A Tale of Four Droughts: Each is a Metaphor of What California Has Become

Pajamas Media ^ | 03/16/2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

[SeekAndFind]

California is not suffering one drought, but four. Each is a metaphor of what California has become.

The first California drought, of course, is natural. We are now in the midst of a fourth year of record low levels of snow and rain.

[bunkerhill7]

Construct a water pipeline from Great Lakes to California- No-wait, obummer will veto it coz it might spill n pollute

[pepsionice]

There was this point in the 1970s and 1980s when something of a significant nature could have been done. Environmentalism crept into the mix, and basically stopped any potential solution from occurring. I’d take a guess that by 2020...unless the drought reverses itself...it’ll be near impossible to survive in the region. Maybe it’s intentional...maybe it’s just plain stupid. But we’ll all sit and watch various big name companies pack up and leave. And by 2030, California will have half the population it presently has.

[cripplecreek]

We in the great lakes region will tell California to take a flying leap.

Besides, what kind of a moron would pump water 1800 miles to dump it on the ground next to an ocean.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

Or what about importing a few icebergs from Alaska?

[KarlInOhio]

Construct a water pipeline from Great Lakes to California- No-wait, obummer will veto it coz it might spill n pollute

I don't know which would be worse: a flow of water from the Great Lakes to California or a flow of thirsty Californians to the Midwest.

[SamAdams76]

Here in southern CT, we are overflowing with water. All the creeks and rivers are swollen and there's still much snow to melt.

The situation in California is going to get interesting. When I was in Las Vegas not too long ago, Lake Mead was as low as I've ever seen it. Also, the Rio Grande is dry in a lot of spots.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

“One of the ironies of the current drought is that urbanites who cancelled these projects never made plans either to find more water or to curb population. Take the most progressive environmentalist in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and the likelihood is that his garden and bath water are the results of an engineering project of the sort he now opposes.”

So true.

[logi_cal869]

And by 2030, California will have half the population it presently has.

And by 2030, California will have half the non-Mexican/Latino population it presently has.

That's more like it. /s

[W.]

California’s liberal democrats, in their infinite wisdom of refusing any solution to the problem in order to justify their very existence, have allowed a problem to grow to an almost unresolvable size. And if most of the industry and half the population bugs out, they’ll have their dried-up utopia—all to themselves.

[rey]

“Besides, what kind of a moron would pump water 1800 miles to dump it on the ground next to an ocean.”

NO PIPELINE! Wil the president veto that pipeline?

[dowcaet]

In other words, a large scale state version of Detroit. No thanks.

[cuban leaf]

Looks like they may be stuck with desalinization - if they want any semblance of a continuation of what they’ve come to expect as “normal”.

[ErnBatavia]

My simple little mind has always suggested an aqueduct from soggy Washington and Oregon....and run it right alongside the I-5 into the central valley -- hell; even the interstate highway's right of way is already in place.

It'd probably cost a helluva lot less than Moonbeams' choo choo.

[cripplecreek]

Again what kind of a moron would pump water 1800 miles to dump it on the ground next to an ocean?

California needs to build desalination plants or STFU.

[Carthego delenda est]

“Construct a water pipeline from Great Lakes to California”

Shhhh!!! Don’t give them any ideas! soon they’ll just cut to the chase and want to pump ALL lakes directly into the ocean. It will be saving mother erf somehow.

[huldah1776]

Same with Russia...

In Russia, a drying lake threatens an ‘era of water wars’

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, March 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In Russia’s Siberian south, near the border of Mongolia, the world’s largest freshwater lake is shrinking.

The surrounding communities depend on Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of the earth’s unfrozen freshwater reserves, for their power, water and livelihoods.

But in the past four months the lake’s water level has dropped so low that experts are calling it a crisis - one they warn could lead to conflicts in Russia over water.

The lake is now at its lowest level in over 30 years and experts predict it will keep dropping until melting mountain snow and spring rains begin to recharge the lake around late April or mid-May.

The problem, scientists and environmentalists say, is a combination of climate change and growing use of hydropower.

http://www.trust.org/item/20150316123016-muqos/?source=fiOtherNews2

I wonder if there were droughts during the ice age?

[george123]

It will affect all of us with higher grocery prices because a lot of our produce comes from California.

[s_vengali]

Engineer Ralph M. Parsons developed plans for the proposed North American Power And Water Alliance (NAWAPA) in the ‘60s-’70s which would distribute water to, amoung other places, the lower 48. Couldn’t get funding because the Vietnam War was a priority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance

[Regulator]

It’s all dead on and we are living it.

“If we don’t build it they won’t come” - nope, they came anyway. For the welfare if not the jobs.

And VDH forgot one thing - they locked out a lot of the land from development with crap like Open Space districts, leading to housing costs of $1000 a square foot in Mountain View.

And a train instead of desalinization?

Insane.