# Can America shake off its defeatist attitude before its too late? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 22, 2015, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268 "2015-04-22T07:53:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/61 "2015-04-22T20:39:25Z")
[We grow lots of nuts in Georgia](http://www.wherefoodcomesfrom.com/article/303-2942/Pecan-Production-By-State-In-Order-Of-Production#.VTgGBCFViko). We can grow more if you need 'em. Maybe not almonds, but there is plenty of room to expand production of pecans and walnuts. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/62 "2015-04-22T20:40:56Z")
Is this the sort of thing you’re thinking about?: [Nation’s largest ocean desalination plant goes up near San Diego; Future of the California coast? – The Mercury News](http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near) Yeah, San Diego is building a massive desalinization plant. For water for the city. The problem is that the water will be fairly expensive. Farmers in the Central Valley would go broke if they tried to build a desalinization plant to provide water for irrigation, because the cost of the water would exceed the value of the crops. This is what people can’t seem to understand. Yes, we can build desalinization plants, or even, god forbid, giant pipelines carrying water from thousands of miles away. What we can’t do is build a desalination plant or a pipeline that can provide water for nearly free. That shit costs money. If you need the water to drink, or flush your toilet, you pay the high prices for the water. If you’re planning on dumping that water on your fields, growing a crop, and then selling the crop, the value of the crop has to be higher than the costs, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. So cities can build desal plants for city water, and the residents can grumble but if there’s no alternative they just pay the price. But almond growers can’t just pay whatever price for water because they have to make a profit. As for why the almond growers in particular are getting beat up, it’s because tree crops take a long time to mature, and you can’t just not water them one year, because the trees will die. If you grow cucumbers and you can’t get enough water, you just don’t grow anything this year and let the fields go dry. But if you’ve got a tree crop that took years to reach maturity, you need to water them enough that you don’t lose your trees. And so tree crop farmers are screaming. But at least almonds are a high value crop, not like alfalfa. As for shipping water to California from Washington, we’re facing a drought here. We have about a quarter of our usual snowpack. [Washington State Is So Screwed – Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/washington-state-drought-apples-snowmelt). So don’t expect any water from Washington. See, the thing is, we can bring water to the places we grow crops, or we can grow crops in places where the water already is. Which one makes the most sense? ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/63 "2015-04-22T20:44:22Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The rest of the country still has much to learn about this issue. I’m already realizing its much more complex than I first thought. Much of the rest of the country is well aware of water issues in California and elsewhere. Not sure why you thought this was as simple issue to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/64 "2015-04-22T20:47:17Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > If you think water is, or ever has been, a back-burner issue in California, you’re just dead wrong. > > Aside from the current drought, water use has been a very hot and divisive topic in California for literally decades. And the politicians have done nothing, for decades. They could have built reservoirs or desalination plants decades ago but they didn’t want to spend the money on that because then they wouldn’t have enough for their pet projects like high speed trains that aren’t actually high speed and that no one will use. Since the farmers switched over to crops that are more profitable and require more water they’ve had the money to buy off the politicians like they did with Gov. Dumb-dumb and why in his plan to have everyone conserve water the farmers don’t have to. So the rest of us have to conserve 25% of the 20% we use. So his plan is for the sheeple to save all of 5% of water usage and nothing else changes. Politicians don’t care about the future. Once they are out of office it’s the next guys problem. As long as they get their sweet bribes they’ll retire with their millions and mansions and be living the good life the rest of their days. The only real solutions are to force the farmers to grow lower water usage crops or start building reservoirs and desalination plants and maybe in a decade we’ll be ok. If we do the first thing those crops will just get grown in some other part of the US but then the politicians won’t get their bribes and they don’t want to spend the money for the second solution. So nothing happens and Gov. Dumb-dumb keeps making stupid proclamations about non-solutions and looking like the idiot he is. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/65 "2015-04-22T20:49:41Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > No. Ultrapure water is not good for drinking. Spoken like someone who drank the Dihydrogen Monoxide! OP’s rant about defeatism reminds me of this exchange between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, [as reported in a reputed historical source](https://comicsagogo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/asterix-and-cleopatra-001.jpg?w=490&h=602): **Caesar:** You have to face the facts, O Queen! Yours is a decadent nation, only fit to live in semi-slavery under the Romans. **Cleopatra:** My people built the pyramids! The Tower of Pharos! The temples – The obelisks! **Caesar:** That’s old hat! All they can do now is wait for the annual flooding of the Nile! **Cleopatra:** THAT WILL DO! ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/66 "2015-04-22T21:00:26Z")
