such policies are highly politically tractable (they have broad support) but economically nonsensical (they aggravate rather than solve the underlying problem).
Economically, the two dynamics in constant tension are the Iron Law of Wages (wages fall to, or below, subsistence level), and the Law of Rent (rents rise to consume all surplus value).
The solution is to address both:
- A UBI provides an income floor which serves as a credible BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement) for any individual, whether or not part of the work force. An employer must offer terms at least as attractive as leisure (or alternative, potentially noneconomic activity) to attract new hires.
- A tax on rents, with the classic case being a land tax, returns surplus value to the public sphere and motivates holders of rent-generating assets to apply those to their greatest economic value, rather than letting them sit idle. (I'd extend the rents past the traditional land, but it's a useful illustrative case.)
Both prongs can be extended. Government might step in as, say, both employer and housing supplier of last resort, as well as providing credits to businesses which are truly socially-beneficial but economically nonviable (the classic definition of a public good: education, healthcare, emergency services, child and elder care, etc.) permitting these to function under a regime of both UBI and rents taxes.
1) There's always the political incentive to raise it. More people benefit than are harmed, thus it will bring votes even as it crushes the economy.
2) It's a trap. You'll end up with the lower segment of the population not having useful job skills. If for whatever reason you have to scale back/eliminate UBI you have a bunch of people who are effectively non-workers.
I used to support it but I've come to realize it's not a solution.
There's also the approach of a negative income tax, but to be at a useful level this would push a form of graft--fake jobs with kickbacks. (I'll hire you to sit in the office for $5/hr. You pay me $8/hr under the table from the tax rebate you're getting.)
I also dislike approaches like universal health care--from looking at the nations that have implemented it it has a major fox-guarding-the-henhouse problem: the same people decide what the standards are and spend the money to meet the standards. Oops, the route to getting votes is to lower the standards as that gets you more votes from low taxes than loses from people lacking treatment, especially if their doctors never tell them of the problem. (You're not likely to miss option X if your doctor doesn't tell you about it in the first place.)
Something I would like to see is to modify the ACA towards lower copays and a much lower *monthly* out of pocket max (perhaps tied to last year's AGI), then give everyone a subsidy equal to the cheapest plan they qualify for with a forced-placement system to that plan if you don't pick one. And I would like to put a time limit on the wait for service--for a routine matter they have say 30 days to provide service (first available appointment with the proper type of doctor) or they have to cover out of network as if it was in network--and once that's been triggered you can keep that doc regardless. The clock starts on the day the referral is made, or the service requested if referrals are not required.
There isn’t enough data to make that claim with any confidence yet.
It could just easily be the start of a spiral into an Argentina style socialist nightmare. The ability to vote for the party offering you a raise may be too dangerous.
There’s no real way to know, because it’s never been tried at enough scale, or real enough, to have any data one way or the other.
My guy, I've spent a decade reading up on that word. You want to talk Bookchin, Kroptkin, or Öcalan I'm available any time.
Respect to my anarchist comrades who are all or nothing, but I recognize the current system we live in, and I'm not going to throw away the useful tools before replacing them.
"I don't know what the comment to you was insinuating"
Obviously that anarchism means, being opposed to all government activity, regulation and rules, so he cannot call him an anarchist if he wants rules for a river. But the thing with anarchism is, that there is not really a authorative definition accepted and in use ..
anarchy (n.)
1530s, "absence of government," from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), abstract noun from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + arkhos "leader" (see archon).
The joke was, that anarchists in general are not a big fan of authorative things, so you can cite all the definitions you want - there will be still lots of anarchists who will oppose that and have their own definition. And yes, they are contradictive, as for example some anarchists negate all authorithy all the time (at least in theory), while some are fine with voluntarily authority, with a grey area into unvoluntarily authority.
(In my opinion, there is allmost no anarchist opposed to all authority - they might say so, but only because they negate the existence of informal hierachies and do not consider collectivism (theft) as a shape of authority for instance. Lots of hypocrisy going on there, but there are self aware and righteous folks among them)
Some people oppose all 'hierarchies', and say that is anarchism, but it is clear those are different words, and good luck getting rid of hierarchies without mass genocide, unless that is the real purpose.
