Yesterday, there were a couple of blog entries posted here about climate change.
Today, there is a somewhat similar theme: the seemingly inevitable water crisis that the western United States is already facing, and which appears to be growing more severe over time.
When you go out West, it really is beautiful. Man, I remember the first time that I saw San Francisco back in February of 1996, I was ready to move out there. A little over one year later, when my girlfriend and I went to Washington state (mostly, but not exclusively, in the Seattle area), I was blown away, and ready to move out there instead. Since then, I have seen much of the West, from Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia to the border with Mexico in Arizona, from Yellowstone to Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and the mighty Rockies of Colorado. I would be lying to you if I pretended not to have given some serious thought about what it might be like to move out there during and after each of these trips. Indeed, there are some pristine landscapes and natural splendor.
However, there are problems. Urban sprawl, and all of the problems that come with it, including massive traffic jams, pollution and days with particularly bad air quality, skyrocketing prices of homes, and so on and so forth have become commonplace. San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles all rank among the most expensive cities in the country, if not possibly the world. Crime is on the rise, and in some cases, already running rampant.
More than all of this, however, there is an impending water crisis. There are still a whole bunch of people moving westward all of the time, and the existing water resources simply cannot keep up. This is particularly true because many of these places are deserts. Maybe the image hides that, but yes, most of sunny California is, in fact, the desert. You might never know that while driving through tree-lined streets in the cities, and seeing beautiful gardens and palm trees everywhere. Ditto with cities in Arizona. Some parts of Phoenix hardly look like a desert at all, save for the brown and clearly arid mountains surrounding the city. Denver and the area looks quite green, and perhaps the snows of the nearby Rockies help. But even then, Colorado is a semi-arid place, almost a desert in some ways. In other words, water can be very scarce.
Add to the already huge populations that would exhaust the water resources already the tendency among Americans to be willfully irresponsible with previous natural resources, and you have the making of a catastrophe. The beautiful, pristine green lawns scattered throughout metropolitan Los Angeles or Phoenix or Las Vegas are not natural, and take a lot of water. So does keeping your car shiny and new looking. It is all coming to a head, and my guess is not in the distant future, either.
We already have seen a major metropolitan area of the world face a near water catastrophe. Cape Town reached that point a few years ago, but the situation was alleviated, last minute. But my guess is that the situation in Cape Town will be revisited eventually in the not so distant future elsewhere. And the western United States will likely be one of those regions where some serious decisions and compromises will have to be made at some point. There is no other way. Our current way of life there is simply unsustainable.
Take a look at the video above, and you will likely learn a bit more about how serious this situation is, and how ridiculously more difficult and painful we are collectively making this situation. Frankly, it feels like an impending disaster just waiting to happen.
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