Some\* say that California has experienced an unusually temperate climate in the past 50 - 100 years and that it’s a historically much more arid area of the country. So one can argue that it’s the farmers and agricultural industry that has been short sighted. So perhaps they’ve simply enjoyed a run of luck that’s now drying up. \*An environmental scientist of note on NPR this week, whose name I can’t recall. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/67 "2015-04-22T21:12:31Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yeah, San Diego is building a massive desalinization plant. For water for the city. The problem is that the water will be fairly expensive. Farmers in the Central Valley would go broke if they tried to build a desalinization plant to provide water for irrigation, because the cost of the water would exceed the value of the crops. Which brings us to this lovely little graphic. [Cost of food as a percentage of income.](http://wsm.wsu.edu/researcher/wsmaug11_billions.pdf) For those who don’t want to click on the link, the US is at 6.8%, Canada 9.1%, Italy 14.4%, China 33.9%, Kenya 44.9%. Basically life sustaining food is at an all time low in terms of cost of effort to obtain in most first world countries. Which is great, until it isn’t. The problem with that is that we’ve come to expect it. We’ve come to believe that it’s our right to eat limes in the middle of winter and by god they better be cheap. And the real cost of producing that food is not included in the price tag we pay at the grocery store. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/68 "2015-04-22T21:44:06Z")
Maybe we don’t have to grow so much of our food in California. According to this chart, agriculture and mining combined make up only 2% of California’s GDP. > **[Economy of California | Agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California#Agriculture)** > > Compared to other states, California has a large agriculture industry (including fruit, vegetables, dairy, and wine production), The total economic contribution is likely more than double this value (see below). Airborne exports of perishable fruits and vegetables amounted to approximately $579 million in 2007. By way of comparison, California exported more agricultural products by air that year than 23 other states did by all modes of transport, though its agriculture is somewhat According to th... This article talks about quite viable alternatives. > **[There's a place that's nearly perfect for growing food. It's not California.](https://www.motherjones.com/food/2015/04/decalifornify-cotton-vegetables-fruit-south/)** > > All part of my grand scheme to de-Californify the US fruit and vegetable supply. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/69 "2015-04-23T01:31:58Z")
Ludicrous engineering thought experiments are fun. What’s a good starting point for calculating installation costs and energy requirements for piping Very Large Volumes of water of long distances? I never learned the fluid dynamics very well, and mostly only think about compressible fluids these days. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/70 "2015-04-23T01:32:09Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > It tastes icky. So freeze it in chunks and then put it in whiskey. Problem solved. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/71 "2015-04-23T01:36:45Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > So freeze it in chunks and then put it in whiskey. Problem solved. :eek: I think this one is onto something. My recommendation is that we conduct science. Right now. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/72 "2015-04-23T01:56:01Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Here’s a suggestion: have all the horses in California killed and sold to France as meat. Their alfalfa consumption means [they consume 7% of all irrigation water](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/24/opinion/la-oe-madison-horses-20110824) in the state. Bottled water is a heck of a lot more useful than a stupid horse. I have a better idea. Stop growing all the vegetables I don’t like. Just a waste of water. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/73 "2015-04-23T02:12:57Z")
As I type this, America has a vehicle tooling around on Mars and a spacecraft orbiting Ceres. Defeatist, no-can-do bastards. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/74 "2015-04-23T02:16:19Z")
