But the Ojai Valley is also a place in peril. That’s because the water source that keeps this inland Ventura hamlet thriving is nearly dry.

Lake Casitas reservoir was built in the late 1950s when decades of plentiful rain hid the true nature of California’s arid climate. Back then, the official projections for water-resources potential were pretty optimistic. Today, that story has changed dramatically, and any other approach to water supplies seems beyond our conventional ways of water management.

I came to the Ojai Valley with my husband about 15 years ago, when the disruptions to the climate regime still seemed distant. But two consecutive deep droughts have brought water uncertainty front and center.

It’s this fear of water shortages that is dominating conversations and creating antagonisms: farmers versus city dwellers, farmers against farmers, water officials vs. everybody. We all know that the snowpack in the mountains is dwindling, so if we run out of water and average temperatures continue to climb, what then?

I am a professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability with several decades of research on California land use, water, energy and the question of sustainability and climate change. I’ve done research with biologists, hydrologists, engineers, climate scientists and public health experts looking at environment and sustainability, environmental justice, policy and politics, and conducted a great deal of quantitative research on water resources. I am also a native Californian, in love with the state.

Thinking about the state’s future and its magnificent resources and agricultural productivity, the fact that much of agriculture today is intertwined with dependence on hydrocarbons—from fertilizers, fumigants and pesticides to diesel and plastics—poses a predicament. These don’t just override the natural conditions, but damage them, seriously. This means that continuing to grow crops and rear livestock using highly consumptive 20th-century methods in a leaner, dryer 21st century will compound ecological crises and implode the agricultural sector. It’s inescapable that in order for California agriculture to survive, and even flourish, with less water and fewer hydrocarbons, we need nothing short of a revolutionary re-envisioning of the future without carbon.

The politics of this change will be enormously contentious, difficult, and protracted. But consider the alternative: The path of agriculture today is toward extinction. A changing climate is here, and water is not something that can be manufactured. With more dry years, and more groundwater extraction, the path toward groundwater depletion is clear. That’s why though what I propose below may seem fanciful and impossible, I offer them as thought pieces, as sketches of a possible future that provides livelihoods and sustenance, a future that the current trajectory cannot deliver.

Before globalization, which is dependent on being able to rapidly ship products anywhere across the world using fossil fuels, people ate far more seasonally. It was unimaginable to eat bell peppers in the wintertime in northern climates, for example. But now, the global south grows crops for the global north to ensure foodstuffs are available all year round. Reduce or eliminate fossil fuels, and a new agriculture will have to emerge for a post-hydrocarbon fuel world that will rely on local and regional resources. People will eat more seasonally and will eat fewer high-energy dense foods, such as meat. Different regions across the U.S. and the world will return to growing what can be grown in those places, supplemented by hot houses heated with compost (for example) in cold regions, or eat mostly tropical crops in tropical regions.

This means California will no longer be a large exporter of food, domestically or, especially, internationally. California agriculture will be primarily destined for Californians. Food will be more expensive and perhaps our diets will be more limited, but that does not mean there necessarily will be less to eat. Rather, we will simply not be able to source the world for our food, often to the detriment of growers here, in Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere.

One of the most challenging issues, fundamental to the type of transition described above, will be the question of corporate large-scale land holdings, and the price of land. With dramatically less water available, and the shift away from hydrocarbon agriculture, land prices may plummet on their own. But it may also be that big farms will break up, as they will no longer be viable without water and without the ability to cultivate lands using large-scale, fossil fuel intensive machinery.

Corporate owners might be compensated, but at the pre-water development land costs, and perhaps subtracting the cost of land and water remediation necessary because of the extensive chemical contamination. (Under the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which authorized federal water projects, farmers were to sell acreage above 160 acres, or 320 for married couples, at pre-water prices, or pay for the full cost of their share of the project. They never did, and under President Reagan that law was overturned, handing over to large-scale corporate agriculture the investment of the American taxpayer in water delivery systems.) If the return on investment for corporate growers declines, they will exit. And since water will be scarce and fuel for commuting non-existent, turning farmland into housing subdivisions will not be an option.

A new agroecological agriculture will, however, create many new jobs. Though lands that were brought into production by the sheer application of fossil energy will go out of production, and the footprint of agriculture in the state will shrink, many more people will work the land. This has the potential to allow us to adopt more sustainable farming practices, modeled on historical examples of regions with climates such as ours, like the Eastern Mediterranean region where water systems were managed by experts adept at passive water systems, where and when the resource was available.

Peasant farmers grew crops based on knowledge about seeds and traditional practices passed from generation to generation and developed over many centuries. Each skill- and knowledge-base was specific to place—to the soils, flora and fauna, climate, slopes, light, and seasons. Practicing small-scale intensive agriculture, growing a diversity of crops, and applying organic inputs to increase or maintain soil fertility, these land artisans were decision makers responsible for feeding their families and others in the community.

We have such land artisans today, although their skills and knowledge are rarely appreciated. They anchor small towns. They create local economies and connected communities. And they have been advocating for such work for decades.

Back in 1996, the international peasants’ movement came together during the Food and Agriculture Organization World Food Summit in Rome to lay the foundation for a 21st-century approach via a policy framework. The coalition, comprised of working-class farmers—known globally as peasants—and Indigenous communities around the world, pointed to the urgent need for an organized, international response to the crisis facing agriculture. They advocated for practices based on agroecology—agriculture that respects local ecologies and fosters wholesome and productive interactions between plants, animals, and humans in order to keep ecosystems healthy and grow food for humans.

The agriculture movement they have built is based on the understanding of the mutual benefits that accrue when farming and livestock rearing practices respect the long-term need for ecosystem functions to endure. Around the world, organizations like the National Family Farm Coalition in the U.S., the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, and Nyéléni Europe and Central Asia Food Sovereignty Network are leading this campaign, which calls for food sovereignty, participation in agricultural policy, and land reform so that workers can retain their land. In addition to farming itself, this movement encompasses occupations including composting, raising beneficial insects, bee keeping, building and maintaining small-scale irrigation systems, manufacturing and maintaining new electric-powered agricultural machinery and processing equipment, food processing, weaving, the making of rope and twine, technical assistance, and local commerce such as distribution, retail, and social services.

Vibrant, modest, local economies will eventually thrive as a result of this agriculture. But none of it will be possible without a politics for a new future, a politics of reclaiming California for the common good, a politics that posits a positive future against an apocalyptic one. It is difficult to construct alternatives within the dominant system, but change does occur, the past is not the present, nor is it destined to be the future.

