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Don't worry, your sacrifice means the politicians funded by the farmers continue to get elected. All you need to do is elect different politicians that will ena

Don't worry, your sacrifice means the politicians funded by the farmers continue to get elected. All you need to do is elect different politicians that will enact regulation that sensibly and responsibly manage the water, reducing the profit made by almond farmers and their campaign donations. I'm sure they pay taxes that fund something or other they can point to as somehow being a net benefit to "the economy" or some high level abstraction. The politics should be simple - California's got a whole lot of cities and population in places where a reliable and predictable source of clean water is a matter of life and death, and it should be a trivial calculation of necessity. What is needed by those places, minus a sensible and responsible buffer, is set aside, calculated dispassionately and without regard to almond farmers or any other interests. Once those calculations are made, offer fair allowances of water from what remains. If some years there are no allowances, then maybe you shouldn't run an almond farm in California. People should win out over corporations almost every time. The trouble with these issues is that yes, they are complex, and that it's somehow acceptable for politicians to use the complexity to fog up the narratives and we give them the latitude to make bass ackwards decisions like favoring the almond farmers. Deny them the complexity and insist on the simple solution - people first, corporations can figure their shit out with whatever's left, and no more.

JohnMakin 3y ago
> All you need to do is elect different politicians that will enact regulation that sensibly and responsibly manage the water all of what you wrote is well said, I just think in the current california political climate (which is a little strange and different from the rest of the country, and not at all what people outside california imagine it is) what you said is essentially impossible as long as politicians are for hire by corporations. Anyone lobbying for this has no chance to get in a position to make any meaningful change. The best hope for change is a proposition passing - california constitution allows basically any prop to make the ballot and they must be enacted into law if they pass. It’s one of the great things about the way CA govt works. The people can overrule through referendum essentially any law (except when the state unconstitutionally removed the secession prop) or part of the constitution. Not all places give voters that much power in how the state is run. However, unfortunately, drought policy in CA has amnesia and every time we have a massive water year like this year everyone thinks severe drought is never going to happen again. For a state that is so seemingly climate conscious, they’re shockingly blind to the realities that climate change will bring to the state’s water supply. We won’t try to address this until it’s such a severe emergency that people are dying in the street (or even worse to them - corporations losing money! oh no!) imho.

JohnMakin 3y ago

> All you need to do is elect different politicians that will enact regulation that sensibly and responsibly manage the water all of what you wrote is well said, I just think in the current california political climate (which is a little strange and different from the rest of the country, and not at all what people outside california imagine it is) what you said is essentially impossible as long as politicians are for hire by corporations. Anyone lobbying for this has no chance to get in a position to make any meaningful change. The best hope for change is a proposition passing - california constitution allows basically any prop to make the ballot and they must be enacted into law if they pass. It’s one of the great things about the way CA govt works. The people can overrule through referendum essentially any law (except when the state unconstitutionally removed the secession prop) or part of the constitution. Not all places give voters that much power in how the state is run. However, unfortunately, drought policy in CA has amnesia and every time we have a massive water year like this year everyone thinks severe drought is never going to happen again. For a state that is so seemingly climate conscious, they’re shockingly blind to the realities that climate change will bring to the state’s water supply. We won’t try to address this until it’s such a severe emergency that people are dying in the street (or even worse to them - corporations losing money! oh no!) imho.