Introducing - the $500 Shower!

 

 

"How could the Golden State turn into the state of confusion and denial?"

Sometimes I really do wonder how smart Americans are. Oh, we can do great things. We can do things that dazzle the imagination. And then there is dumb. There are no boundaries on how dumb we can be. Responding to, and preparing for, the drought in California is a perfect example of dumb. And because of that, we are stuck with a $500 shower.

How in the world did we get here? How did the Golden State, the state which gave us Hollywood, Yosemite, the Sequoias, the San Joaquin Valley, wine country, and on and on, become so destitute?

This will surprise many of my friends. As much as I think Governor Moonbeam (not ours - theirs) is a goof, I am not going to fault him for what he is doing. He had no choice. Water, we are finding out, is a finite resource. California has been living on borrowed time for years. They knew what they could do to increase the supply of water in that arid state. And yet the "greenies", hold extraordinary power in that state. They put a halt to most of them. So now we are where we are.

In my morning post, I discussed Yucca Mountain. Different issue, same problem. Rather than fix the issue, plan for the issue, we have opted for "crisis management". In other words, we will wait until things get really crappy like in California and then initiate $500 showers. Whether it is with our electric grid, our nuclear waste, our coal industry, our water management, our whatever - we are suck. We practice dumb.

In California the citizens are being asked to hoard water like gold. Meanwhile, the nut farmers are getting off cheap. On the radio today, is was reported that every almond in California takes a gallon of fresh water just to get them ready for market. Walnuts take five gallons. And that is after all the water it takes to grow them. Water should be a commodity. It should have a cost. Water needs to be harvested from the sea, from run off, from where ever. Now water is a scarce and valuable resource which is being rationed. It is being rationed due to a lack of planning. And the citizens, the tourism, will suffer.

To my friends who live in or want to visit California, get used to it. This is a crisis which was caused by poor and lousy planning. It is time for us (collectively) to get smart. To get with it. Our lack of planning will keep $500 showers with us for a while. This lack of planning will lead to more painful remedies. I just hope it will not be with everything...