Take worker cooperatives, for example, which have been growing rapidly, by a net of 35.7 percent since 2013; such cooperatives have an average pay ratio, between the highest and lowest paid workers of 2:1, in contrast to the average pay ratio in the corporate world of 303:1. Current labor trends—including people seeming to prefer to stay home than work for poor wages—also represents a possible shift in thinking about commitment to the current system, which may lead to the kind of transformation that enables other shifts.

All we have to do is look to the Central Valley, which produces a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of the nation’s fruits, nuts and other table products, for the problems California will face if we continue to follow the path we’re headed down now. There, small towns are shrinking or have disappeared. The workers who live near the fields are served by archipelagos of franchise restaurants, gas stations, and chain hotels. Highway 99 rumbles through these towns, often below grade, both destroying the urban fabric and by-passing it, causing the Valley to reek of pollution from heavy truck traffic and diesel-burning locomotives in addition to the tractors and irrigation pumps whose toxic mix of pesticides and herbicides are contaminating the water or the air.

This story of poverty and ill-health will become the story of our state unless we develop a different ethics of practice, one where modesty, and living within our means is the foundation of a better and wholesome future where life of all kinds thrives. It is a pathway along which it will be possible to repair the rift between humans and nature and reconnect humans with the rest of life, upon which we so ineluctably depend. The driving force of this new ethics is about loving place.

I see glimpses of this other future in the Ojai Valley. Ojai is a transliteration of the Chumash word A’hwai or “moon,” and vestigial ancient oaks that the Chumash lived with still dot the orchards and town. For those who choose to live here, learning to farm within the limits of this small place will ensure the viability of the town and the surrounding agricultural land.

This means learning about place. It means learning about its groundwater resources—how to reinfiltrate stormwater effectively when it does rain (and it will, buckets), and then applying it carefully through up to date and well-maintained drip systems, and ensuring there is enough mulch to maintain soil moisture and build soil fertility. And it means planting locally appropriate plants in gardens, refraining from building individual swimming pools, being thoughtful and aware of limited water resources, and treating it as precious and life-giving.

The idea of living with limits needs to reach the Valley. In response to our changing climate, rather than bring in more water, despite the obvious fact that water from elsewhere does not exist and/or has been long promised to others ahead in the hopeful queue, the Valley should invest in proven and reliable groundwater resources that do exist here and can be managed for long-term sustainable yield. This does not represent hardship; it represents recognition of place and living in that place, fully.

Similarly, a new path for California may seem revolutionary in its vision as it will mean dissolving current systems, reappropriating land through expropriation for the benefit of the many, and insisting on mutualism and collaboration for new social organizations. But it’s a vision that can be possible if we decide this is the future we want, and resolve to follow a new ethic, one of mutual respect, one of compassion, and one that is aimed toward nurturing life.

The post California Needs an Agricultural Revolution appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Conceição crossed the Concentration Camp very quickly. Sometimes a voice would stall:
“Mistress, a little handout…”
She would take a nickel out of her purse and pass by, in a light step, running away from the promiscuity and stench of the camp.
What a cost, to go through that filthy trap of filthy people, of old cans and dirty rags!

This is an excerpt from Brazilian social critic and novelist Rachel de Queiroz’s first book Os Quinze. Published in 1930 and later translated in English as The Fifteen, it refers to the year 1915 when thousands of people fleeing a drought in the interior of the state of Ceará, in northeastern Brazil, were placed in a concentration camp on the outskirts of the state capital, Fortaleza.

Though little discussed today, in 1915 and again in 1932, eight concentration camps were built in the countryside of Ceará. Today, the rescue of the meaning and memory of such camps is more than a necessity. The camps of Ceará remind us how easily human beings who were considered undesirable could be discarded and isolated to avoid “infecting” the rest of the population and causing discomfort to the elites.

The stated aim in erecting these camps, or as they were known at the time, “poverty corrals,” was to prevent workers from poor regions from moving to the city, a phenomenon of great proportions throughout the Brazilian Northeast in the 20th century. Rural exodus was the result of the misery and abandonment, as millions of Brazilians—facing a scenario of malnutrition, hunger, and even death by thirst and starvation—were forced to give up everything in order to try a better life in the big urban centers.

But the retirante, as these people were called, were not seen as dignified human beings, nor even as a social problem that needed a solution. Instead, they were seen as a problem to be eliminated or, at best, hidden from the urban elites.

The genesis of the concentration camps lay in the Great Drought of 1877–78, the largest and most devastating drought in Brazilian history. It caused the deaths of between 400,000 and 500,000 people in northeastern Brazil—a massive impact for a country whose first census, in 1872, counted a population of just under 10 million.

The Great Drought forced mass migrations from rural to urban areas. All over Ceará, there were shortages of food and essentials and a surge in diseases such as smallpox. At least 100,000 retirantes arrived in Fortaleza, more than triple the local population of the capital at the time, overwhelming it.

In 1915, when another devastating cycle of drought hit, state authorities in Ceará were not willing to see history repeat itself. Instead, they resolved to prevent the arrival of those who trying to flee rural areas, and to remove those who had already reached the city center. The governor of the state, Col. Benjamin Liberato Barroso, created the first concentration camp in the so-called Alagadiço, a region on the outskirts of the capital Fortaleza.

Desperate retirantes sought to reach the capital by train—or even by foot following the railway line. Once they arrived in the capital, they were rounded up and sent to the camp, with the promise of work and, without any other option, they followed the orders. Those who had made it to the city center before the camp was set up, about 3,000 people, also ended up being removed to the Alagadiço where at least 8,000 people were crowded in makeshift tents living in less-than-ideal sanitary conditions.

The Alagadiço camp was dismantled in 1916 with the end of the drought, having largely succeeded in preventing the influx of thousands of people into the capital’s streets. The number of deaths resulting from the terrible living conditions in the camp is unknown, but the camp served as a model for the others that were organized from 1932 onward.

In 1932, with yet another major drought, seven more camps in Ceará followed the “success” of the initial venture. Two opened on the outskirts of Fortaleza, and others—at Crato, Senator Pompeu, Ipu, Cariús and Quixeramobim—lined the routes of the two main railroads that crossed the state.

These sites were strategic points on the migration routes of the people now known as flagelados da seca (“those plagued by drought”).

