[tristor]

California would immediately become a failed state on its own, unable to meet even the most basic needs of its residents. California MASSIVELY relies on other states for two of the most essential needs for modern civilization: water and electricity.

California, ecologically, is not capable of supporting its own population independently, and short of geo-engineering at continent scale nothing will ever change that. It has absolutely nothing to do with politics, economics, or any sort of issues like that, it's simply the geographic and ecological nature of the state.

Los Angeles, for example, would be impossible for it to exist without modern technology and mass importation of water, most of which comes from outside of California (although some comes from Northern California where it actually rains).

Anyone, like yourself, who seriously contends that California could survive on its own independent of the United States simply does not understand how anything works, water systems, electric systems, import/export economies, globalism, money movements between coasts, investment funding and how it is structured to take investments from the US heartland and VC companies in Californian tech. Your statement is not just a gross oversimplification of a LOT of complex topics, it's blatantly untrue in /every single/ one of those topics.

[reducesuffering]

SoCal will just use NorCal water along with access to ocean desalination. For residential use, there is plenty, without needing to ship out water in the form of half of the US's fruits, nuts, berries, and vegetables. Solar ramp-up is progressing well, already at 17% vs. 50% natural gas, with battery storage to eventually buffer the rest of the 15% nuclear + hydro.

[dragonwriter]

> SoCal will just use NorCal water along with access to ocean desalination.

There’s not enough NorCal water for that, which is why SoCal already relies on Colorado River water as well as NorCal water.

> For residential use, there is plenty, without needing to ship out water in the form of half of the US’s fruits, nuts, berries, and vegetables.

Sacrificing the state’s agriculture would…rather deeply harm the economy.

> Solar ramp-up is progressing well, already at 17% vs. 50% natural gas, with battery storage to eventually buffer the rest of the 15% nuclear + hydro.

Nearly a third of California’s energy is imported. displacing fossil fuels with clean renewables for in-state generation is good, but it isn’t self-sufficiency.

[nerdchum]

Do you know how much energy it would take to desalinate water for 30 million people plus all the farms?

We're talking numerous large nuclear power plant levels of energy.

Have you reaf how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant??

Around a decade.

So it's not as simple as just "desalinate"

[reducesuffering]

Right now, 80% of California water is used for agriculture. If you reduce the ag water usage that is shipping most of that produce to the rest of the country, CA has water for residential and ag. for its 39 million.

[dragonwriter]

> If you reduce the ag water usage that is shipping most of that produce to the rest of the country,

Those aren’t gifts to the rest of the country (and, actually, much of it is exported directly internationally), they are cash crops, and the lifeblood of rural California.

[reducesuffering]

This whole thread I responded to was about CA self-sufficiency and I was specifically arguing that CA can be quite self-sufficient.

> California would immediately become a failed state on its own, unable to meet even the most basic needs of its residents

Of course CA independence would be economically harmful and disruptive. Doesn't mean CA won't be able to provide its own water by taking an ag trade economic hit.

[nerdchum]

From where?

I don't understand how that's possible. I don't know of any lakes or rivers or aquifers larger enough to provide water to almost 40 million people in California.

[reducesuffering]

The Sierra Nevada watershed

https://www.nature.org/media/california/california_drinking-...

The large greenery to the right is the Colorado River which provides 15% of CA water at the bottom.

[nerdchum]

Sierra Nevada watershed is already being used by Northern California.

It provides 60% of California water.

Even removing the farms, I couldn't find any data supporting that it was enough water for the rest of California.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't either.

The data I found says the Sierra Nevada watershed supports 750,000 farms.

Is that equivalent to 15 million people or so?

[tristor]

Desalination will likely be required long term for SoCal no matter what, but currently California is not capable of supporting the energy requirements of desalination to replace the water it gets from out of state. The vast majority of California water comes from out of state, less than 30% comes from sources in-state.

[reducesuffering]

> The vast majority of California water comes from out of state, less than 30% comes from sources in-state.

That's quite a preposterous assertion. Source? CA has ~85% coming from the Sierra Nevada watershed, only 15% is the Colorado River at the bottom. "California receives 75 percent of its rain and snow in the watersheds north of Sacramento."[0] CA is more than water self-sufficient if it loses the 15% Colorado River, but reduces the ag. water usage (80%) that ships out most of it to the rest of the states.

https://water.ca.gov/water-basics/the-california-water-syste...

[PaulHoule]

I'd note that one of the problems Russia has run into with Crimea is that Crimea used to get water from Kakhovka Reservoir but now it doesn't.

[int_19h]

It's only a problem if you massively piss off the neighbor who supplies water, to the point that they wouldn't even sell it to you.

An independent California would just buy the things that it needs from its neighbors, like most other countries do.

[dragonwriter]

Secession itself tends to massively piss of the country from which one has seceded, which points to why this would be a problem for an independent California (unless it was a “Greater California” including the headwaters and course of the Colorado River, etc.)

[int_19h]

In many cases, you see the opposite - a strong public sentiment to allow or even force secession of some territory that is perceived as a "burden". This is usually represented in economic terms - "why do we have to feed X?" - but it can also be motivated by culture, religion, ideology etc (but, quite often, still coached in economic terms).

[thriftwy]

You can buy electricity, and water in riverways doesn't even belong completely to upstream countries according to water laws.