Climate models predict a continuation of the trends we’ve been seeing in many countries: heat waves happening more often and more intensely, longer and more severe droughts owing to decreased precipitation, wildfires as a consequence of long-term dry spells, and water stress for both urban and rural populations as well as for agriculture. Nowhere are these trends more in evidence than in the American West. The extraordinary engineering that has gone into making the West prosperous is at risk. (I blogged about the landmark history of water policy and politics in the West, Cadillac Desert, here in September.) Continue reading
Tag Archives: California
Water in the American West – Demand-Side Management
I wrote about Cadillac Desert, the classic book about water in the American West, in September. Scores of millions of people depend on the waterworks that were built up over the 20th Century there, and many millions more benefit from the bounty of fruits and vegetables that grow there, much of it in California, where agriculture accounts for 80% of overall use. The story of Cadillac Desert, though, is that there has been a tremendous price paid for all that concrete, steel, energy, and the treasure needed to build and operate the waterworks. Environmental destruction has been catastrophic, lives were lost when dams broke, thousands of small farmers and their communities were destituted because the water too often benefited Big Ag, and the American taxpayer was bilked out of billions over time. Continue reading
Can Trump Destroy the Paris Agreement and Thus the Earth’s Climate System?
I have a Spanish friend who likes to use the expression: “Is complicate.” When it comes to the climate crisis, the transition to clean energy, and international politics one can safely say: “Is complicate.” I tried to convey a real sense of optimism in my book, A Newer World, and some of the hopeful trends I identified then have proven even more robust than I could have imagined at the time I was researching and writing it. We are spending a great deal of money, globally, on clean tech, and that’s only going to continue. Continue reading