The easy economic (although not political) solution is to raise the price of water. Long-term, the way we can help is by causing more people to understand very basic microeconomics.
Sociologically, it would be nice if this destroyed the norm that good home owners maintain grass lawns.
People like lawns, and there is research that shows plentiful greenery increases a sense of well-being. It is just absurd to force this kind of pointless water austerity on people while enabling massive scale waste elsewhere.
Through the entire city of Melbourne (Australia) houses have a gravel lawn out front; and japanese style minimalist gardens. few plants; aesthetic rocks. That’s just life. Lawns are weird.
Why don’t people have actual gardens instead of lawns? Roses and bushes and hedges and stuff. This seems to be the suburbian norm in Central Europe. But I guess we have enough water.
Yes, but… Why do people insist on imported species and habits at all? I have only barely seen California, but why not plant sagebrush or something equally adapted and learn to love it? It might even lend itself to topiary.
(But nooo, exotics are so much cooler.)
That may be true for the Americas and perhaps Australia, but intuitively not for Eurasia. We have botanical gardens, though. It’s actually part of their mission to popularize biodiversity, and what better evidence to show for the effort than to have an introduced species become widely cultivated? Horse chestnuts have no place in Kyiv’s native flora, but they became a symbol of the city. (‘Oh, the horse chestnuts suffer from leaf miners! Why doesn’t the Institute of zoology DO something?’ ‘Stop planting the friggin’ trees.′ ‘You, sir, are not a patriot.’)
The first botanic gardens were a library of useful plants. (Diversity is a library-ish role.) Then imperial gardens were about gathering the diversity of the world, to assess whether it was useful.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything false about your statement. I don’t remember what my point was, so I should have written it down. It might just have been trivia.
You probably meant that technically, even the trees like ginkgo or all the oaks and maples imported from afar are useful—they can withstand the ufriendliness of city life. I agree. It is just a different kind of usefulness that potato and cucumber have, and back then there was no way to weigh costs and benefits of introduction.
(The usefulness of a cactus is yet another thing.)
Or you could mean that having a rich botanical garden
was a status thing for a capital; an obligatory research facility
for a self-respecting university. It should be still somewhat true. However, today people know little enough about native species that there’s merit in educating them, and the libraries now get it backward.
Or you could mean, further, that botanical gardens used to be efficient institutions of progress, and indeed gave rise to centralized experimental biotechnology research as scientific approach. That is, I think, probably true.
Looks like almost twice as much goes to lawn maintenance as to the entire industrial and commercial sectors, and by contrast, lawns have absolutely no productivity or economic benefits.
High prices do two different kinds of parallel rationing. They ration the good to its higher marginal utility uses: people who need it more will be willing to sacrifice more for it. This is a good thing. They also ration the good away from the poor and towards the rich. This is not really a good thing.
How could, in general, one have the first but not the second? Ration a thing to high marginal utility uses, but ability to afford, income, social class should not play much a role?
My attempt: let the price go high, because it incentivizes production. But also subsidize a certain quota of it per person, roughly as much as the highest marginal utility use is (drink, one quick shower etc. calculate it). Make the quota sellable, transferable, because people will do it anyway on the black market.
I would expect the second effect to be small in practice with respect to water because of the small quantities involved. My demand for water for drinking and cleaning is inelastic within the relevant margins, and even large changes in the price of tap water would have minimal costs to me. My use of water for lawns would be more price sensitive, so green lawns in California would become more of a luxury good, and I am with James_Miller in seeing that as a good thing in the American Southwest. As you suggest, some sort of price tiering or progressiveness in municipal water costs would minimize effects.
The larger effect will be on those using large quantities of water, farmers. Which is the goal. We can discuss the plight of the poor farmer, but that quickly seems to become a cover for agribusiness lobbying rather than a targeted intervention for independent farms.
That makes sense on the object level (although I was more interested in the meta, as in how to think beyond econ 101, beyond the supply-demand curve).
I should add that there are grass fields here (Vienna, Austria) that nobody waters and they are green enough—granted, there is far more natural precipitation than in California, granted, they don’t look as nice as really “manicured” lawns, but they still look kinda grassy enough. The point is—probably it would be possible to find a different species of lawn grass that looks 80% as good but takes like 30% of the water. I suspect British lawn species may have been imported to Cali and that may not be such a good idea.
Because they’re human, and humans have a hard time imagining how very different conditions can be.
I know someone who had a hard time raising basil, which mystified me. What could possibly be hard about raising basil? You put it in a pot on a windowsill and water it when it’s looking a little limp and it grows.
My friend was living in Wales. Basil needs more sunlight than occurs naturally there.
Left to myself, I never would have believed that water boils at different temperatures in different places. It sounds like a practical joke, but there’s good physics behind.
It’s not that simple. Farmers are some of the largest consumers of water. Raising the price of water would not really reduce water consumption considerably for farming, as modern farming techniques are already fairly water-efficient and further improvements (such as greenhouses or advanced irrigation techniques) are typically very costly. It’s more economical for the farmer to just use the same amount of water and push the increased costs towards the consumer. In the end, the average consumer would end up shouldering the burden of increased water cost without any appreciable change in water supply.
