Almond farms aren't the only food plants that use way too much water for the number of calories of food raised. Of course animal protein (beef, pork, chicken, lamb, etc.) also wastes a lot of water compared to vegetable food.
How about air? If Goldman-Sacks corners the market on oxygen and you're not rich enough to ventilate your family... oh well, they're not a charity. How is it even acceptable to think of rain as private property? Name two. And which two regulations will Trump strike down to make which one regulation for water sale? (We already know) It's not a valid one. First: fossil deposits play no active role in global climate- and eco-systems, the disruption of which causes global catastrophes. Second: petroleum not a necessity of life for all plants and animals. Third: The commercial acquisition, transport and distribution of oil has caused an immense amount of ecological damage, extinctions, death, illness, hardship, dislocation, war and other strife, as well as costing the taxpayers of many nations uncounted $millions, because the cleanup and fallout is usually evaded by the profit-maker. Fourth: The widespread use of fossil fuel causes incalculable damage to the planet and its occupants; the widespread use of water does not. No way any non-profit organizations, even a very badly run one, could have made this big a mess of it! Not far enough!
In fact, far more. Alfalfa takes more water than almonds here - and it takes a lot of alfalfa to produce a pound of meat.
Almonds - that is, the trees that haven't already dried up or been bulldozed - brings revenue to the state. That revenue is tied to other factors than caloric value. Of course they should be grown in more hospitable locales, and of course all food production could be a 1000% more sensible. But the water trees use doesn't get polluted or degraded: it keeps participating in the life cycle. Swimming pools are unnecessary, contribute nothing to the commonwealth - especially these http://blog.intheswim.com/21-lavish-celebrity-swimming-pools/ and are too full of chemicals to be cycled back into the city mains without extensive filtering. Besides, I said vegetables, not almond crops. If small farmers have to buy water, they are ruined - it is that simple.
If people could get over their innate distaste for eating insects, that may be the way to go in the future for creating cheap, good protein. I've had a few cricket candy bars and they tasted OK to me -- but they are still damn expensive here in the US. Not sure how much water is used to raise crickets but it can't be too bad.
Well, they bring revenue to farmers. I guess you could argue that they bring revenue to the state via taxes (as do swimming pools.) That's certainly true - and is also true of swimming pools. All that water that gets lost from pools ends up in the air, where it falls somewhere else as rain. Agreed that they are unnecessary. They do, however, contribute both to state income and the water cycle. Drive through El Centro some day. You will see a lot of farmers growing vegetables in the desert who have not been "ruined."
You're too late. Farmers, property-owners and city governments have all but eliminated insect life in North America. There isn't enough for the birds to eat; there is certainly no surplus for humans. So far. What's the price of a gallon? That quoted remark of mine "The billionnaire's swimming pool gets filled before the small farmer's vegetables get a drop." was in response to the proposition that private ownership of water by multinational financial institutions will be beneficial, through better management. That is, in a future where water is a commodity at "market value", profit, not social benefit, will dictate the priorities of distribution. I have no particular objection to swimming pools, if you have the water to spare and the recycling facility to clean it. If it's draining all the inland rivers, that's a problem. Evaporation is fine, and does help the people in the immediate vicinity of a pool, but it's not full participation in the cycle: if that water were evaporating off a tree, it would also be cleaning the air, producing oxygen and contributing to the health of subterranean life and other vegetation. If vast quantities of water are brought artificially - diesel truck? metal pipe? dams? - to a desert, where it evaporates more rapidly off large stationary surfaces, the system is disrupted at two, three or four points, and the results are hard to calculate. It's not simple and it's not okay.
I suppose you don't run a car, then. Or use any plastic items in your house. Or fly anywhere, ever. Etc etc. Spare me the sanctimony. People that try to blame the oil industry for our consumption of oil and its side-effects always put me in mind of an alcoholic trying to blame the barman for his problem.
