"In a normal year, no one in California looks twice at a neighbor’s lawn, that mane of bluegrass thriving in a sun-blasted desert. Or casts a scornful gaze at a fresh-planted almond grove, saplings that now stand accused of future water crimes. Or wonders why your car is conspicuously clean, or whether a fish deserves to live when a cherry tree will die.
Of course, there is nothing normal about the fourth year of the great drought: According to climate scientists, it may be the worst arid spell in 1,200 years. For all the fields that will go fallow, all the forests that will catch fire, all the wells that will come up dry, the lasting impact of this drought for the ages will be remembered, in the most exported term of California start-ups, as a disrupter." NY Times
------------
Schadenfreude, a splendid Krautism, is perfectly suited for my deepest guilty pleasure in contemplating the mess that "The Californians" (in the SNL sense) have made for themselves. A semi-desert interior valley system edged by a Mediterranean coastline would seem to be an accurate description of "The Golden State."
California needs to contemplate reality rather than its present land of the lotus eaters world view. If it wants to survive and prosper there is, IMO, only one practical course of action. That is to build a massive desalination system fueled by nuclear power. Many of "The Californians" will recoil in horror from such a thought, but, in the end, it will come down to a choice between anti-nuclear ideology on the one hand and the agricultural economy/lawns/ swimming pools on the other.
I would be perfectly happy to see a reverse "Okie" migration take place but there would be a lot of refugees and some of them might come here. pl
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-california.html?_r=0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4347ZE0NQM
Recent Comments