The purpose of the camps and their locations was to prevent people from reaching the capital, but they also were used as justification of “modernization” and “beautification” of the city based on the idea of social Darwinism or the “survival of the fittest,” meaning that certain people were innately better than others, and the deep-rooted prejudice that rural populations would be lazy and less productive, and thus, responsible for their own situation.

This time it was not the state, but the central government, which took charge of creating the camps. In a speech in Fortaleza in 1933, the dictator Getúlio Vargas praised the creation of the camps, where, according to him, 1 million people were being “served” and receiving government assistance.

In reality, the camps were created not to provide help to those in need, but to make the problem disappear from the cities—or at least to hide it for a while. By controlling entire populations, the local government aimed to avoid not only social upheaval, as in the Great Drought, but also social revolts such as the one that happened in Bahia between 1896 and 1897, known as the War of Canudos.

As with the Great Drought, reports about what was happening in Ceará in the 1930s were largely ignored by the Brazilian and foreign press. Inside the concentration camps, though, the picture was grim. Women and men were separated and could not leave except to perform forced labor on road and dam construction, under strong police escort. In many cases, their hair was shaved. The rules were strict, and those who disobeyed them were imprisoned in jails on site. The unsanitary conditions of the camps and the lack of food led to the deaths of thousands of retirantes.

In 1932 alone, it was estimated that more than 73,000 people were confined to these camps in inhuman conditions. The number of dead is unknown. In one camp, Senator Pompeu, it is estimated that at least 2,000 people died and were buried in mass graves. The total death toll for all of the camps may be as high as 12,000.

The inhumane treatment given to those seeking only to survive was not an exception and was not restricted to the years of great droughts. For retirantes who did manage to migrate, they were used as cheap, disposable labor, whether they fled toward the rich cities of the southeast, the rubber plantations of the north, the gold mines of Serra Pelada, or the construction jobs of Brasilia, today’s Brazilian capital.

By the second half of the 20th century, concentration camps were no longer fashionable. Even the military regime of 1965-1985 that tortured and killed hundreds of people did not set up camps. The idea of placing thousands of people in forced isolation in spaces with dubious sanitary conditions and without any legal process had been tainted by Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags.

Thus, when the greatest drought of the 20th century in Ceará occurred, between 1978 and 1984, camps were no longer a viable option. The government delivered food donations, but did little more to mitigate the worst effects of hunger and rural exodus.

At first, legacies of the camps were recorded in great books of Brazilian literature dedicated to analyzing, reporting, and romanticizing the consequences and the background of the drought in the Brazilian Northeast. Among them include Graciliano Ramos in Vidas Secas (literally Dry Lives), José do Patrocínio in Os Retirantes (Drought Refugees), Euclides da Cunha in Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), and De Queiroz’s O Quinze, which deals specifically with the concentration camps. This vast literature on the subject, which became known as the “Cycle of Droughts,” had been of immense relevance during the nationalist discourse prompted by the Vargas regime. The drought was also eternalized in the 1944 painting “Os Retirantes” by Candido Portinari.

Still, there’s a Brazilian saying that goes, “What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t feel.” Today, Northeast’s countryside continues to have development rates below the Brazilian average, periodic droughts are still common and a considerable part of the population depends on government aid to survive—which shows that the lessons of the past have not been learned.

There is scant physical evidence left of the camps, themselves, which were designed as mostly temporary structures, to testify to what happened there. Only in the small town of Senator Pompeu do the masonry structures still stand. Originally constructed by Norton Griffiths & Company to build a dam in the region in the 1920s, the buildings were abandoned for years until they were used for the camps, then abandoned again.

A year ago, Senador Pompeu’s town government turned the ruins of the concentration camp and its cemetery into a historical heritage site. There are plans to preserve the camp’s grounds, a way to the horrors of drought and the crimes committed there by the state—but testimony alone is not enough to prevent past mistakes from being made again.

The post The Forgotten History of Brazil’s Concentration Camps appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Lancaster’s character is beefy and full of swagger, just as dramatist N. Richard Nash imagined him when he wrote the play upon which the film was based. But the real-life rainmaker who inspired Nash was quite the opposite.

Charles Mallory Hatfield was trim and partial to pressed suits and trilby hats that sharpened his already-narrow face and nose. He struck a studious humility that disarmed civic leaders and businessmen who would have been wise to any Burt Lancaster bluster. “I do not make it rain,” Hatfield would demur. “That would be an absurd claim. I simply attract clouds, and they do the rest.”

Hatfield was once the most famous rainmaker in America. His notorious “success”—“Hatfield’s Flood”—arrived in the form of extreme rains in January 1916 that burst through the dam at San Diego’s Morena Reservoir, killing more than 20 people and washing away roads, bridges, and homes.

The compelling mystery about Hatfield is not whether he brought the rain; meteorologists say “atmospheric rivers”—long streams of water vapor in the atmosphere that can stall over vulnerable areas—were likely to blame for Hatfield’s Flood. The great question in his life and work is also the central theme of Nash’s play: Did Hatfield believe in his own ability to milk the clouds?

Hatfield was born in 1875 in the rainmaking motherland of Kansas. During a crushing drought in the late 19th century, the state’s dry winds blew in some of the most audacious conmen of American history along with the tumbleweeds: Traveling rainmakers would charge up to $500 for a storm, brew chemicals in tents or train cars, and claim success for any rain that fell within many miles. (As meteorologists know, it’s always raining somewhere.) They hardly needed to advertise; credulous newspaper reporters did it for them.

Hatfield’s family moved to Southern California when he was a boy, and he shined in his first career, sewing-machine salesman. But his passion lay in picking apart the machine of the atmosphere. Hatfield read and re-read classic weather texts like Elementary Meteorology by William Morris Davis. The San Diego Public Library still has his well-thumbed, underlined copies. By 1902, he was dabbling in rainmaking at his father’s ranch outside San Diego.

The swirling steam of a tea kettle gave Hatfield the idea to climb a windmill at the ranch, heat some chemicals in a pan, and send the vapors ambling into the sky, Clark C. Spence writes in his classic history of American “pluviculture.” When a heavy storm descended after his first try, Hatfield was convinced either that he had figured out the recipe for rain—or could make people believe he had.