"good luck getting rid of hierarchies without mass genocide, unless that is the real purpose"
The idea of the peaceful anarchism like gandhi represented is, to convince people to just stop following unjust orders. No need for genocide this way and he showed, that this can work sometimes.
The problem I see rather with the natural developing of informal hierachies in group dynamics. In other words, there will be leaders, even if they say everyone is equal.
I disagree with anarchists as much as the next guy, but a quick google gets a bunch of results that contradict your definitions. It seems that anarchism is, at best, very rarely defined in the way you provided.
Language evolves, but whenever people misunderstand each other by using the same word differently, it is perfectly fine to defer to the original meaning to avoid confusion. Especially, when no agreement is reached otherwise; Same applies to literally every other dispute, like marriage, property, labour, music, etc.
Whomsoever originally wrote/performed the music, gets to name the song and tag their name to it.
Whomever gets married first, gets dibs on wedding night.
Whomever does the work, gets the spoils.
etc.
"it is perfectly fine to defer to the original meaning to avoid confusion"
Well, I kind of tried that method for some time, but for some reasons I was not able to avoid confusion. Maybe because people care more about what a word means to them today and not what it meant 2000 years ago?
This is not, by any stretch, what modern anarchists would use as a definition.
Try instead, "a society free from unjust hierarchies". Most anarchists are comfortable with the idea of democracy, elections, and delegation of decision making. As long as it's consensual and democratic. Think of like, "hey, we need a treasurer to manage the finances".
Anarchism is not a unified idea. Anarcho syndicalism is different from Anarcho communism is different from Anarcho socialism.
"Most anarchists are comfortable with the idea of democracy, elections, and delegation of decision making. As long as it's consensual and democratic"
Most anarchists I met, not so much. Till the extreme point of "anarchists don't vote". Not even in a small group. There is a consensus or there is no decision.
I like the idea of doing things in a consensus. But only one person in a bad mood can then block everything. But when you remove that person, it is not really a democratic consensus anymore, but majority rule .. which is fine by me, but is probably not "pure anarchism" anymore.
I've met those types of anarchists. They get nothing done in the name of ideological purity. They'll still be getting nothing done two centuries from now.
I think incrementalism is a dead end too - at some point we need to make some hard cuts away from current systems, but it's self defeating to not acknowledge the material reality in front of us.
"we are working with a federation composed of 40 other anarchist groups. We elect a delegate and delegate small decisions to them, and they can be removed easily by the group."
"We have a safety officer on the factory floor who has the power to stop the work of others if there's a concern. They can be replaced easily"
"A teacher removing students who are disruptive to learning, but finding them alternative learning models."
An unjust hierarchy is when one person has power over another for no reason and whose power is self reinforcing or permanent. (A wealthy capitalist has more power, and gains power faster than a factory worker.)
Here's an analogy: let's say you work on cars and you've got a decent set of tools. You have a friend who has an excellent set and a whole shop. You can imagine yourself running with your ideal set. But the first step isn't "throw out all your tools and get a $20 Walmart box of assorted tools."
I can imagine a society built on mutual aid, and I practice that everywhere I can. But I have access to tools today. I can vote, I can use my voice to influence the government. What's my alternative, given the reality of today? Convert everyone asking the Colorado river to council communists before the river dries up?
My tool box isn't perfect, but it has some good tools in it. Many of them I'd ideally get rid of and replace, but I'm not going to ignore the tools I have until I replace them with better ones.
Sounds like you don't know many anarchists? Most of the anarchists I know are focused on:
Building mutual aid networks locally, first and foremost. We help us, we protect us. Think food, clothing, and shelter for anyone in need.
Advocate for harm reduction. Given there are a lot of systemic problems that will take years to unwind, it's important to offset those harms, even if it's not your ultimate goal. I vote. It takes me ten minutes, it reduces the harm by electing progressive politicians who might be able to lower the power of capital. That doesn't make me not an anarchist. I can hold an ideal and also recognize reality simultaneously.
Finally, anarchists educate. They are focused on teaching that anarchism isn't "the purge", it's a system built on the idea that every human deserves respect. We have the means to care for everyone and still enjoy some luxuries.
The definition I could find of anarchism as a political philosophy is:
“Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessarily limited to, governments, nation states, and capitalism”
You sound like you’re describing being a good neighbor. Which is good.
