As with anything, there is a happy medium. We need enough water, but not too much or too little. Humans do tend to congregate around rivers and lakes and oceans.
There is a lot of water in So Cal. It's called the Pacific Ocean. There are numerous methods of desalination; local and state governments need to invest in such because building hundreds more miles of canals to tap distant natural sources of water is no longer viable. Desalination is perfectly viable, not horribly expensive when done on scale, but surely more expensive than current "cheap" sources of potable water. Water is essential to life, who's to say what is expensive when it comes to a life-sustaining resource?
Said it before, I will say it again - it is simple math; the population keeps growing, the supply is finite and with water, actually diminishing as we pollute and use the supply of potable water. More people, same or less amount of water, equals less water per person. This trend is not changing. At some point, we run out of water as a whole, for some not insignificant number of people, they are already running out of water and droughts/etc. just show how close the rest of us are to the abyss.
As many have said, the only solution to the problem will be natural equilibrium. The population is growing because there is still enough water for the average human to survive and reproduce. Long before we completely "run-out" of water, the population growth will slow and then plateau as water shortages lead to shorter life-spans and less reproduction!
I'm not sure what you mean by cubic acre, When discussing water, there are acre feet and there are cubic feet.
A very interesting factoid and analysis! Most people are unaware of the total water consumption required to produce just about anything!
Yea, I have no idea how I confused cubic acres to gallons. Oh, I know, to make a point.
Not exactly accurate. There are rivers and natural bodies of water. There's not enough annual rainfall to make them flow. There's also a ton of dams along the Colorado & other rivers.
100% on point. Golf courses are absolutely horrible for a lot of reasons.
Start asking for volunteers to willingly off themselves and their families of course! HahaAny solutions?
In the long run there won't be no asking. Har
A better solution:
Southern California has a number of ground water aquifer basins. Which have been under management since 1959. In the 1940's and 50's, flood control projects paved over many of the seasonal rivers. Lately, work has been undertaken to restore sections of some rivers to help recharge aquifers with storm runoff. This is part of an overall management plan, each little piece of which is a good idea. But the population load on So. Calif. is such that effective management of local resources will never be adequate. Hence the need for other sources of potable water. Which up until now has been importation from distant regions which historically had surpluses. The adequacy of that is coming to an end. New solutions will have to be found. Money will have to be spent.
burn the golf courses to the ground?Any solutions?
Indeed. We cannot increase or decrease the amount of water on planet earth. Less water here means more there. It does not rain salt water, so clearly there is no crisis with fresh flowing into salt. The world would have perished from salinity eons ago if that was the case.
