“Mr Brown put his foot on urban hosepipes while letting farmers carry on merrily wasting water, for which they pay far less than urbanites. Agriculture sucks up about 80% of the state’s water (excluding the half that is reserved for environmental uses). Farmers have guzzled ever more water as they have planted thirsty crops such as almonds, walnuts, and grapes. Meanwhile, urban water use has held relatively steady over the past two decades, despite massive population growth, thanks to smart pricing and low-flow toilets. Per-capita water use in California has declined from 232 gallons a day in 1990 to 178 gallons a day in 2010.”
We have posts about a whole bunch of less important stuff, I think a drought which is definitely a sub-category of risk is definitely well within boundaries.
I fail to see why this is important enough to be a post. The problem is almost certainly politics and market distortion, not ‘lack of water’:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647994-why-golden-state-so-bad-managing-water-price-wrong
“Mr Brown put his foot on urban hosepipes while letting farmers carry on merrily wasting water, for which they pay far less than urbanites. Agriculture sucks up about 80% of the state’s water (excluding the half that is reserved for environmental uses). Farmers have guzzled ever more water as they have planted thirsty crops such as almonds, walnuts, and grapes. Meanwhile, urban water use has held relatively steady over the past two decades, despite massive population growth, thanks to smart pricing and low-flow toilets. Per-capita water use in California has declined from 232 gallons a day in 1990 to 178 gallons a day in 2010.”
We have posts about a whole bunch of less important stuff, I think a drought which is definitely a sub-category of risk is definitely well within boundaries.
The California water shortage is not a “sub-category of risk”, it’s a sub-category of the use of political power to benefit particular groups.
And half of what gets discussed here isn’t?
No, not that I’ve noticed. LW occasionally discusses political philosophy but very rarely gets down to actual, specific policies and politics.