But I don’t see how it has any bearing on being an anarchist.
And encouraging the feds to step in to fix interstate water rights sounds very pragmatic, but the opposite of that political philosophy. Unless you’d expect it to weaken their power.
Market socialism and market communism exist. I think they are bad ideologies, but they exist.
Don't confuse ideals with immediate needs. My ideals, and what I'm willing to do today in the name of harm reduction aren't always aligned.
It's called "making compromises" and "using your judgement". A blindly dogmatic adherence to ones own idealism is a recipe for all talk but no material improvements.
So then what's with the insistence (and multiple reminders) of self-labelling as "anarchist"? Why not pragmatist, or harm-reducer, or just not labelling or categorizing yourself at all?
Most people I know who have these beliefs - anarchism, communism - don’t believe a sudden big-bang is how a transition to their l preferred system of government would work, and are pragmatic in moving towards it without upending society in the process.
Hell look at Russia’s “shock therapy” transition to capitalism, we are seeing the very direct consequences of that to this day.
The legal framework is the intersection of eminent domain and Congress's constitutional power to regulate interstate disputes and commerce. Compared to just about everything else the federal government does, this may be the most within its legal powers.
Yes of course congress is a mess and intervention will have major consequences, but the alternative seems to be everyone stands around watching the water dry up.
Sounds like poorly informed policies are the problem here - those water use grants that we now know permit more to be taken out of the river than the river produces would need to be revisited. It doesn’t sound like they’re implying more government is needed when fixing the cause of the river and reservoir’s shrinking. Rather, they’ve suggested UBI as a means to help take care of those whose livelihood might be lost by plans to fix the water usage.
> How much history class did you sleep through exactly?
My guy, no clue why you doubt it. We aren't getting rid of government in the next two years, but the government we have could address this in that time frame. Fuck you for telling me my beliefs.
Use the toolbox you have while you build the better one, don't just try to build everything from scratch.
I'd love to see the reasoning where the California government, rather than prohibitive energy cost, is why we don't have privately bootstrapped desalination at a scale to replace the Colorado river.
>>I get it, I'm an anarchist.
> Doubtful
There's pragmatic anarchism - the belief in the concepts that some facets of anarchy is good : i.e. less reliance on a central govt and hierarchies, perhaps instead some system where 90% of your tax money has to be spent w/in 100 miles of your home, the rest can be fought over between the State+Federal. Make states more like EU countries, etc. Instead of full socialism - just make companies either switch to co-ops or make the 'board' be made up of at least x% average (non-management-level) workers and give every worker at least (some) voting powers, and make labor unions practically a given.
Companies could create mutual aid programs that benefit their local residents who are their customers as well as employees. Universal healthcare for example could come from just being loyal to worker-owned businesses above corporate companies.
>> Government is the problem here
We have government regardless of if it works in our best interest or not (protecting water, ubi, healthcare). I'm an anarchist too, albeit pragmatic, with a focus on syndicalism, but we have to work in the framework we're given and that's capitalistic country, so the only way we can fix this is govt intervention or community enforced interventions.
Ideally to me THIS is what the federal govt SHOULD be about and ONLY this : interstate matters, foreign affairs, and military (though I think each STATE should have their own military that they 'loan' to the feds). I'm with Jefferson on the idea that we should be more loyal to our local neighborhood, then our state and only then the federal.
We definitely can use more regulation for companies that don't have some social benefit designation, but I'm not sure how to reconcile that specifically with anarchism except going all in on co-ops because a company where all the workers are on the board, are less likely to vote Yay on dumping forever chemicals in the water and poisoning their own water sources.
The problem is corporations are treated like humans without any of the moral costs and punishments. Corporations should be able to be 'executed'.
> Human consumption of freshwater is now approaching or surpassing the rate at which water sources are being naturally replenished in many regions, creating water shortage risks for people and ecosystems. Here we assess the impact of human water uses and their connection to water scarcity and ecological damage across the United States, identify primary causes of river dewatering and explore ways to ameliorate them. We find irrigation of cattle-feed crops to be the greatest consumer of river water in the western United States, implicating beef and dairy consumption as the leading driver of water shortages and fish imperilment in the region. We assess opportunities for alleviating water scarcity by reducing cattle-feed production, finding that temporary, rotational fallowing of irrigated feed crops can markedly reduce water shortage risks and improve ecological sustainability. Long-term water security and river ecosystem health will ultimately require Americans to consume less beef that depends on irrigated feed crops.