Hatfield turned professional on a public bet in Los Angeles, when he claimed he could draw 18 inches of rain to the city for the winter and spring of 1904 to ’05. L.A.’s annual average rainfall is 15 inches. In times of drought, the city can see as little as five. During what we now know as the El Niño cycle, L.A. can draw closer to 20. Ending an unusually dry decade, the winter of Hatfield’s bet was such a year.

Thirty L.A. business leaders pooled a total of $1,000 for Hatfield if he could draw 18 inches by May. Hatfield erected a 12-foot derrick in the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena. He set to work mixing his chemicals and sending them aloft. He explained his technique to the Los Angeles Examiner:

When it comes to my knowledge that there is a moisture-laden atmosphere hovering, say, over the Pacific, I immediately begin to attract the atmosphere with the assistance of my chemicals, basing my efforts on the scientific principle of cohesion. I do not fight Nature … I woo her by means of this subtle attraction.

After a dry Rose Parade on New Year’s, as requested by the locals, the Los Angeles skies rained furiously that winter. The last inch specified in Hatfield’s contract fell a month before his deadline. The triumph created demand for Hatfield and his rain derricks throughout the West, including Canada and Mexico. He was soon credited with filling the streams that kept local mines in operation in Grass Valley, California; replenishing the reservoirs of the Yuba City Water Company; and bringing rain to the parched badlands near Carlsbad Caverns.

The late Riverside journalist and historian Thomas W. Patterson, who wrote extensively about Hatfield and interviewed his family members, described him as scrupulous. He discouraged crowds from congregating around his towers. But those who caught a glimpse were mesmerized. Hatfield clambered across his scaffolds almost like a madman, pouring his concoctions, and keeping huge plumes moving until they evaporated. Patterson concluded that Hatfield believed in his abilities, and in the product that he sold.

The science and technology historian James Fleming argues Hatfield’s contracts gave him almost unbeatable odds. He always worked during rainy season, and his contracts extended over a hundred-mile radius, “which increased his chances of apparent success a hundredfold,” Fleming writes in his weather-control history Fixing the Sky. Hatfield’s most dogged detractors were the scientists at the U.S. Weather Bureau. Each time a newspaper lauded him, bureau chief Willis Moore sent scathing rebuttals from Washington. Back home in San Diego, the local weather bureau commissioner wanted him prosecuted for fraud.

Instead, the people of San Diego would credit Hatfield with the most copious rains in memory—and the city’s most devastating weather disaster. In December 1915, the San Diego City Council engaged him to conjure enough rain to not just fill, but overflow the Morena Reservoir. If Morena topped its banks by December 1916, the city would pay him $10,000. If not, he would be owed nothing.

During the first week of January in 1916, not long after he’d built his derrick and started brewing near the reservoir, the skies began to drizzle. The drizzles turned to steady rains. The rains turned to record torrents; more than 28 inches fell that month. Morena Reservoir overflowed. On January 27, the Lower Otay Dam burst, sending a wall of water into downtown San Diego that killed at least 22 people and washed out all but two of the city’s 112 bridges.

Armed vigilantes were said to have gone after Hatfield and his brother, who fled on horseback. When the pair returned to collect Hatfield’s money, the shrewd city attorney argued the deluge was “an act of God.” Hatfield filed a lawsuit. City lawyers said San Diego would pay only if he would sign a statement assuming responsibility for the flood and relieving the city of damages; some $3.5 million.

Hatfield never received his fee. But the publicity was worth more. For the next 15 years, Hatfield built his derricks around the American West and on a few international assignments, even if sometimes he cashed in on rains an inch below normal. In 1922, the New York Times ran a story about his trip to Italy to help break a drought: “He was anxious to explain his secret process to Pope Pius, and if the Pontiff agreed he would try to induce rain to fall on the Vatican gardens.”

If Hatfield’s methods were suspect, the concept was sound. Cloud-seeding—injecting clouds with silver iodide or other aerosols to make them form the ice crystals that then fall as snow or rain—can boost precipitation in clouds that were going to rain anyway.

Of course, it’s impossible to know whether it would have rained without a nudge. The most comprehensive study of cloud-seeding found that it increases precipitation by only 5 to 15 percent. Still, it is a testament to the value of water in arid regions that western state and local governments, utilities, agricultural consortia, ski resorts, and others have ongoing cloud-seeding programs to try and squeeze every possible drop from the sky. From rainmaking to reservoirs, to the $1 billion seawater desalination plant opening this year in San Diego County, all promises of water to quench drought require some magical self-belief; a suspension of the reality of living in arid lands. This is part of the American dream of the Big Fix—pervasive in our environmental history, the belief that an ingenious solution will come along to solve our water, land—and now climate—mistakes.

Hatfield died quietly at his home in Pearblossom, California, during a rainy El Niño winter in 1958. No one picked up the news of his death until four months later, when the city of San Diego tried to reach him—perhaps for a history project or a documentary.

The answer to the question of whether he believed in the rain-making power of his curious chemical concoctions went with him to the grave. It may be that Hatfield himself was not quite sure. And perhaps it didn’t matter, so long as others believed in him, and in America’s latest water dream.

The post The Magic of Squeezing Water Out of the Sky appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Sometime during the last-blast furnace heat of September, as I made my turns on foot around my San Gabriel Valley neighborhood, I began to take careful note that the term “conservation” was widely open to interpretation.

Evidence was everywhere. Street to street, lot to lot. Each week, I’d push a little farther outside my core neighborhood, comparing and contrasting.

Many residents let their square of lawn “go”—in a come-what-may fashion that seems optimistically to believe that brown will one day be green again.

Others chose to take matters into their own hands. I watched early-adopters embark on elaborate, months-long transformations, removing turf, transporting earth, tarping lawns, designing intricate new ground cover—not wanting to gamble on the vagaries of Mother Nature. As weeks passed, I’ve been taken by the range of improvisation among these remade yards: blasts of color and texture, hay-yellow patches, haphazard rock gardens, dirt and dandelion weeds.

Just as prominently however—and often side by side—I’ve also observed a renegade pack: lawns as green and moist as a tony golf course. Sturdy St. Augustine turf. Fragrant just-cut Bermuda grass. Lush, tangled ivy. Pressing farther, I might pass through not-so-hidden glades where an oscillating sprinkler geysers during the high sun of late morning (or where the stutter-hiss of automatic sprinklers kicks in—twice daily!—under the cover of early-morning darkness).

