Guest post: Move to the desert then use up all the water
Originally a comment by iknklast on Prolonged drought aka desert.
States like Arizona, Utah, and Nevada are among the highest per capita water users in the US. People move to states without much water, then use water like there is a huge supply. The states with the lowest per capita usage are mostly in New England, where there is a better supply of water. I don’t have too much sympathy with people who move to the desert and then consume water they are usually stealing from somewhere else. And there is a water fountain in Phoenix that shoots water up to 560 feet (though the average is 300 feet). Most of that will evaporate in the desert air.
Also, Lake Mead should not have been built. The lake is evaporating more than 600,000 acre-feet every year. The Colorado River has so many dams that it no longer reaches the mouth for several months each year.
None of this is acceptable. Deserts are inappropriate places for intensive development. I realize some people like it hot, and don’t want winter cold, but if there isn’t enough water to sustain the lifestyle you require, you need to live somewhere else.
Why live in the desert if you want to have a lawn from suburban Chicago?
And may of the lawns are based on eastern US ideas of a lawn, which were carried over here from England. So we are trying to build lawns in a desert where rain is scarce modeled on lawns from a country with regular rainfall.
If the human species goes extinct, we may be the first species to be extincted by its own stupidity.
Surely, other species have gone extinct because they used up the resources that supported them?
What is new about humans compared to other animals, is we have enough brains to figure it out and take some action to avoid it. Except, of course, we don’t. At least not enough or in a timely fashion. Perhaps it is because humanity en masse is much stupider than we are individually. Tragedy of the commons, and a whole lot of other shortcomings of the “collective we”.
Desert environments are spectacular, as long as they’re not strewn with human artefacts. :P
twiliter: That is what is so sad about places like Phoenix or much of Los Angeles. The cityscape is just so…banal. I know it reflects what people generally want and can afford and have been trained to believe deserve, but. Heck, I don’t live in a small apartment, either.
I live in the southwest. Since COVID and the return to remote work the housing market has gone insane due to high demand-tons of people are moving here from California and elsewhere due to lower cost of living among other factors, putting more stress on an already stressed system.
Well it worked for the Sumerians (admittedly that was largely because the soil got too salty)
I can’t speak to Phoenix specifically @Brian, but LA has been a depressing pit for decades. The last time I visited the LA basin I swore never to return and never have. That was back in the late 80’s. From what I hear, Arizona is a popular destination for fleeing Californians, so naturally they bring LA with them and Californicate it as well. It is sad, I agree.
@Studebaker, that confirms what I guessed. Fortunately it’s still a big place, but it’s getting smaller and more Californicated every year, and the cost of living will rise as the resources get skinnier.
Well, there are many things about Phoenix that show respect for the beauty of the desert, and a big one is the Desert Botanical Garden. It shows how beautiful the desert is as desert.
And my house there was right across the street from the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, where no one could come in and build a ranch house with lawn or that hideous astro turf.
It’s just that I think that the effect of the loss of the Colorado is not apparent enough yet, and people think that the city can continue to make enough water for the the long future.