Drought is a Policy Choice

California is a land of contradictions. Verdant orchards and vast deserts coexist, reflecting both the abundance and the desolation that defines our state. We now stand at a crossroads as we confront climate change, a threat that is poised to turn our prosperous lands barren.

The Newsom administration’s Water Supply Strategy presumes the inevitability of the acidification of the West¹. Passivity is our state's reaction to this challenge, with water resources cautiously calculated and demand deliberately suppressed². As a result, millions of fertile acres³ are actively fallowed each year, sacrificing agricultural land to “progressive” policies touted as sustainable.

This shortsighted strategy is ignorant of California's history with taming arid lands. The prosperity arising from the contradictions of her landscape stems not only from her geography, but from the indomitable American spirit that characterized the 19th Century. In fact, the West’s natural climate has always been arid beyond habitability. Yet, with scientific progress as our guide, the United States has cultivated one of the world’s most vibrant economies from a harsh wasteland. Given this track record of surmounting aridity, the West should be poised to meet today's challenges. Instead we flounder.

The true threat to the West lies not in climate change, but in policies that were once well-intended, now twisted into the shackles of civilization. With advancement constrained by the perversion of progressive laws, paralysis takes hold.

Paralysis breeds inevitable decline, as time gradually erodes civilization's hard-won gains. Even more unsettling, the realm of reason is gradually yielding ground to a pervasive skepticism regarding the very existence of an objective reality. Consequently, a grand yet suicidal vision is steadily gaining adherents - the restoration of an imagined natural utopia through the deconstruction of infrastructure. This only accelerates our downward descent.

Nature patiently awaits any lapse in vigilance, poised to reclaim dominion if humanity's grip slips. We teeter at the precipice, failure assured if resignation and willful demolition persists.

But this trajectory is a choice. The quickly approaching moment of crisis contains opportunity, if we can find the courage to see beyond surrender. Our future remains unwritten. Progress no...

Posts

Wiki Contributions

Comments