A deal to keep the Colorado from going dry – for now

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/climate/colorado-river-deal.html

by scythe • 3 years ago

13 5 3 years ago

scythe2• 3 years ago

Google234• 3 years ago

I wish more people were aware how much water goes to agriculture and would react accordingly when their government asks them to cut water usage or raises prices - 90% goes to (largely wasteful) farming and they don’t really pay…

It’s not the people taking 2 (gasp) showers a day fault, it’s the almond farmers using floors irrigation

Taikonerd• 3 years ago

I wish I could upvote this comment 10 times.

This is a political problem. In fact, maybe it's the purest form of political problem: "there's a limited resource. Who gets how much of it?"

bscphil• 3 years ago

It is absolutely bonkers than more than half of the water being used from the Colorado river is for livestock. How is there even a political route forward, given that no one is going to touch the third rail and implement a tax on meat? (Or heck, even eliminating subsidies.)

scythe2• 3 years ago

A lot of the "water used for livestock" is used on crops that are exported for livestock that live elsewhere. A tax on meat domestically won't hit that. A tax on exports would be very unpopular, for obvious reasons.

A deal to keep the Colorado from going dry – for now

Related Stories