If you believe, as I do, in the risks of climate change, then we are indeed on the cutting edge… we’re not going to flood, like Bangladesh, but we rely on the Sierra snowpack to store our water for summer. It’s a big deal; without it, the snow that falls (even if the amount doesn’t change) just rushes to the sea in a near-immediate snowmelt, so the current situation is worth a few hundred dams.
Lest you think I’m just another panic-spreading liberal, here’s some red meat for the other side: many of our water problems would be immediately addressed if we just made water a fully free-market, tradable, commodity. We’d allocate it efficiently to the most economically useful use. Of course, farms growing alfalfa in the desert with government subsidies don’t like that idea… (but the Bass brothers do… they’ve been buying up Imperial Valley farms, waiting for the day they can sell off the water rights and turn the land back into desert).
Desalination?? Har har har… and perhaps Chinese investors will buy those BBB- MBS bonds and propel more no-doc clients into their first $700K homes… (whoops I forgot my own advice to play nice… better go now…)