As a native Angeleno, I’ve lived through what we used to call “dry spells.” “A quick dry patch,” we figured. In the back of our minds, we knew it wouldn’t—couldn’t— go on forever. Often then, there were only a few weeks of restrictions; a small accommodation. Because, back then, winter brought relief with—at the very least—a brief season of rain. Now droughts have reshaped the way we both think about the environment and present ourselves to the world.

Front yards with lush lawns, of course, once defined this area—like those old kidney-shaped turquoise swimming pools you’d glimpse as you flew over the region. “Home” meant little patches of green in the front, aqua in the back. That was the indoor-outdoor SoCal lifestyle in one flyover snapshot.

Raymond Chandler once described the idyll as a “half acre of fine green lawn [drifting] in a gentle slope down to the street.” But something else was deep at work in paradise. In a 1957 letter, Chandler wrote to a friend how “the climate has been ruined partly … by too much vegetation, too many lawns to be watered and in a place that nature intended to be a semi-desert.”

More than half a century on, we’re catching up finally with nature’s intentions. The notion of “curb appeal” is shifting. Brown lawns have in some neighborhoods become status symbols of their own— like a compost heap or hybrid car. I hear this from friends across the city—from Silver Lake to Santa Monica. Even in my own neighborhood, curious drivers roll by one neighbor’s magical drought-tolerant garden the same way folks take in Christmas lights—pausing to snap pictures or ask questions. I eavesdrop on conversations as I stand in line at the market or wait for the train about pollinators, unthirsty plants, and wildscape.

Even still, possessing a “little patch of green” means enough to turn some residents into highly visible scofflaws. In my neighborhood, watering days through summer were restricted to two; as of November 1, that was scaled back to one. Polite billboards and placards—warning residents that we are in a severe drought—have been stepped up to fines (from $100 to $500 for repeat offenders). I have to wonder if those risking the penalties are negligent, arrogant, or just deeply attached to a deep-seated, decades-old feeling—an old picket-fence pride. One that boasted to passers-by of lawns to roll on, run barefoot through. Lawns were a way to telegraph one’s pride of ownership.

Nowadays, that SoCal bent to break the rules or be a “maverick”—in this context—reads as intransigence or selfishness. My neighborhood is transitioning like so many others around the Southland—old dreams are catching up to new necessities and demands. I’m watching my own lawn “go”—it’s now a quilt of fading green, yellow, brown, with hard dirt in places where the sun bakes it all day. While I’m still hoping for a season of rains, I know now that is only a temporary reprieve. I’ve yet to formulate a “just-in-case,” alternative plan, but one’s coming—it has to.

As a Southern California symbol of autonomy, that apron of land has always been, it seems, as important as the home that rises above it, emblematic of a life where we hoped to live by our own rules. Our own self-appointed paradise. As we consider our next chapter, the front space may no longer be a finished patch of green—that mantra of “two stories and a lawn”—but it continues to be a dream manifested, hard-won, and well tended.

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What works? What doesn’t? What policies need to be put in place to encourage change, and what can everyday Californians do to help?

At a “Thinking L.A.” event co-presented by UCLA, four panelists took a broad look at the state of water technology in California, and discussed both the importance and difficulty of implementing desalination plants, water-recycling facilities, and other tools to help California make better use of its scarce water resources. Margot Roosevelt, an economy reporter at the Orange County Register, moderated the conversation in front of a standing-room-only crowd in downtown L.A.’s Grand Central Market.

Roosevelt began by asking which technologies are most effective, and the panelists agreed the issue of drought was too complicated to merit any single technological solution—if technology is the ultimate answer at all.

“Technology is important, but it’s not a silver bullet,” said Celeste Cantú, the general manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority. She argued that a “silver buckshot” approach is more appropriate. “We basically need ‘all of the above.’ Our relationship with water—how we use it, where we use it, how we landscape—is the biggest thing.”

Madelyn Glickfeld, assistant director of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, agreed, and pointed to water pricing as a major factor in dictating some of this use. “The technologies that are most promising are smart technologies—technologies that use smart sensors to help people know how much water they’re using. This helps change behavior.” For farmers, she added, sensors “tell them when they need water and how much water they need.”

Like the other panelists, R. Rhodes Trussell, chairman of Trussell Technologies, was optimistic about the range of technological solutions already available, as well as the rate of innovation. The problem isn’t coming up with technology, he argued, but finding the right ways—and the motivation—to implement it. With a population that grew to surpass the water infrastructure built for it decades ago, California, like the rest of America, is far from perfect in its water use. The wastewater that California discharges into the ocean could account on its own for nearly a third of the state’s municipal water use, he pointed out. But it takes scarcity to prompt innovation. “We’re lucky to have the drought,” he said.

One of the biggest obstacles to recovering much of the water that’s wasted, Roosevelt said, is stigma: the misperception that dirty water can’t or shouldn’t be reused because it’s unhealthy, or simply gross. She brought up the buzz phrase “toilet to tap,” which is thrown around in the media but hated by experts because of the image it conjures.

“The fact of the matter is the amount of water we have on this earth is the exact same amount we’ve always had,” Cantú said. “We’re constantly recycling water. We’re still drinking dinosaur pee out of the bubbling brook.”

She recommended a better buzz phrase: H2O in, H2O out. “We have to come to terms with that reality,” she said.

In terms of technology, our ability to recycle water is already extremely advanced, said Eric Hoek, a UCLA professor and the CEO of Water Planet, a manufacturer of water purification and separation products. “I can take any quality of water and turn it into any other quality of water,” he explained. “The technology is there. It has been there for 20 years. The question is how much you’re willing to pay.”

He added, “Reusing water should be completely uncontroversial. The reality is it’s much safer to intelligently implement technology [that safely recycles water] than to put water back out in the environment and pray that nature magically cleans it up.”

As Glickfeld summed up, “the problem is not the technology, but having people trust the technology.”

In a lively question-and-answer session, the panelists delved into the specifics of other technologies that could help to manage and conserve water, from apps that award users with badges when they conserve water to better use of facilities that store water until it’s needed. Hoek mentioned that the city of Santa Monica is building an underground storage reservoir that captures rainfall runoff and then passes the water through a treatment facility, so that it comes out at an extremely high quality.

“There’s a big shift taking place in awareness among the people who are building this sort of infrastructure,” Trussell observed. “I think we’re going to see this more and more.”

In the end, the panel came down hard on Shatner’s pipeline dream and other proposed comprehensive solutions that have cropped up in recent years, including the idea to tow a giant iceberg from Alaska to the Bay Area.

