[Veserv]

Then don’t do that. You are the one who brought up alfalfa, the classic example of a low value good being subsidized by unsustainable and flagrant water usage, as evidence that desalination is not viable.

I pointed out how even if we decided to support and subsidize the moronic use cases the US can still easily support a desalinated water economy if we had to.

In actuality, if we moved to bulk desalination we would see a reconfiguration of water usage to higher value usage since water would be immensely more expensive. However, despite being much more expensive, even if we massively overestimate water usage by including water wasteful export crops, desalination still ends up being viable including the usage that would almost certainly disappear if they did not get to defray their depletion externalities.

Massive overestimate comes out reasonable. Therefore correct estimate will also come out reasonable.

[Retric]

Simply introducing vastly more expensive desalinated water isn’t going to get people to use it when they can just pump more water from aquifers.

You need to fix the underlying issues or nothing changes. But by fixing those issues there’s no niche for desalination.

Desalination is a solution in search of a problem, not a useful tool here.