re: #313 Decatur Deb

California’s drought and the subsequent water regulations are pretty bad, but California is hardly the state where the water situation is dire. That goes to Arizona and Nevada in particular, which have little leeway and lack the water resources of California (which at least gets a significant portion of water from the Sierra Nevada range. Arizona and Nevada get a significant portion of their water from the Colorado River, and they’re both sucking it bone dry - and Lake Mead and Lake Powell are running towards historic lows.

So, with expected population increases and higher demand, those states have to figure out what to do - either limit water usage, population growth, or enact draconian regulations. So far, they’re going with some limits on water usage, and tapping underground aquifers as much as possible, depleting those at rates not seen before.

This is what happens when you live in a desert. You rely on limited water supplies, and when they’re gone, so too goes the people. You can only ship in so much water from elsewhere, especially when upstream water supplies are also dwindling. The entire Southwest is parched, and there’s no end in sight to that.

To address this would mean a sea change in the landscape - eliminating lawns, golf courses, and much of the agriculture. Heck, you’d probably have to eliminate a bunch of data centers too, which rely on water for cooling purposes. And it’s the changes with agriculture that would be most disruptive since we get a whole load of agricultural items from the Southwest and California - higher costs for everyone, more limited supplies, and the need to shift where food is grown in the country. It would also likely result in shifting population centers towards those areas where agriculture is more sustainable.