“It’s this American myth that we all have this great solution that can overcome our environment,” Glickfeld said. Instead, she and the other panelists argued, we’re better off looking at the problem from multiple angles, and using as many different tools as possible to deal with the drought.

The post Technology Can Quench California’s Thirst appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

No, no, no, I replied. In fact, it was business as usual back home except for some lawn-watering restrictions. I also told her that it’s easy to walk around many lush neighborhoods in L.A. and not even know there’s a drought.

With that conversation in mind, I recently visited three reservoirs in our region to see firsthand how some of our water supplies were holding up. I had seen the pics of the big, depleted reservoirs in Northern California. I was curious if the situation here seemed as dire.

First stop: Castaic Lake, north of Santa Clarita, where I got my first hint at an answer: There was a long line of pickup trucks towing motor boats, waiting to pay at the entrance.

At first glance, Castaic certainly has a serious case of ring-around-the-collar due to dropping water levels. On the day I visited, the lake—which gets its water from Northern California via the State Water Project—was at 39 percent capacity. That’s less than half its usual level for this time of the year.

But still. It’s hard to watch dozens of boats criss-cross a lake with 40 billion gallons of water and feel the need to hit the panic button.

A few days later, I pointed the car east toward the Inland Empire. Numerous electronic message signs on the freeway reminded motorists stuck in our region’s never-ending traffic problem that we also have a “serious drought” problem. The chutzpah of the signs is admirable.

After 95 miles and five freeways through sprawl that showed no signs of quit, I arrived in Hemet and Diamond Valley Lake. The reservoir occupies a giant valley to which three dams were added to form a giant bathtub to store water in dire times—you know, drought, earthquake, or some as-yet unimagined disaster.

Diamond Valley is the largest reservoir in Southern California and can receive water from the Colorado River or Northern California via a network of aqueducts. Diamond Valley makes Castaic look like a kiddy pool.

This is despite the fact that Diamond Valley is presently at 40 percent capacity, the lowest it has been since it was first filled in the early 2000s. The lake has also fallen below the bottom of its boat ramp, meaning private boats can no longer be launched.

The water in Castaic and Diamond Valley goes to districts throughout our region. I also visited the smaller San Gabriel Reservoir, which sits in a canyon in the Angeles National Forest upstream from Azusa. Reservoirs along the San Gabriel River perform two functions: flood control in the rainy season and holding water ultimately destined for the San Gabriel Valley. The San Gabriel Reservoir is only 18 percent filled. Another upstream is down to nine percent.

Alarming? Sure, but let’s put all of this in perspective. Diamond Valley is a lake that still contains 105 billion gallons of water. And many billions of gallons of water in other reservoirs are scattered across Southern California.

Despite much prodding from the media, water officials have been loath to say we’re going to run out of water on such-and-such date. One reason is that water supplies in California are a moving target with so many different water sources in different places. Officials also point out that conservation can still save more water and the region has saved a vast amount of water in reservoirs and underground aquifers for times like these. And of course, the National Weather Service last week said there’s a 90 percent chance El Nino may happen and bring the rains and snows that would help erase some impacts from the four-year drought.

After leaving Diamond Valley, I drove by the many new homes and sprawl of places like Hemet and Menifee. These relatively new places raise the question (again) of whether our region will ever have to pay the piper when it comes to growth and water. But it was stinking hot out and I needed a break. I stopped at a Panda Express in a new mall, grabbed an icy Coke, and aimed home for a nice refreshing shower.

The post Southern California’s Reservoirs Are Fuller Than You Think appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The poor results suggested an important lesson: Water conservation isn’t going to happen on its own. Brown responded by mandating water-use reductions, which, so far, seems to have more of an effect. His effort is part of a growing push to save an increasingly scarce commodity—a problem that isn’t only drying up California’s rivers, but affecting people all over the world.

What can we do now to protect our water supplies? And what technologies will ensure California and everywhere else will have safe, clean water for years to come? In advance of the Zócalo/UCLA event “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Drought?”, we asked a variety of water experts: What is—or could be—the single most important invention to help us survive growing water scarcity due to climate change?

The post Six Ways We Can Keep the World From Drying Up appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

A traveling painter learns to seize the moment with pigment and brush, because it may not look the same on the next visit, or even an hour from now. Old, charming buildings are torn down and replaced by condo complexes and picturesque barns collapse into rubble. In a way, that is part of the appeal of doing what I do; I interpret a unique and fragile bit of time and space through the medium of paint.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “You cannot step in the same stream twice.” But what we are facing now in drought-stricken California are streams that have not just changed; they have utterly disappeared.

I started out as a studio painter, but my love of wild places lured me to paint from life, with all the attendant challenges of changing light, wind and weather, bugs, cranky easels, and hard-to-reach locations. Now, as a landscape artist, I paint small “plein air” studies on location to get to know a place well. Direct observation tells me a lot about light and color—more than a camera can. I take these studies, along with sketchbook drawings and photographs, back to my studio in La Cañada to use as inspiration for the creation of larger paintings.

The author painting by the ocean

California has no shortage of attractive subject matter. From the coast of Big Sur to the redwood groves north of San Francisco, from Yosemite’s majestic landmarks to the Central Valley’s rolling golden hills dotted with oak trees—all of these scenes have found their way into my portfolio. But in the last few years, and especially this one, 2015, the drought has thrown me a curveball.

A few weeks ago, in late July, my husband and I drove 22 miles southwest from Bishop to South Lake, in the Eastern Sierra. I had painted the lake a previous fall and wanted to see how it looked wearing summer hues. But the lake was closed to boating for the season due to drought. The waterline was substantially lowered, perhaps by 30 feet or more.

Painting wildflowers is all about timing, as early impressionists such as Granville Redmond and John Gamble, who built their careers portraying California’s flower fields, knew. When will they reach peak bloom, how dense are the meadows, and how long will the show go on? I’ve painted the western Sierra foothills and the Antelope Valley at times when they were heavily carpeted with golden California poppies for nearly a month. This year, although some areas had a good showing, they were blasted by an unseasonal heat wave, which severely shortened the season. I had to adjust my schedule to catch local poppies at their peak. A few days later, they were shriveled and gone.

