4 ms·

Its kinda bonkers that golf courses and grass lawns are things allowed to thrive in areas of the US where they are not naturally occurring. I also think its ki

Its kinda bonkers that golf courses and grass lawns are things allowed to thrive in areas of the US where they are not naturally occurring. I also think its kinda crazy that humans have brought agriculture to a desert via irrigation and think that's sustainable. This is the type of thing where Federal laws/rulings are needed because there are like 4 states over consuming the water.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
Irrigation agriculture has been a primary source of life in places like Arizona for millennia. Reducing it down to "irrigation is unsustainable" is both incorrect and unproductive. It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. It's likely those changes will need to be larger than anyone wants, but they're still possible in a less dramatic way than "everyone is forcibly removed from the area".
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  Also, that water is shipped to other countries in the form of alfalfa. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  > It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. I think this illustrates that its sustainable on paper but the current sets of humans using the Colorado river water aren't using it sustainably though when its all added up. We can get pedantic about it but something has to change, right?
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    I don't think there's any disagreement that things have to change. The difference is whether we're talking about negotiating a difficult balance of competing interests within reasonable limits, or engaging in a political knife fight to decide who gets all the remaining water. We need to make a conscious decision to recognize a balance is possible though and negotiate it. If we don't, the situation eventually devolves into the knife fight regardless.
- seadan83 4y ago
  > places like Arizona for millennia. Millennia? Do you have any references for this? AFAIK the natives did not do large scale irrigation, I'll be interested to know if that was the case. Further, my understanding is that we are getting out a multi-hundred year wet period for California and the Southwest. Before then it was particularly arid, and we are returning to that and then some. Which is all really unfortunate as most of the concentrated population settling there has been since the 1800s, when the climate was maximally accommodating.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Yes, I used to work as an archaeologist in the southwest. Canal irrigation in the Santa Cruz watershed is found from the late archaic period (<2000 BCE), as a well-established example. Those networks remained mainly small regional networks until the Hohokam classic period, when they built massive canal networks irrigating tens of thousands of acres and sometimes draining entire rivers dry. Many of these later canals remain still in use today (in greatly modified states), like Phoenix's Grand Canal.
zikduruqe 4y ago
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession-with-lawns/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession... This is a good listen/read.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

Irrigation agriculture has been a primary source of life in places like Arizona for millennia. Reducing it down to "irrigation is unsustainable" is both incorrect and unproductive. It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. It's likely those changes will need to be larger than anyone wants, but they're still possible in a less dramatic way than "everyone is forcibly removed from the area".

zikduruqe 4y ago
Also, that water is shipped to other countries in the form of alfalfa. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
> It can be made sustainable, as long as we understand the system and respect appropriate limits within that. I think this illustrates that its sustainable on paper but the current sets of humans using the Colorado river water aren't using it sustainably though when its all added up. We can get pedantic about it but something has to change, right?
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  I don't think there's any disagreement that things have to change. The difference is whether we're talking about negotiating a difficult balance of competing interests within reasonable limits, or engaging in a political knife fight to decide who gets all the remaining water. We need to make a conscious decision to recognize a balance is possible though and negotiate it. If we don't, the situation eventually devolves into the knife fight regardless.
seadan83 4y ago
> places like Arizona for millennia. Millennia? Do you have any references for this? AFAIK the natives did not do large scale irrigation, I'll be interested to know if that was the case. Further, my understanding is that we are getting out a multi-hundred year wet period for California and the Southwest. Before then it was particularly arid, and we are returning to that and then some. Which is all really unfortunate as most of the concentrated population settling there has been since the 1800s, when the climate was maximally accommodating.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Yes, I used to work as an archaeologist in the southwest. Canal irrigation in the Santa Cruz watershed is found from the late archaic period (<2000 BCE), as a well-established example. Those networks remained mainly small regional networks until the Hohokam classic period, when they built massive canal networks irrigating tens of thousands of acres and sometimes draining entire rivers dry. Many of these later canals remain still in use today (in greatly modified states), like Phoenix's Grand Canal.

zikduruqe 4y ago

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession-with-lawns/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession... This is a good listen/read.