California

Cost 3.1 Billion in today’s USD, it did

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Forget solidarity: the global south will not survive this century without climate justice. You in the west are talking about paper straws, we in the global south are talking about reparations.

Source: The west is ignoring Pakistan’s super-floods. Heed this warning: tomorrow it will be you | Fatima Bhutto | The Guardian

A clear example of flooding in this scale has already happened in California, of all places: The Great Flood of 1862:

  • Heavy rains over the preceding months.
  • Record amount of rain in a short period of time.
  • Knowledge from Native people was ignored. Their lore had passed down knowledge of such events.
  • Sacramento was underwater for three entire months after the storms causing the flooding passed, forcing a move of the state capital from Sacramento to San Francisco.

This is just one instance. The lack of infrastructure maintenance in the US will prove very, very costly. Just look at New Orleans.

The US should be bracing for a very watery future.

Cost 3.1 Billion in today’s USD, it did Read More »

Blinding heat

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Longer term, the Colorado River poses issues that no amount of tribal water can resolve. Beset by climate change, overuse, and drought, the river and its reservoirs, according to various researchers, may decline to the point that water fails to pass Hoover Dam. In that case, the CAP would dry up, but so would the Colorado Aqueduct which serves greater Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as the All-American Canal, on which the factory farms of California’s Imperial and Coachella valleys depend. Irrigators and municipalities downstream in Mexico would also go dry. If nothing changes in the current order of things, it is expected that the possibility of such a debacle could loom in little more than a decade.

Tomgram: William deBuys, Exodus from Phoenix | TomDispatch.

Mexicali is already getting hotter and dryer, with the city’s water table being refilled by the keeps complaining about the All-American Canal, supplied by − you guessed it − the Colorado River. Mexicali and Calexico are already gearing up for a fight with San Diego, where the canal ends.

Then there’s Tijuana. It’s right by the sea but to its people the sea is where water eventually ends up, not a source of potable water. There have been talks of a desalination plant, but so far they’ve gone nowhere.

I have friends in both cities. What happens when conflict arises?

Blinding heat Read More »