A painting of Anza Borrego State Park

But along with the negatives, the drought has brought with it a few scattered positives. Some of my painter friends who are ambitious backpackers were happy to discover that Yosemite’s Tioga Pass opened earlier than it has in 20 years. The early thaw offered them a unique look at the backcountry terrain earlier in the season. I hope they found more than the ankle-deep trickle I recently saw at the Tuolumne River.

So, that’s the problem. And unless El Niño brings us the snowpack we’ve been desperate for this winter, it’s one that we’ll have to adapt to. What’s a plein air oil painter to do?

For one, I head to the coastlines. As in the winter when there are no fall colors or spring wildflowers to paint, California’s beautiful shores are always appealing. Yes, some of the estuaries show signs of the drought, but for the most part there is still plenty to paint in the tidal areas from San Diego to Sonoma Park State Beach and beyond. Deserts and rocky areas are another option, as their flora and fauna are already more adapted to aridity. Some artists who like to paint buildings may gravitate to cities and urban landscapes in times like these.

Secondly, I pay more attention to nature reports to identify the areas that are less affected. Even though the drought rages on, one heavy winter rain can still make parts of a desert bloom gloriously, as I found this year at Anza Borrego State Park in the Mojave Desert.

I no longer assume that an area will be full of color as it has been in the past. I have to do more research. This is where it’s helpful to be a part of close-knit communities. Painters as well as photographers, hikers, and native plant lovers often know where to find the most beautiful scenery.

The author painting at Morro Bay

Another strategy is to simply leave California in search of greener pastures. Each area where I’ve painted has its own unique characteristics, and portraying them provides opportunities for experimentation and growth. The light in a region can be affected by many factors, including the color of the land, the amount of dryness or moisture in the air, and the altitude and weather patterns. This year I’ve spent three weeks in Italy (Tuscany was wonderfully green with full lakes), a week around Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains (lush green farmland, with daily showers), and a three-week trek through Nevada, Utah, and Colorado to paint a wedding atop Vail Mountain. In Colorado, monsoon season brought daily thunderstorms and cloudbursts, nourishing some of the most spectacular wildflower meadows I’ve ever seen.

Yet another option is to paint the land in a way that finds art amid the suffering. That’s a taller order, but it’s possible. In the Owens Valley, dry-looking cottonwood trees surrounded by broken limbs cast dramatic shadows. And even parched dry grasses on hillsides have a lovely luminosity when the afternoon light strikes them at a certain angle. Shallow rivers still create reflections. A dry riverbed could be a Zen garden. Beauty can still be found in unexpected ways if we have the patience to look for it.

Of course it’s frustrating to have a more limited range of places to go and paint, and seeing the damage is disheartening. But the inconvenience to me is trivial compared to the toll the drought is taking on agriculture and on communities where water has to be trucked in for bare necessities.

We can only hope and pray that this winter will bring sufficient rain to begin to build back the snowpack that is lifeblood for everyone in this beautiful state.

The post A California Painter Laments the Drying Landscape appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We hear so much about California and the drought there. But consider the whole West—and the Continental Divide, also known as the Great Divide. This spine of the continent splits North America—and the state of Colorado, where I live—into hydrological halves.

The snowy West Slope of the Great Divide boasts abundant rivers that flow to the Pacific Ocean. The East Slope, which drains to the Atlantic, is decidedly drier but is home to a thirsty agricultural sector and Front Range cities (including Denver and Colorado Springs) that support the vast majority of the state’s population. To address this imbalance, Colorado diverts water from the West Slope of the Great Divide to the East Slope by means of a Rube Goldberg assemblage of dikes, dams, and pipes, including a tunnel that runs beneath the Rocky Mountains the exact length of a half marathon, 13.1 miles. The economic and ecological consequences of this water transfer from one side of the Divide to the other have provoked disputes throughout the state’s history.

Droughts and disconnects between water sources and water needs are by no means exclusive to the western United States. Even in the water-rich Southeast, imbalances between population centers and water supplies have led to conflicts. In the 1980s, severe drought triggered a water dispute between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida when drought-depleted rivers couldn’t satisfy competing needs for agricultural production, municipal use, hydroelectric generation, and environmental health. This tri-state dispute clogged courtrooms and triggered the involvement of the federal government.

Florida also faces water wars within its borders. According to a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Florida is one of 14 states at high risk of water shortages by midcentury. The Sunshine State is blessed with an abundance of freshwater in its rural north, but cities desperate for more supply crowd the south. This disparity has exposed chasms between competing economic and environmental interests. Transferring water over long distances in Florida could allow golf courses to remain green in the south while upsetting the balance of ecosystems in the north.

Along with diverting rivers, pumping water from beneath the ground has supported the growth of cities in many parts of the country. It has also revolutionized agriculture, perhaps most notably on the High Plains. This rain-scarce region was transformed into one of the world’s most bountiful breadbaskets by pumping from the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from Texas to South Dakota. The Ogallala, which accumulated over millennia as melting Ice Age glaciers soaked into the ground, is now being spent far faster than rain can replenish it. This liquid inheritance is in danger of running dry—and creating skirmishes both within states and across state borders.

Conflict, of course, commands attention. Some of the West’s most iconic stories—from the novel The Virginian to the movie Shane to the Broadway musical Oklahoma!—center on conflicts over scarce water. In my first water book, Dam Nation: How Water Shaped the West and Will Determine Its Future, I spun tense tales of water wars to keep readers, and myself, awake while unpacking complex issues. For instance, one of the West’s most memorable water battles broke out in 1934 when Arizona’s governor, vowing to stop California from completing a dam that was being built to divert water to Los Angeles, dispatched National Guard troops with machine guns to the Colorado River.

Yampa River, Colorado

To say that water is a perennial cause of conflict is to state the obvious, but as I learned while researching The Great Divide, a forthcoming film and book about Colorado’s water issues, that’s not the whole story. What is less apparent, but arguably more significant, is that water scarcity has spurred far-reaching compromises throughout history. When fierce debate over the use of the Colorado River headwaters threatened to fracture the state of Colorado in 1937, a pact was forged to maintain peace across the Great Divide. While negotiating this historic agreement, neither the West Slope nor the East Slope got all the water it wanted. Each side achieved a modest victory, and compromise prevented conflict from escalating into chaos.

