Giving up on ag is an extreme response. The more reasonable approach is giving up on categorically insane water use policies that actually encourage waste by (a

Giving up on ag is an extreme response. The more reasonable approach is giving up on categorically insane water use policies that actually encourage waste by (a) placing a trivial price on each farmer's allotment and (b) reducing their allotment if they "fail" to use every drop allocated in the previous year. The drought is serious, to be sure, but the severity of the crisis is not a direct function of the drought itself. Rather, it is a function of a serious drought converging with a deeply corrupt political culture that allows an obscenely reckless and short-sighted farming lobby to maintain the worst policy imaginable. So I actually welcome this drought. I'd be very happy to see our major ag players ruined by the pressure they're under. Given the damage they've done to California, I wish them nothing but suffering in return. And no, we are not "all in this together". Commercial and residential users who have been steadily adjusting to reasonable and climate-appropriate codes for decades have been doing their bit. Ag has not. Indeed, they've been going so far in the opposite direction that they're risking permanent collapse in the aquifer. A characteristically Californian way of looking at the very real pain they're suffering is seeing it as major karmic payback from their corrupt and corrupting approach to policy. If the outcome of this drought is that we finally break the backs of these people (politically speaking) and free the people of California to make water policy in something other than the most inefficient, wasteful, and environmental degrading manner possible, then I'd say the whole experience is a net positive. Indeed, if I were a religious person, I'd call the drought an act of divine intervention.