Would the OP be agreeable to turning to renewable energy sources to reverse the climate changes that are affecting places like California? > [@aceplace57](#): > > The US has been coasting along for too damn long. Nearly all our infrastructure was built by the sweat and blood of our great-great-grandfathers and great grandfathers. Giants of industry built the railroads. Refined oil, built the dams, the bridges and the roads. Men of vision designed and built the TVA and all the nation’s power plants. That infrastructure is crumbling and our country is too impotent and lazy to do anything about it. Why do people constantly say this? They’ve been talking about our “infrastructure crumbling” for the last 30 years that I can remember. And yet, I always seem to be able to manage to get in a car, airplane or train and take it to wherever I need to go anywhere in the country. They always seem to be constantly working on and expanding the highways or replacing bridges up here in the Northeast. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/75 "2015-04-23T02:51:17Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Why do people constantly say this? They’ve been talking about our “infrastructure crumbling” for the last 30 years that I can remember. If a certain type of infrastructure lasts 50 years on average, they should be replacing 2% a year. If a certain type of infrastructure lasts 33 years on average, they should be replacing 3% a year. If a certain type of infrastructure lasts 25 years on average, they should be replacing 4% a year. They are not meeting these numbers. Instead they a building up a big backlog of projects which need to be done. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/76 "2015-04-23T03:11:09Z")
**PastTense** : exactly so. Our roads, bridges, canals, streets, and pipelines are crumbling – because everything man-made begins to crumble the day it is first deployed for use. We have a number of Mississippi River bridges which are dangerously decayed, where inspection teams can count the missing bolt-heads, but for which maintenance budgets have been cut or eliminated. In the middle of a water crisis, Los Angeles is famous for water-main breakage and mid-city-street geysers. The pipes are ancient, and are only being repaired or replaced as they break, not in an intelligent pattern of preventive maintenance. Now, as for the potholes in our streets… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/77 "2015-04-23T10:14:24Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > I have a better idea. Stop growing all the vegetables I don’t like. Just a waste of water. I’ll get behind that. I was mostly joking with my comment of course. The right solution is to price the water correctly. In all probability, that _would_ mean fewer horses (among other things). But no one has to pick favorites if everyone pays the same price. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/78 "2015-04-23T12:04:29Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Some agricultural interests, for example, were granted water rights many decades ago at prices that are ridiculously low … How difficult would it be to abrogate those contracts? If nothing, else, couldn’t “eminent domain” be applied? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/79 "2015-04-23T12:49:35Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Spoken like someone who drank the Dihydrogen Monoxide! > > OP’s rant about defeatism reminds me of this exchange between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, [as reported in a reputed historical source](https://comicsagogo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/asterix-and-cleopatra-001.jpg?w=490&h=602): > **Caesar:** You have to face the facts, O Queen! Yours is a decadent nation, only fit to live in semi-slavery under the Romans. > **Cleopatra:** My people built the pyramids! The Tower of Pharos! The temples – The obelisks! > **Caesar:** That’s old hat! All they can do now is wait for the annual flooding of the Nile! > **Cleopatra:** THAT WILL DO! Lovely nose, though. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268/80 "2015-04-23T14:57:21Z")
I think I have read the entire thread and no one has mentioned that in order to carry out the infrastructure maintenance necessary, they will have to be paid for. In taxes most likely and no one is willing to raise taxes. Wait till a bridge falls down or a major dam bursts. The Tappan Zee bridge had a design life of 50 years (to save money of course) and is now 60 years and crumbling. They have shorn it up to some extent and are now building a replacement, but the replacement should have begun 15 years ago. The Brooklyn Bridge, now well over 125 years old and very heavily used, is holding up quite well. The G. Washington, Golden Gate, B. Franklin Bridges, all built 80-90 years ago are doing fine. They were built. Getting back to California water, I recently read that they can clean and reuse waste water quite successfully. What they need is a change in the law to make it legal and also get people past the EEW factor. What do they think happens in nature? I have also read, as mentioned upthread, that this drought might be more or less permanent. The history is that Cal has, except for the recent past, mostly had a drier climate. And the effects of climate warming, currently unknown, might exacerbate (or, conceivably ameloriate, but do you want to count on it?) the problem. Politicians, more cocerned with getting elected that solving problems, will not worry about anything that will happen more than four years in the future. (Actually, that is not entirely true. I once read a fascinating article about how NYC has been rebuilding its water pipeline for the past 20 years or so and expect to be finished in about five more years. I commend them.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-shake-off-its-defeatist-attitude-before-its-too-late/718268.md?page=5)