Prior to that momentous accord within Colorado, the 1922 Colorado River Compact united seven western states in a far-reaching agreement that negated the need for courtroom brawls. Some argue that the Colorado River Compact should be discarded and replaced with a new interstate agreement that reflects the economic, demographic, and environmental realities of the 21st-century American West. Regardless, over nine decades later, that compact continues to balance water use between states. This is not as exciting a story as the narrative of Chinatown, the film noir classic that shows ruthless power brokers in Los Angeles robbing a river from a rural valley. But as California’s epic drought exposes stark divides between north and south, between cities and agriculture, and between economic development and environmental sustainability, the proven ability of water agreements to bond fractured regions must not be forgotten.

In 2013, after six years of persistent effort to find common ground among competing parties in the state of Colorado, the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement was finalized. This pact created a framework for resolving disputes over the use of West Slope rivers by Denver Water, which supplies 1.3 million people in the city of Denver and its surrounding suburbs. Furthering this cooperative process, Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit conservation organization, and the West Slope’s Grand County joined with Denver Water to craft a plan to heal the ecologically damaged Colorado River headwaters. Former adversaries will work together to improve the health of the watershed while allowing Denver Water to increase the amount of its diversions across the Great Divide during periods of high flow.

Water compromises are not the stuff of scintillating drama. But as we face a future of cities surging with growth in some of the continent’s driest regions, a food supply strained by drought, and ecosystems degraded by depleted aquifers and drained rivers, we must remember that cooperation, not conflict, is the best way to bridge our nation’s many water divides.

The post How Water Scarcity Shaped America appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

You are watering outdoors too much. You kept your lawn when you should have taken it out. You tore out your lawn—and put in hard surfaces that will contribute to the heat island effect, making the drought even worse.

And you, with the beautiful swimming pool you keep refilling before your sweet summer parties? I’m shaming you on Twitter as the person most responsible for the drought. Not so popular anymore, are you?

You’re rich, and this drought is all the fault of you rich people, with your lush gardens, living in those wealthy water-wasting places like Beverly Hills and Newport Beach. You rich celebrities are the worst. I’m blaming my lack of water on your landscaping, Barbra. And Kim and Kanye—California must have sunk about a foot with all the water you’re using around your mansion.

You poor people, too, shouldn’t be spared, since you’re using all that water in those semi-arid places where you like to live, like the Antelope Valley. Why can’t you be bothered to spend thousands on low-flow toilets and low-water appliances and drip irrigation, like the rest of us?

Those are just the people who are alive. Now, I’m using my Ouija board to talk to you dead folks—this is your fault, as well. You just lie there in those lush grassy cemeteries.

You in the different California regions need to shoulder the blame. You water-guzzlers in Sacramento are responsible for this drought—you only recently got water meters. And you newlyweds and nearly-deads in Coachella, how dare you keep gardens and lawns in the desert? You Bigfoots up in the far north deforested for decades, messing with the water cycle. And don’t look smug, you hippies in San Francisco and Santa Cruz. Yeah, you use less per household than most of us, but you’re so holier than thou about it that I get all hot and angry, and I have to cool off with an irresponsibly long shower.

You guys in agriculture, in places like the San Joaquin and Imperial valleys, are the biggest villains. The very few of you use as much as 80 percent of the state’s non-environmental water to grow something as unimportant as food. And you farmers are growing all the wrong crops in the wrong places. All those almond groves. Alfalfa. And the cows, drinking 35 gallons a day—Water Moooo-ches, you gals are—to produce the milk, to make the cheese, for all the pizzas Californians eat. When you think about it, you pizza delivery guys are unindicted co-conspirators in the great water heist.

And why do you fishermen insist that some water stay in the rivers and the Bay, when people need it? You’re almost as bad as the fish. Delta smelt, why can’t you be a little tougher, instead of getting all endangered and making people have to do without water because of you? And Mr. Salmon, you say you just need all that fresh water, but don’t we all? And I don’t see you paying any water bills.

And don’t think you’re getting away with this, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Your dream factories have long seduced people to come to this land where anything is possible (and where those people water their lawns). For all your creativity, have your industries figured a way out of this drought? No! The finest executive you guys in Hollywood have ever produced—Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, and his alter ego, actor William Shatner—put his mind to the question, and the best he could do was a plan to build a water pipeline from Seattle that would bankrupt the state. Maybe Spock could have solved the drought, but he died in February.

Of course, I can’t blame the drought entirely on fictional people from the future, especially when I can blame old people from the Delta, whose families have been farming there since the 19th century. You Delta folks just won’t shut up—even after Jerry Brown told you to shut up—and let the governor fix the drought by building his two water-conveying tunnels under your homes and farms.

Now, the drought is also all your fault, Governor Brown, because you won’t listen to anybody. Everyone knows you’re just protecting the farmers against urban demands. Everyone knows you’re just protecting the cities, where the votes are. Everyone knows you’re just protecting your buddies in the environmental movement. You’re a recidivist—you put the state into drought the first time you were governor too! (In 1976 to 77, you can look it up).

While we’re taking about the Browning of California, I blame your dad, too, Pat Brown, for building all this infrastructure that’s not getting us enough water. And I blame Earl Warren, for saving up all that money so Pat could pay for the infrastructure. I want to see you gubernatorial ghosts in my office.

California state government, it’s not just your policies that are letting this drought happen. You federal agencies are totally to blame, too, with your regulations and scientific opinions making it harder to move water around. And you local governments have failed, too. I blame you local water agencies for not moving fast enough to embrace tier-pricing and reduce water use. And I blame you locals for moving to tier-pricing too fast—and attracting lawsuits that will make the drought even harder to manage.

I can’t just blame California governments for this. You coal apologists in Kentucky and West Virginia, and natural gas maniacs in North Dakota, are heating up the earth and making this drought so much worse. You in the Chinese government, you’re making our drought worse with your planet-warming economy based on massive energy use.

Don’t try to hide, nature—I know it’s you, and not humans, who bear most of the responsibility for this. Hey, Colorado River, how could you dry up on us? And I’m looking at you, Sierra Mountains. Yeah, just Sierra. You can’t call yourself Nevada (“snowy”) anymore!

Let’s not forget who is ultimately responsible for the rivers and mountains and existence of the Earth. This drought is all on you, God. Not only do you fail to send California enough water, but also you deluge us with way too many possible culprits for this crisis.

So, if you won’t send us snow and rain, if you won’t convince us to look at our own culpability in this crisis, couldn’t you at least answer our prayers—and give us one clear-cut scapegoat, so we know exactly who to blame?

The post Let’s Play the Drought Blame Game appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.