What if it never rains again?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

California is experiencing one of the most feared circumstances human's can experience: A drought that no one can predict when they will emerge. There is a reason that almost all of our major cities have developed near large sources of fresh water, or over large and plentiful underground aquifers. As highlighted in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we need water to survive...more immediately than anything else besides air. Next in line is food, which takes water to produce as well. We cannot access water sources or food, and support the populations to which we have grown in our cities, without energy to extract, transport, reclaim, and process the water and food on which our survival depends.

I have written previously on this "food/energy/water nexus": The idea that in our pursuit of our basic needs, none of them exists independent of the other. Our hope for maintaining our existence lies in having as detailed an understanding of this balance as possible, then making decisions that lead us in the direction of minimizing usage of water and avoiding a path that leads us in an out-of-control spiral where we cannot control our use of the basic resource. This issue is coming to a head in California, even as we speak.

Jan 2011

Aug 2014

Since 2011, California has gone from a state with a small area of minimal drought risk to a state of emergency with almost the entire state in some level of drought and many areas in severe drought conditions. Obviously, weather plays a large role in this as California has had only sporadic rain over the last year or so, but such a quick change in the status of the state comes from short-sighted management of resources. In addition to direct human water use for health, and our ongoing insane obsession with water-thirsty manicured lawns and decorative landscape, California also taps all available resources to maintain the largest agricultural economy in the country. With the large expansion of fracking over the past decade, California has jumped on the bandwagon to get its share of the pie, at the expense of its water resources. To add insult to injury, California hold the distinction of being one of the most densely developed areas of bottled water extraction in the country. (See this piece for a more detailed examination of why bottled water in everyday life is not only stupid but dangerous.)

To make matters worse, what we see today may only be the beginning of a long-term - potentially as long as 50 year - drought condition for this area of the country. Climate change and shifting weather patterns may severely limit the rain patterns that replenish the water sources for the region. Already, the Colorado River and Lake Mead, two of the main water sources in the southern part of California, have hit record lows with little signs of bouncing back. Recent research (see here and here) has placed the chances of a decade long drought at 50/50 and a half-century long one at a non-trivial 5-10%. We could see a major threat to the lives of 1/10th of the nations population...and a mass movement of those people to areas that have ample water to survive. Managing this challenge will define the future of our country.

A major shift in weather patterns that restores rainfall to California and mitigates the threat to life would obviously be welcome, but we should not hope for that, nor if it comes, allow it to divert us from taking action. We need a strong, national energy policy, and one that recognizes the overlap in our food, energy, and water industries. We need to seriously rethink some of the uses of water currently in our economy - such as landscape irrigation and non-emergency bottled water - and develop long-term (like 150-200 year) water use plans that apply conservative principles to ensure that we have the water we need to maintain our existence.

The combination of a lack of foresight on water use with the effects of climate change has put California especially in a dire predicament. If we do not learn our lesson, we could lose more than we could ever imagine.