> Irrigation of cattle feed crops is the single largest consumptive user at both regional and national scales, accounting for 23 percent of all water consumption nationally, 32 percent in the Western U.S. and 55 percent in the Colorado River basin.
a huge portion of the alfalfa being irrigated isn't even used to feed american beef. The plants are literally sent to saudi arabia to feed cows there. You could entirely fix the agricultural use of water if you priced it more accurately. There is enough water to grow all the food we need and more, its just priced in a way that encourages the agricultural landlords who own the water rights to waste it because it is essentially costless to the individual rights holders. Price the water better and they will build conservation methods without lowering output.
I'm struggling to believe that it's a "a huge portion" given that Saudi Arabia has less than 1/10th the population of the US. Still, the story you link to is an amazing self-own on the part of Arizona.
>So far, four California water districts have proposed to reduce water use by up to 400,000 acre-feet per year. That would amount to about 9% of the state’s total water allotment from the river through 2026.
Even a 10% reduction in use due to Saudi exports would be higher than the current goal. It is considered a national security risk to export encryption to foreign countries, but it isn't a national security risk to export our water? And why are we growing such water-intensive crops in a desert to begin with?
but trade is what has kept the world wars a bay. Start down the path of protectionism and what we see in Russia/UKR will seem like a nice day at the park
a Middle East-China-Russia vs US-EU-UK-AU-CAN would be the likely outcome, and not good for economic stability or national security
Watch 2-3 episodes of 'How it's Made' and you can see how much water use is industrial.
Add the industrial and cattle together and one can quickly see that it's not humans that are consuming the vast majority of potable water, but companies and industry that are depleting what's available for the rest of us.
> it's not humans that are consuming the vast majority of potable water, but companies and industry that are depleting what's available for the rest of us.
companies only make what they can sell. The sell what consumers want. So it is humans. Humans want meat. If they stop wanting meat companies will stop making meat.
That's not entirely true. Supply, demand and culture have some complexities in them. Humans want meat, but the kind of meat they consume is based on what is available. And then it seems to follow that what they want to consume in the future is based on what was available in the past, not on what is most economical now. A kind of cultural feedback loop which results in most of the shellfish around England being sold in Europe because the English don't want to eat it.
I'm sure this kind of feedback loop happens in a lot of industries. Companies don't just make what people want, they also make people want things. Throw in regulation too, which limits the shape of what can be produced. I think what it boils down to is that when you say people want X, that want is not unshaped by those providing it plus other external factors, so there can be a path to people not wanting it that doesn't just involve their individual decisions.
A huge reason companies use so much water is that it's artificially cheap. Companies typically pay 10% or less of the cost per gallon a resident does in their home.
Farmers don't need drinking-safe water but that doesn't justify the price difference.
There should be three grades of water:
1) Untreated.
2) Salty (desalinated, but not to full freshwater standards), used for toilets, showers and the like.
3) Potable.
What you're doing with the water should have no bearing on the price and the price difference should only reflect the additional cost of going from #1 or #2 to #3.
You also pay a separate charge for delivering water to your place, this is omitted if you're getting it from a well and don't need delivery.
The base rates are standardized across a watershed (in this case, every place served by the Colorado river), the delivery charge is based on the cost to provide it to you. (Thus the cabins on the other side of the mountain here that lost their water in a wildfire--when the trees burned it not only damaged the pipe but caused land slippage that destroyed said pipe--pay a whopping delivery charge, but otherwise the same price per cubic foot we do.)
Why should someone pay a ‘Colorado watershed price’ for a gallon of water they pump from their own well on their own land, if that aquifer doesn’t meaningfully participate in that watershed, and isn’t even drawn on by other people?
Most of Central California for instance isn’t in a watershed that connects to the Colorado in any way.
> If they stop wanting meat companies will stop making meat.
If companies start paying the total costs (water, carbon)—including externalities—of their raw materials, and pass those costs onto consumers, perhaps things will rebalance.
