[Aarostotle]

What a pessimistic view from the person managing the River District.

How many people would the river basin have supported without damming and irrigation? Far fewer than 40M. In other words, the engineers clearly engineered nature and made it much more hospitable to human life in the arid West.

Sounds like they might have overshot and can't meet tomorrow's demand, but even so, the status quo is certainly far superior to an un-engineered Colorado River Basin.

[klyrs]

> What a pessimistic view from the person managing the River District.

Good managers are honest about their ability to address a problem given the tools at their disposal.

[voz_]

> but even so, the status quo is certainly far superior to an un-engineered Colorado River Basin.

Making an uninhabitable area, habitable, at the cost of a total destruction of natural resources does not seem like its "far superior".

[Aarostotle]

That depends on your standard of value.

Do you justify things in terms of human life? Conversely, is your standard that nature should be left untouched?

As for me, I would say that flooding the valleys that are now Lake Mead and Lake Powell, enabling tens of millions of people to live, is worth far more than whichever critters and plants were displaced.

Besides, the issue here is not "total destruction" it is over-allocation. We have not destroyed the Colorado River. Rather, it seems like we just have too much demand for its supply. Did I misread that?

[voz_]

We have absolutely different perspectives here. I do not justify anything in terms of quantity of human life. The destruction of critters and wild plants to me is as painful as the destruction of human lives. Also, we rob future generations of that nature.

> Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.

That quote is oft-posted, and cliche at this point, but it has a ring of truth to it. Life in an area that cannot sustain in long term (1000+ years?), in balance with nature, is not really life but an exploitation of the environment for short term gain. Why? Because what happens when, in your own (terribly chosen, btw) words, we run out of supply? What happens to those people? Do they die? or do they move on, like locusts, elsewhere? What's the endgame there?