Turn it around, why would you begrudge us fruit and movies and stuff?
I don’t. I love that you buy what we produce! I love that California and Californians are the best in the world at so many things and that the market recognizes that! And I love that California draws from the country, and the world at large more than its fair share of the most driven and ambitious and innovative people!
I am suggesting that if people make comments that they really haven’t thought through closely, suggesting policies that would affect the CA economy, that there would be some personal experience and consequences.
In particular, suggesting that Californians don’t deserve water is foolish. Probably no one on earth is more efficient at turning the investment of water into broader economic value, or at continuing to squeeze out increasing efficiencies than Californians.
So when you hear people say the US could do without California, or Californians, I encourage you to think if that is really true or not, because some people are very sincere when they say it. I just want to list some of the very real, tangible, daily benefits we all have and acquire from California and Californians that are not replaceable. We have them in large part because of our shared investment in providing water to California. A proposal to take away the water is a proposal to take away much of what you hold dear in your own life, that can’t be moved elsewhere or replaced.
Basically, because it’s already being drained by the states in the Eastern US.
The tone of your posts is what makes me say “don’t take it personally”.
What I’m getting at is that it is beginning to look as though doing it that way is not going to be sustainable in the long run. The idea is to begin changing things so that we’re not pushing so hard against natural processes (like the amount of rainfall a region gets).
The amount of water which California currently imports from other states is a done deal. I’m simply saying that it’s not a good idea to import more.
People talk bad about my state too, I agree that it’s rude to do so.
IMO it’s time for the U.S. to rethink all of this. Is it necessary for me to eat tomatoes every month of the year? Probably not. Is it necessary for me to eat salsa? Probably not.
I’m not a good one to ask about that, because I don’t eat grapes or oranges. I’m not disagreeing about the % fruits, nuts and vegetables produced by California. I’m saying it’s time to take a look at the amount of imported water it requires and decide if that is something we (as a country) want to keep doing.
Who said anything about doing away with California or Californians? 
I disagree. Check out this map of annual rainfall. Lots of states east of the Mississippi have sufficient rainfall for growing things without lots of irrigation.
I think everyone could do a lot better in terms of eating local produce. If there is some vegtable/fruit which doesn’t grow here, I will eat something else which does. If it is out of season I’ll wait until it is back in season. That’s not a scary idea to me.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting Californians don’t deserve water. I’m not saying the US could do without California or Californians.
I do think that water use should be looked at - no matter which state it’s being used in. That hard decisions need to be made about the way we (as a country) are going about doing things. It isn’t ‘a proposal to take away the water’. It’s a proposal to figure out how best we should be using and distributing water.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
people have proposed draining our lakes for decades. The Great Lakes states and Canada join together to stop it. Water diverted from the Great Lakes Basin past a certain volume has to be replaced later. Move to to where there is water or reduce your usage. We have enough trouble with our water tables depleting already.
I would be if my wife would let me. Washed down with sweet, sweet lake water 
When people give up the swimming pools and fountains and lawns and golf courses and all those other things out in the middle of the desert, I’ll start worrying about the poor strawberries and avocados.
OK fair enough!
So that would mean some sort of hard population control already in some regions - how do you propose to do that? How do you propse to reduce the overall population rto reduce pressures? How do you propose that our economy compete in the world with less people? We are already less than 40% the size of both China and India, and they are graduating experts at a rate far faster than us…our competitive advantage is our efficiency, how will we maintain that by changing the way we grow food because we don’t have the will to store or move water?
So rather than grow the most productive, innovative, and nourishing parts of our economy, you are wiling to settle for less? Hmmm…
Once again, I am not talking about FRESH tomatoes, but the processed, canned kind. You would make pizza (e.g.) a seasonal food? Or even a rare one if there are no tomatoes for packing after meeting seasonal demand for fresh? Same for ketchup? :dubious:
What would you do with the water instead? Send it to Phoenix, where they grow nothing? Innovate nothing? Import nothing?