If you try to raise the price of water beyond that which farmers could work around, they’d likely just pack up and leave, like ChristianKI says. And nobody wants that, either.
If you try to raise the price of water beyond that which farmers could work around, they’d likely just pack up and leave, like ChristianKI says. And nobody wants that, either.
I am entirely fine with that. There is no right to grow water-thirsty crops in the desert.
Look at one of the documents linked in the OP. If the farmers stop growing alfalfa hay which is one of the thirstiest crops and replace it with almost anything else, California will save a lot of water.
You’re correct that modern farming techniques are fairly efficient, but within the confines of any specific crop being grown. Efficiently watered corn, for instance, still takes less water input than efficiently watered rice, millet takes less water still. Techniques are good but crop selection is questionable. Beef/alfalfa is the thing on the top of my mind when I say this.
I think everybody understands that if you raise the price of water enough farmers won’t be able to be in business and shut down instead of using up water. The problem doesn’t seem to be understanding of basic microeconomics but the politics and process.
Do you raise prices by taxation? Do you raise prices by taking drafting rights away and doing yearly auctions of water?
Is there a way to change the pricing of water on a seasonal level? Price pressure only works to reduce consumption if the people are knowing which price they are paying. If you do this, do people actually know which price they are paying at which time?
To me those seem to be questions for economists.
Prices alone also don’t challenge norms that good home owners maintain grass lawns. They just turn grass lawns into a desirable luxury that not everybody can afford.
It’s not just that some farmers will shut down if you raise the price of water, others will find better ways of conserving water, some will switch to less water-hungry crops, and still more will move to locations with cheaper water.
Prices alone also don’t challenge norms that good home owners maintain grass lawns. They just turn grass lawns into a desirable luxury that not everybody can afford.
But that would still lower the amount of water used on grass lawns thereby increasing the amount of water available for other purposes (assuming the demand elasticity of grass lawns is larger than that of those other purposes, of course).
Status signaling through spending money on luxury items can be complex. The fact that not everyone can afford lawns makes the lawn a better signal for status and makes it more valuable as a status signal.
The easy economic (although not political) solution is to raise the price of water. Long-term, the way we can help is by causing more people to understand very basic microeconomics.
Sociologically, it would be nice if this destroyed the norm that good home owners maintain grass lawns.
People like lawns, and there is research that shows plentiful greenery increases a sense of well-being. It is just absurd to force this kind of pointless water austerity on people while enabling massive scale waste elsewhere.
Through the entire city of Melbourne (Australia) houses have a gravel lawn out front; and japanese style minimalist gardens. few plants; aesthetic rocks. That’s just life. Lawns are weird.
Why don’t people have actual gardens instead of lawns? Roses and bushes and hedges and stuff. This seems to be the suburbian norm in Central Europe. But I guess we have enough water.
Yes, but… Why do people insist on imported species and habits at all? I have only barely seen California, but why not plant sagebrush or something equally adapted and learn to love it? It might even lend itself to topiary. (But nooo, exotics are so much cooler.)
Part of the story may be migrants taking their native plants with them out of nostalgia.
That may be true for the Americas and perhaps Australia, but intuitively not for Eurasia. We have botanical gardens, though. It’s actually part of their mission to popularize biodiversity, and what better evidence to show for the effort than to have an introduced species become widely cultivated? Horse chestnuts have no place in Kyiv’s native flora, but they became a symbol of the city. (‘Oh, the horse chestnuts suffer from leaf miners! Why doesn’t the Institute of zoology DO something?’ ‘Stop planting the friggin’ trees.′ ‘You, sir, are not a patriot.’)
The first botanic gardens were a library of useful plants. (Diversity is a library-ish role.) Then imperial gardens were about gathering the diversity of the world, to assess whether it was useful.
I omitted that because nowadays it no longer holds.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything false about your statement. I don’t remember what my point was, so I should have written it down. It might just have been trivia.
You probably meant that technically, even the trees like ginkgo or all the oaks and maples imported from afar are useful—they can withstand the ufriendliness of city life. I agree. It is just a different kind of usefulness that potato and cucumber have, and back then there was no way to weigh costs and benefits of introduction. (The usefulness of a cactus is yet another thing.) Or you could mean that having a rich botanical garden was a status thing for a capital; an obligatory research facility for a self-respecting university. It should be still somewhat true. However, today people know little enough about native species that there’s merit in educating them, and the libraries now get it backward. Or you could mean, further, that botanical gardens used to be efficient institutions of progress, and indeed gave rise to centralized experimental biotechnology research as scientific approach. That is, I think, probably true.
Is this really where any interesting amount of water goes?
Perhaps not, but the norm forces many people to spend lots of time and money on lawn maintenance.
