Re:Arizona’s dry future begins as Colorado River shrinks
by PaulDavisThe1st on Saturday April 23, 2022 @10:34PM
(#31140781)
I really enjoyed the book. I live in New Mexico.
It's a little unclear to me how realistic the scenario painted there is, for the simple reason that the main problem with water in the US southwest is commercial agriculture, which uses 75% or more of all the water in these areas. This is the result of ideas promulgated in the first 3-4 decades of the 20th century (the Bureau of Reclamation) which touted the idea of a garden paradise, based largely on the unusually wet couple of decades that had just happened.
If you eliminated commercial agriculture in the US southwest (let's conveniently pretend that this doesn't cover the Central Valley of CA), there's plenty of water for everything else, even in the middle of the worst drought in 1200 years.
The book doesn't appear to deal with this very well. Still, great story and very imaginative.
[ EDIT: one idea I did really like in the book was the part about the federal government allowing states to ban inter-state migration, so that the "Zoners" (people from AZ) could not move, and would effectively become refugees within their own state and nation ]
It's a little unclear to me how realistic the scenario painted there is, for the simple reason that the main problem with water in the US southwest is commercial agriculture, which uses 75% or more of all the water in these areas. This is the result of ideas promulgated in the first 3-4 decades of the 20th century (the Bureau of Reclamation) which touted the idea of a garden paradise, based largely on the unusually wet couple of decades that had just happened.
If you eliminated commercial agriculture in the US southwest (let's conveniently pretend that this doesn't cover the Central Valley of CA), there's plenty of water for everything else, even in the middle of the worst drought in 1200 years.
The book doesn't appear to deal with this very well. Still, great story and very imaginative.
[ EDIT: one idea I did really like in the book was the part about the federal government allowing states to ban inter-state migration, so that the "Zoners" (people from AZ) could not move, and would effectively become refugees within their own state and nation ]