Talk about limiting water is tantamount to that. It places severe economic constraints on growth or even sustenance.
Access to water is not all that is needed for farming, nor is it sufficient. I have been attending the largest Farm Show in the country the last few years, the operations and conditions, and frankly money here are the envy of farmers nationwide and worldwide.
Oh did I mention how few CA farmers take subsidies to NOT grow stuff? If other places could grow what we grow profitably, why don’t they do that rather than take money to fallow their land?
Not a scary idea? have you implemented it? You will never eat a carrot that is not local? Not a lettuce? Not an apple? not a peach? not a celery? Not a potato? You won’t eat herbs or spices not grown locally? No sauces not made from local i ingredients? No milk or dairy products? No bread not made from local wheat? No juices? No rice? No strawberries? No meat if you go that way?
Good luck with that, let me know how it works out. I don’t know where you live, but I bet you will be mighty hungry a lot of the time. It might be healthy in the summer, but come winter in most of the country you are going to have a very subsistence diet indeed in most of the US.
I think you are mistaking California, which is responsible for dellivering a very very large chunk of yoru food supply in a place with very few lawns and pools (as a look outside my door will tell me) with someplace like AZ or even Vegas, which provides essentially 0% of your food supply.
And btw, I bet the midwest growing beek takes more water per calorie or per meal or whatever at your plate than food grown in CA does, and as I said, the midwest is as dry or dryer than CA is - google “Oglalla Aquifer” and see how water supplies there are dwindling at a scary rate. It does not rain nearly enough to replace the rate farmers there are using it up, and its depletion is precisely why the Great Lakes look interesting as a water supply - the ground water is disappearing.
I take it that the waters of the Great Lakes are not static but dynamic. Water flows into it and water flows out of it. Taking water from it will mean less water going out. Introducing water into it means more water going out and may affect the amount of water going in from traditional sources.
On Oahu, tapping the waters of the natural aquifers had the unfortunate effect of less water flowing into one of the largest bays in Hawaii - Kaneohe. Thus Kaneohe Bay is no longer the beauty it was. The size reduced as the mud and sediment that would naturally flush out, now clog it.
So what’s your problem? California is so rich that it should have no problem buying all the water it needs. Or is the rest of the country supposed to just donate the water because your state is so wonderful?
No one is building CA its own special pipeline.
Go complain to the other states for ruining your chances if you think CA is innocent of water misuse.
I can’t speak for the view out your door but a brief survey of Los Angeles via Google Maps satellite shows all sorts of lawns and pools. Maybe you can ask them for a cup of water for your avocados before you come tapping at our door 
We do buy water we import. And we return more than its value to every American citizen many times over. Other desert states may not be able to make both those claims, I am talking to you Utah, Arizona, and possibly Nevada.
It was suggested in this thread (and elsewhere) that California simply not be allowed to have water it does not already have, at any price.
My “problem” as you call it, is that this is a knee-jerk reaction - that few people realize how much of their diet and other aspects of their day to day lives are imports from California, and are consumed regularly, and hence must be re-produced. You can’t simply say no water for California without hitting yourself in the head.
The people with the most to lose from this might be those in the Niagara Falls/Buffalo area. Not only would the removal of water on the scale required for agriculture lower the level of the falls and thus tourism but would also lower the amount of water available for power generation. (Unless of course Canada cooporated in diverting rivers south but that’s crazy talk.)
I don’t have a proposal for population control (wish I did). My point is these are issues which need to be brought to the table and discussed. The “will” to move water? What about when we get to the point where we can’t afford to move water? Should we not be talking about this before we get to that point?
Yes, I’d settle for less, if it meant gaining sustainability.
I don’t care if pizza or ketchup are seasonal. Do you not see that for centuries people lived without all this produce from California? I don’t know why you’re fixated on California being the only answer.
That’s something we (as a country) should be discussing. I don’t have an instant answer.
IMO, continued growth is not a sustainable model.
Right now it might be cheaper to grow all this in California. As energy and water costs rise it won’t stay that way, IMO.