Looks like almost twice as much goes to lawn maintenance as to the entire industrial and commercial sectors, and by contrast, lawns have absolutely no productivity or economic benefits.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/
High prices do two different kinds of parallel rationing. They ration the good to its higher marginal utility uses: people who need it more will be willing to sacrifice more for it. This is a good thing. They also ration the good away from the poor and towards the rich. This is not really a good thing.
How could, in general, one have the first but not the second? Ration a thing to high marginal utility uses, but ability to afford, income, social class should not play much a role?
My attempt: let the price go high, because it incentivizes production. But also subsidize a certain quota of it per person, roughly as much as the highest marginal utility use is (drink, one quick shower etc. calculate it). Make the quota sellable, transferable, because people will do it anyway on the black market.
I would expect the second effect to be small in practice with respect to water because of the small quantities involved. My demand for water for drinking and cleaning is inelastic within the relevant margins, and even large changes in the price of tap water would have minimal costs to me. My use of water for lawns would be more price sensitive, so green lawns in California would become more of a luxury good, and I am with James_Miller in seeing that as a good thing in the American Southwest. As you suggest, some sort of price tiering or progressiveness in municipal water costs would minimize effects.
The larger effect will be on those using large quantities of water, farmers. Which is the goal. We can discuss the plight of the poor farmer, but that quickly seems to become a cover for agribusiness lobbying rather than a targeted intervention for independent farms.
That makes sense on the object level (although I was more interested in the meta, as in how to think beyond econ 101, beyond the supply-demand curve).
I should add that there are grass fields here (Vienna, Austria) that nobody waters and they are green enough—granted, there is far more natural precipitation than in California, granted, they don’t look as nice as really “manicured” lawns, but they still look kinda grassy enough. The point is—probably it would be possible to find a different species of lawn grass that looks 80% as good but takes like 30% of the water. I suspect British lawn species may have been imported to Cali and that may not be such a good idea.
Good news—such a species does exist! It’s called “Astroturf”, and it requires even less than 30%.
Why is it some Europeans have a hard time imagining that not every place has the same climate as Europe?
Because they’re human, and humans have a hard time imagining how very different conditions can be.
I know someone who had a hard time raising basil, which mystified me. What could possibly be hard about raising basil? You put it in a pot on a windowsill and water it when it’s looking a little limp and it grows.
My friend was living in Wales. Basil needs more sunlight than occurs naturally there.
Left to myself, I never would have believed that water boils at different temperatures in different places. It sounds like a practical joke, but there’s good physics behind.
Letting market prices reign everywhere, but providing a universal basic income is the usual economic solution.
It’s not that simple. Farmers are some of the largest consumers of water. Raising the price of water would not really reduce water consumption considerably for farming, as modern farming techniques are already fairly water-efficient and further improvements (such as greenhouses or advanced irrigation techniques) are typically very costly. It’s more economical for the farmer to just use the same amount of water and push the increased costs towards the consumer. In the end, the average consumer would end up shouldering the burden of increased water cost without any appreciable change in water supply.
If you try to raise the price of water beyond that which farmers could work around, they’d likely just pack up and leave, like ChristianKI says. And nobody wants that, either.
I am entirely fine with that. There is no right to grow water-thirsty crops in the desert.
Look at one of the documents linked in the OP. If the farmers stop growing alfalfa hay which is one of the thirstiest crops and replace it with almost anything else, California will save a lot of water.
It’s my understanding that California farmers don’t use many water saving farming techniques because of the low price they pay for water.
You’re correct that modern farming techniques are fairly efficient, but within the confines of any specific crop being grown. Efficiently watered corn, for instance, still takes less water input than efficiently watered rice, millet takes less water still. Techniques are good but crop selection is questionable. Beef/alfalfa is the thing on the top of my mind when I say this.
I think everybody understands that if you raise the price of water enough farmers won’t be able to be in business and shut down instead of using up water. The problem doesn’t seem to be understanding of basic microeconomics but the politics and process.
Do you raise prices by taxation? Do you raise prices by taking drafting rights away and doing yearly auctions of water?
Is there a way to change the pricing of water on a seasonal level? Price pressure only works to reduce consumption if the people are knowing which price they are paying. If you do this, do people actually know which price they are paying at which time?
To me those seem to be questions for economists.
Prices alone also don’t challenge norms that good home owners maintain grass lawns. They just turn grass lawns into a desirable luxury that not everybody can afford.
It’s not just that some farmers will shut down if you raise the price of water, others will find better ways of conserving water, some will switch to less water-hungry crops, and still more will move to locations with cheaper water.
But that would still lower the amount of water used on grass lawns thereby increasing the amount of water available for other purposes (assuming the demand elasticity of grass lawns is larger than that of those other purposes, of course).
Status signaling through spending money on luxury items can be complex. The fact that not everyone can afford lawns makes the lawn a better signal for status and makes it more valuable as a status signal.
Yes, but that still decreases the amount of water used on lawns.
If having a lawn that needs water becomes a status symbol, rich people wanting to signal status can choose to grow lawns that take even more water.
Yes, in principle such a thing is possible. But we’re talking about water.