| The author is a liar. To pretend the water crisis is about food is a giant lie, if the given subtext is we need to eat. The author is smart enough not to outright lie, but he definitely leaves a wildly incorrect impression. We piss away acre-feet of water per orchard to irrigate almonds, using approximately one gallon of water per almond. I love almonds, but we will live just fine without them. No-one will starve if they don't have almonds. We export a hundred billion gallons of water per year via alfalfa. ie a year's water supply for a million families. I'm sure Japan will whine if they have to figure out some other way to feed their cattle, but that's their problem. Nobody in California or the US will go without food if Japan and China have more expensive beef, or are forced to internalize the the environmental impact of their food choices. We grow fucking cotton in the desert. You don't eat cotton. etc... I've posted about this before, but pretending that the water crisis in CA is a choice between food, where the subtext is people will go hungry, and environmental concerns is a flat out lie. It's a choice between 2% of the economy that is wildly, ludicrously wasteful with an increasing precious resource and is pitching a tantrum that they may not be able to treat water as effectively free. |