Certainly we could work towards that. Of course one couldn’t just stop the current processes and jump on the ‘local’ train. Again, this is something people should be talking about. Continuing down the current path isn’t going to work out IMO.
I live in Mississippi. A great many things grow here. People have lived off of their truck gardens for generations. What to do for tomatoes in winter? Eat the ones you canned.
This isn’t about California bashing. This is about a limited resource, and what is the optimum way to use it.
ETA: This obviously was a typo: *I bet the midwest growing beek *. What did you mean?
not_alice it seems to me that no one would argue that California’s agricultural sector produces excellent and desirable products. But California’s a big, diverse state.
What I believe people are referencing when they “rag on California” is SoCal. While a vast majority(77%) of California’s total water usage is for agricultural purposes, 54% of the water usage in southern California is used to support the vast urban sprawl of LA and its neighbors, the vast majority of whom don’t produce jack shit(at least not jack shit that couldn’t be easily produced elsewhere). That entire area exists unnaturally; without importing water from neighboring states SoCal would quickly return to the desert it used to be.
We have internal issues regarding allocation of water for ag and non-ag uses.
But pools in and of themselves are not wasteful, no more so than water sitting in a reservoir. I will suggest that urban use of water in CA is far less wasteful than anyplace else in the US, east of the Rockies anyway. many if not most of the lawns you see use reclaimed water, and of those that don’t, the amount is not really that much in the scheme of things. I rent, and would tear my lawn out in a heartbeat if I owned, but even so, I am confident that watering my yard uses less water than a family of 5 in the East would use for showers, flushing, and cooking over and above what they would use if they had CA style plumbing.
The difference being that they’re not trying to take water from thousands of miles away.
Sorry, I don’t see turf lawns, swimming pools and golf courses in the desert as defensible when you’re trying to reach across the nation and take their water to support your needs. Even if you do make nifty movies (and a lot of crap ones).
Of course cost is a factor. Some here are simply saying no without looking at alternatives. Or understanding where their food comes from, and water’s relationship to their not being hungry every day.
Define sustainability? I am thinking about the continued operation of an innovative economy that is the envy of the world and feeds 300million plus so far (and growing).
If you envision a return to an agrarian economy of 1830, where we spent a very high part of our GNP simply to grow food for each other, well, let’s be up front about that. Because our population was maybe 20% of what it is now back then. it might be romantic to think of, but practically, a lot of people will go hungry and even die.
Even if we can pull that off and feed people, wqe will have little left for the other things that make us great, and then we are sitting ducks for others before too long.
See above, if you want that economy of centuries ago, then say so.
But the price of food is very elastic - reduce the supply while not changing the demand, and you have big issues.
Plus, you just wiped out about 100,000 pizza shops in the US (rough guess) by fiat because now they don’t have sauce because CA doesn’t have water to grow tomatoes - that can’t be good for anyone anywhere!
Well, then you are left with either standing still or shrinking. I haven’t ever heard a serious proposal for either of those, so…
I am suggesting most of it CAN"T be grown elsewhere in the US, for a variety of reasons - soil, expertise, other demands on resources, water is not the driving factor.
We will simply buy from other places in the world that can grow each crop. We already do that to a large extent. I don’t know the specifics off the top of my head but I bet that imports on fresh veggies and fruits (other than corn and maybe potatoes and a few others) matches if not exceeds that which is grown in the US other than CA already.
It is a fair question if we want to outsource our food supply like that just to save a buck.
I have been doing some prelim numbers on the “local” thing for a while. My hunch so far is that it won’t scale to feed 300 million plus people in all locations and of all incomes.
Right. If that is the level of economy you envision, it could be done. But no offense, Mississippi is not the place people think of when they think about a powerful US. And just across the river headed west, wasn’t farming failure in the 1930s what led to the large internal migration to California in the first place? It hardly seems like a sure thing even nearer to you!
Seems like I am the only one addressing what the real situation is though.
yes, that was a typo. “Beek” was supposed to be “beef”.