Just because some people may not grasp this: it is still individual humans consuming the water. Companies and industry don’t burn resources for no reason, they become products that consumers buy.
The only real solution is that we consumers consume less, and probably spend more for the same products, period.
> The only real solution is that we consumers consume less, and probably spend more for the same products, period.
I couldn’t disagree more. We need more regulation and taxation, and the real cost of the externalities added to the end product. The public is subsidizing and paying for private industry to pollute and use resources without accountability. That needs to end. The idea that the problem is solely due to personal consumption by individuals is a greenwashing tactic used by corporations to avoid responsibility for their products. The real solution is to put up barriers to producing these products and make the companies pay for their impact on the planet. This strange, antisocial idea that companies aren’t part of the social contract and don’t have to follow the rules of governments and civilization needs to be called out.
I think you’re reading the wrong thing into my comment. I would absolutely agree the problem is that externalities aren’t priced in. The result of pricing those in would be that everything gets more expensive and consumers get to consume less.
I don’t like the idea of blaming companies anymore than blaming individual consumers. They’re working in the same market
I read that the original comment was laying the blame at the feet of individual consumer choices - implying that if people simply bought/consumed less of … whatever is causing the Colorado river to be depleted then things would fix themselves. And the reply is saying that there need to be explicit regulations to cause this, presumably because people have really no way to know the what environmental impact each dollar they spend has and where.
I read it the same way, similarly to PR campaigns that tell Californians to water their lawns less and take fewer and shorter showers, even thought that usage uses by far less water than ag or industrial uses.
> Companies and industry don’t burn resources for no reason, they become products that consumers buy.
If companies start paying the total costs—including externalities (water, carbon)—of their raw materials, and pass those costs onto consumers, perhaps things will rebalance.
This isn't whats happening at all, at least in ag. There is a huge amount of deadweight loss to extremely wealthy long time ag landlords who own water rights. At this time, they have extremely inefficient water uses because water is costless to them. If water prices were to be raised, they would install various methods of water conservation (drip irrigation instead of flooding, etc) and maintain production levels, resulting in similar prices and availability for consumers.
> Arizona has [some non-water requirements for Semi fab location]; however, it faces water challenges. Semiconductor fabs require tremendous quantities of highly pure water, using between two and four million gallons daily.[1] The fact that Arizona has become a semiconductor fab given these high water requirements may seem bewildering.
> ... Although these companies use vast amounts of water, they also recycle aggressively
It was greenwashing if I remember correctly. They had to do ‘water credits’ to improve watersheds elsewhere in AZ, which they used to claim they were doing good things in the area they were in. When really, they weren’t.
Oh damn, so something like the carbon credits thing Tesla did? In that case what on earth are they doing putting such a facility in such a water-poor locale.
Wow, this has gotten bad fast. I did some reading on the water shortage in the Southwest the last time I saw a story about it on the FP, and came away with the idea that this is a classic coordination trap, and the only solutions are a) everyone involved spontaneously decides to conserve water in unison, and b) the Feds enact quick, decisive regulations that almost no one (the states involved, counties and cities, developers, industrial corporations, big agriculture, etc) likes and enforce them harshly. The former is a fantasy and I'm not sure the latter isn't either. It's hard to draw any conclusion other than: don't move there.
Just to be crystal clear this has not gotten bad fast. This has been a loud, obvious, well known issue at least since I was born in Arizona almost 30 years ago.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard sentiments to the effect of, “well you know there’s no water, so that’s why we’re building on a lot further up the basin and we’ll just have to drill the well deeper than the other folks.”
“One way or another, physics and Mother Nature are going to dictate outcomes if we don’t come up with some solutions,” Entsminger said. “I would like every water user on the Colorado River to recognize that the 21st century has substantially less water than the 20th century. And all of the institutions we built in the 20th century need to be adjusted — in months, not years — in order to face the reality of less water for every user, in every sector, in every state.”
This is the downside of a more decentralized country. In many nations with more centralized control, the federal government would simply come up with a plan and each smaller jurisdiction would have to do what they were told.
But the USA requires a meeting of "officials from seven states, water agencies, tribes and the federal government" to negotiate, and continually fail to come to any agreement.
Each will blame the others, nothing will get done, and everyone will lose, all to avoid not getting the best deal for themselves.
