> The lawns and fields were green, the backyard pools all full and people were washing cars like normal.
The reason for this is that lawns and pools aren't the problem. The problem is, and continues to be agricultural use of water. You could rip out literally every single lawn and golf course in the entire state of California today and the impact it would have on statewide water use would be within the margin of error for measurement. We're talking literally less than 5% of total water usage.
The scope of this problem is so massive that most people have difficulty comprehending it, both due to the massive amount of water involved, and the massive amount of land area involved. People think all the lawns cover a huge surface area. It's a rounding error compared to the size of the industrial farms in the Central Valley and the amount of water they use.
Some crops in particular use far more water than others as well. The two biggest offenders are almonds and alfalfa. If we temporarily stopped growing those two crops in California, the crisis would be literally non-existent. The entire cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco use about 800,000 acre-feet of water per year COMBINED.[1] Alfalfa growers in California are using 5.3 MILLION acre feet of water.[2]
On top of that, Alfalfa contributes so little to the California economy that we could buy out the entire Alfalfa growing industry in this state and it would only cost a total of about two dollars per resident.
Most people are already fairly water conscious, and don't go around wantonly wasting it, so when they're asked to further cut back an additional 20% on their water use and threatened with increased fees and fines if they don't, they tend not to be too happy about it. Especially when you take into account the fact that household water use(drinking water, showers, toilets, cooking, lawns, swimming pools, sprinklers and such) accounts for roughly 3%[2] of total use in the entire state, why should we all suffer, cut back, put up with low-flow showerheads, drain our pools, let our lawns die and leave piss sitting in our toilets to save 20% of 3%? All that to save 0.6% of the total water used in the state? Sorry, but no.
Read over link [2] below in it's entirety, it has great data and really provides some excellent perspective on the state's water issues.
>buy out the entire Alfalfa growing industry in this state and it would only cost a total of about two dollars per resident.
that's interesting - you could say that if you can convince just 10% of people in california (4mil people) to donate $20 bucks, they can reduce the drought problem by half. I'd say that should be agreeable for most, except for the alfalfa related industries...
The reason for this is that lawns and pools aren't the problem. The problem is, and continues to be agricultural use of water. You could rip out literally every single lawn and golf course in the entire state of California today and the impact it would have on statewide water use would be within the margin of error for measurement. We're talking literally less than 5% of total water usage.
The scope of this problem is so massive that most people have difficulty comprehending it, both due to the massive amount of water involved, and the massive amount of land area involved. People think all the lawns cover a huge surface area. It's a rounding error compared to the size of the industrial farms in the Central Valley and the amount of water they use.
Some crops in particular use far more water than others as well. The two biggest offenders are almonds and alfalfa. If we temporarily stopped growing those two crops in California, the crisis would be literally non-existent. The entire cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco use about 800,000 acre-feet of water per year COMBINED.[1] Alfalfa growers in California are using 5.3 MILLION acre feet of water.[2]
On top of that, Alfalfa contributes so little to the California economy that we could buy out the entire Alfalfa growing industry in this state and it would only cost a total of about two dollars per resident.
Most people are already fairly water conscious, and don't go around wantonly wasting it, so when they're asked to further cut back an additional 20% on their water use and threatened with increased fees and fines if they don't, they tend not to be too happy about it. Especially when you take into account the fact that household water use(drinking water, showers, toilets, cooking, lawns, swimming pools, sprinklers and such) accounts for roughly 3%[2] of total use in the entire state, why should we all suffer, cut back, put up with low-flow showerheads, drain our pools, let our lawns die and leave piss sitting in our toilets to save 20% of 3%? All that to save 0.6% of the total water used in the state? Sorry, but no.
Read over link [2] below in it's entirety, it has great data and really provides some excellent perspective on the state's water issues.
[1] http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/n...
[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...