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Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy, account for half of water usage in California. Texas usage is trending toward oil and gas using a dangerously large am

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy, account for half of water usage in California. Texas usage is trending toward oil and gas using a dangerously large amount of water (fracking requires billions of gallons of water at the scale it happens in persistently drought stricken Texas). I am not familiar with New Mexico or Arizona or Nevada, but it would not be surprising to find that one or more industries dominate water usage, and in ways that are not sustainable or responsible. Water usage by individuals, for cleaning and cooking and drinking, is often miniscule, in comparison to industrial usage.

ebiester 11y ago
How are we going to have a city (and food and jobs) without that industrial usage?
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Stop fracking. It's the most expensive way to get oil out of the ground, and wouldn't be cost-comparable to renewable energy sources if the industry wasn't empowered to use dangerous amounts of water in drought-stricken areas, use eminent domain to steal land for pipelines, and generally externalize every cost, making everyone who doesn't have lobbyists foot the bill for their reckless behavior. At this point, the only reason fracking is profitable is because government is propping it up. Solar and wind (particularly in places like Texas, California and the southwest) is cost-competitive (or even cheaper, if you calculate long-term, because solar panels and wind farms have a very long productive lifetime and quite low ongoing costs, unlike oil and gas), if you take away the crutches that our government provides oil. As for food, meat and dairy doesn't need to be produced in water-starved environments (and probably doesn't need to be consumed at the rate that Americans consume meat and dairy). Again, industry gets a pass and gets to socialize environmental costs that they simply shouldn't be able to externalize. But, he who has the money and the lobbyists makes the laws.

ebiester 11y ago

How are we going to have a city (and food and jobs) without that industrial usage?

SwellJoe 11y ago
Stop fracking. It's the most expensive way to get oil out of the ground, and wouldn't be cost-comparable to renewable energy sources if the industry wasn't empowered to use dangerous amounts of water in drought-stricken areas, use eminent domain to steal land for pipelines, and generally externalize every cost, making everyone who doesn't have lobbyists foot the bill for their reckless behavior. At this point, the only reason fracking is profitable is because government is propping it up. Solar and wind (particularly in places like Texas, California and the southwest) is cost-competitive (or even cheaper, if you calculate long-term, because solar panels and wind farms have a very long productive lifetime and quite low ongoing costs, unlike oil and gas), if you take away the crutches that our government provides oil. As for food, meat and dairy doesn't need to be produced in water-starved environments (and probably doesn't need to be consumed at the rate that Americans consume meat and dairy). Again, industry gets a pass and gets to socialize environmental costs that they simply shouldn't be able to externalize. But, he who has the money and the lobbyists makes the laws.