I wonder if it is possible to take two or more high water using industries and combine them in a way that would all the combination to work on substantially less water than they were using individually?
For example we've all read that it takes a little over a gallon to grow an almond. And it takes about 10 gallons to make one integrated circuit.
But that almond does not contain a gallon of water. The almond only contains about 0.0003 gallons of water.
And my computer, which contains dozen of integrated circuits, certainly does not actually contain hundreds of gallons of water.
So could we put almond farms and semiconductor fabs next to each other and arrange that much of the 0.9997 gallons that does not go into the almond is available to the semiconductor fab? (Or maybe the other way around--start with the fab and then do the almonds?)
And could we put some other agricultural or manufacturer after all that, and so on?
Some of these uses might contaminate the water so some cleanup might be needed before it could be used downstream, but there are a lot of agricultural and industrial processes that need water with varying requirements as to how clean it needs to be so it seems plausible that there should be some combinations that would work well together.
Plants respire, as we do, so much of that water goes into the air. Water + CO2 + light -> sugar + oxygen. Metabolized sugar -> water vapour + heat + CO2. Also, much of that water, now in the form of sugar, is used to grow the plant. Cellulose, in particular, in the cell walls, etc. There are certainly pathways to unlock the water again; burning cellulose releases water vapour, for example. But how much are you going to get for the work involved? 1 tonne of dry hay would release a few hundred litres of water if you burned it, very roughly.
Conceivably, you could grow them in a greenhouse and capture much of the exhaust, but it'd probably be cheaper and easier to desalinate, or just dehumidify air directly. Just growing them in a greenhouse at all -- with humidity and gas exchange under control -- would allow water consumption to be cut enormously.
There are lots of instances of them irrigating with oil waste water, injecting fracking water into aquifers used for irrigation, etc, etc. Then, there are counter claims like "well, we don't know if the [contaminant we release] is from us or is naturally occuring", or "there haven't been any studies showing this thing is harmful at that level", and in one case "we've been doing it for 60 years". There are also many instances of sloppy record keeping, contradictory statements, etc.
It looks like the standard gross polluter coverup playbook to me.
for plants, the issue is transpiration where water escape as steam through the leaves.
The cleanup part though has used for domestic application sucessfully in several places like Singapore and Las Vegas. What the do is that the cities domestic waste water is cleaned up to the point it is safe to be used a gain (quality become equal or better that the source). This can be now recycled back. I wonder if this can be implemented for industrial waste water.
Yeah, it's not a good look, especially since California is the only state that is adjacent to the ocean. Not only that, renewables like solar are perfect for desalination as you don't really need one of these systems to be running around the clock.
best intent assumption that they meant "of the states having water shortages in the southwest". The other 2 on the coast are OR and WA and they are not dependent on the colorado for water, they have their own massive river.
The big showstopper is what to do with the hypersalinated byproduct. You'd kill anything that was near where it's let out. It's also very corrosive and I imagine the would be a problem moving it far from the plant.
It's not actually that big a deal, it's just they don't want to deal with it. You discharge pipe has to be a lot longer, spreading it over enough water for it not to matter. (Spread it enough and it's no more of an issue than evaporation at the surface increasing salinity.) You can also pump ordinary seawater into the discharge system to lower it's salinity before release.
If you have the real estate you can also go with evaporation ponds. Probably not too viable in California but it could be done in Texas.
I was surprised how slow the Metro Water District of SoCal took to move on this. They restricted water use for residents relying on the state water project back in June. But they've sat on their hands for the Colorado River until just a few days ago.
Aren't there passageways left over from the dam's construction that could be dynamited to restore the normal flow of the river? Given that the reservoir no longer serves a purpose it seems like that would be the most sensible approach at this point.
What's the real impact of a downpour year (like the 1980s had) downstream of Glen canyon dam without the Hoover dam in place? It looks like Yuma is the only population center before you get to Mexico. Mexico historically gets basically 0 water from the river from what I understand.
Very irrelevant as water rights use on the Colorado isn't a commons, and has been governed under the Colorado River Compact for the last century.
Note also the paper's historical inaccuracy of attributing commons failure to users of the commons, rather than owners enclosing and appropriating land from common use.
http://web.archive.org/web/20221216221543/https://www.latime...