Ah you knucklehead, I'm not talking about "hunting" or "gathering" insects. Jeez, how stupid is that? I'm talking about growing them, breeding them in controlled insect factories. You're a silly man Jeeves. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Uh oh. If the multinationals can sell that line we're in real trouble. If the disasters - war, famine, disease, death - inflicted on the world by the economics and politics of oil production and distribution is our model for good management of a commodity, we're completely fucked with water. In dealing with a commons - which water, unlike oil, is - free market allocation does not work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons noted that, game theory has put a solid foundation under the common observation, and it's not a lesson we need to learn over and over and over in a society with, like, books and internets and stuff.
It's done. http://www.globalresearch.ca/privat...y-rather-than-a-universal-human-right/5378483 "The director of a global advocacy group called Corporate Accountability International, Shayda Naficy, pointed out that 75% of expenses for running a water utility company should go to infrastructure. In nation after nation private companies have placed the priority of making a profit over the need to invest in necessary infrastructure to connect and adequately service water customers. In efforts to maximize cost efficiency as well as profits, water prices invariably go up and fast become out of reach for poorest customers. Cutting off the water supply to thousands of low income families unable to pay for their rising costs has become the all too frequent inevitable result. The World Bank’s 34 percent failure rate for all private water and sewerage contracts between 2000 and 2010 far surpasses its single digit failure rates in the telecommunications, energy and transportation industries."
@Jeeves Here's an insect farm right in your home province. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://entomofarms.com/ Here's a food/water ratio calculator: http://entomofarms.com/future-of-food/#howmuch A video of entomo farms, Ontario, Canada:
Well it was not me that started a huge moan about the supposed iniquities of the oil industry, it was you. But back to water, I very much doubt that you can point to a working example of the efficient international distribution of an important global commodity, managed by a non-profit agency. Can you?
As with Jeeves, I'd like to see your proposal, based on a working example, for how you would do it. It is one thing to moan about the shortcomings for how a thing is done, it is something else to actually come up with a better alternative that works in practice. The lesson of socialism seems to be clear, from Russia and the former east bloc. Market economies are far more efficient and far better at giving the populace what they want than central control by the state. If you have a 3rd alternative system, I'd be intrigued to see an example of it.
For farmers with old water rights it's almost free, and if they don't use it, they lose it. That's why small farmers in El Centro have catfish farms. In the desert. (The water market in California is pretty f*cked up.) Latest costs I heard were about .005 cents a gallon for farmers with water rights, which is far less than it costs to pump there. To some degree (i.e. agriculture) correct. However, water suppliers to the general public are public utilities, and there the cost is set by the government (i.e. public utilities commissions.) OK. Yes. People vastly disrupt the natural hydrosphere. (A very big example in California is the Salton Sea.)
Merely responding to your analogy between water and oil, which was invalid on four counts. It still is. Characterizing an accurate description as a huge moan doesn't make the analogy more valid. bold added - problem defined Only every relatively honest city and town council in the world. As billvon pointed out that's how it works now. As my last link showed, the private utilities are far less efficient and more expensive. Once they have a monopoly, all bets are off.
International distribution? Town councils? Because the issue is one of whole countries that will be short and others that are in surplus. We will need transnational trading (or supply) of water.
Yes. I think when fresh water in the future becomes scarce (expensive) it will be piped, trucked, transported by train, shipped in tankers, etc., just like oil is now.
Water is a commons. If you allocate its use by free market, for profit agency, it will in most cases be irrecoverably damaged and diminished as a resource. What lesson would that be? That all the well-run watershed and aquifer management agencies set up by communities on the planet that have ever done a good job of managing that common resource should be sold to Exxon? Prediction: The capitalist insurgency in the old USSR will not cause the abandonment of the irrigation diversions that starved the Aral Sea, and restore good management to that watershed. There's too much money in cotton and irrigated produce. Says the guy advocating for something of which there has never been a long-term working example, and theory says can't work anyway. The way the Great Lakes have been managed so far beats anything we've ever seen from private water management - that's a low bar, but still. California's setups have been corrupted by corporate interests of course, but otherwise they seem to "work" ok as well. There are quite a few working river and lake management setups on this planet - select your favorite, and build from there, would be my advice. Tell you what, though: I'd support the commodification and market allocation of all fresh water that is actually produced, manufactured or extracted, via capitalist investment. Desalinated, in other words, using privately funded and built desalination plants.
