The Incomprehensible Migration of New Yorkers toward Thirsty California

Why are the trendy of New York fleeing to Los Angeles? This city has never been this polluted, the water shortage is hitting California hard, and shale gas is spreading its harmful effects as far as America’s organic kitchen gardens.

For weeks, I have been focusing on the drought in California and the measures taken by the government to limit private water consumption like a mouse is drawn to a baited trap – tempted, but frightened.

Tempted, because the subject encompasses all of America’s ecological and civil contradictions, from resource overconsumption to social inequality, including the political war on the climate that the American left and right are waging.

Frightened, because a simple article in this blog obviously will not suffice to describe the complexity of the situation. Besides, most people don’t want to read this sort of article – ecology and disasters bore them. Besides, I hate Californian life, so I am biased.

Mini-Brooklyns with Palm Trees

All the same, after having read some dubious approximations regarding Californian farmers who would be filthy profiteers, traffickers reselling their water for a huge profit (alas, I cannot find my source – it was in a French newspaper), I was well on my way to deciding to set the record straight here.

And then it so happened that the Sunday supplement of The New York Times published a lifestyle article that left me speechless: the bohos of the Big Apple, who until then had taken LA and California for a superficial place without culture, are undertaking a massive migration toward the city they used to hate.

They toss lodging and employment aside and find or recreate coffee shops, organic grocery stores and artsy boutiques there in mini-Brooklyns with palm trees. All at the same astronomical price as before, by the way.

“In an era when it has become fashionable for New Yorkers to grumble that their own city is becoming a sterile playland for the global-money set (Dubai with blizzards, basically), Los Angeles is enjoying a renaissance with a burgeoning art, fashion and food scene that has become irresistible to the culturally attuned.”

Some Tiny Drawbacks

Of course, the article vaguely mentions, at the end, some minor drawbacks:

“Newcomers face a catastrophic drought (a developing crisis) and endless traffic snarls (an enduring one).”

I imagine that if The New York Times doesn’t elaborate on the unpleasant subject of the drought and does not mention – at least, not in this article – the restriction plan announced last month by the governor, it’s in order not to spoil the light mood of its delicious supplement “Style.”

Because finally, California has truly entered the biblical era of the seven plagues upon Egypt! Climatologists and other experts have warned: This drought, which has lasted three years, is the prelude to more and more devastating forest fires, flood due to the rising sea levels, storms, extreme heat and, of course, aggravated air pollution.

An Ambitious Plan Against Pollution

When it comes to this, California is by far at the top of the list of places with the most polluted cities in the United States. The American Lung Association just published its list of winners:

• in ozone pollution, LA is number one ahead of four other Californian cities;

• in particle pollution, LA is number five behind four other Californian cities.

It is with good reason that Governor Brown decreed, on April 29, a pretty crazy plan to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions:

“Brown said the state must cut the pollutants to 40 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2030. That is an interim target, intended to help California lower emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050, a goal set by Brown’s predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

This means that the governor is setting the bar very high. As high, to tell the truth, as the European Union. However, unlike the EU, California has already considerably lowered its own emissions. The fight against drought is a part of the fight against climate change.

The Rich Don’t Care About the Water Bill

There’s a drought … so? At the beginning of spring, the reservoirs were already nearly empty. The state’s northern cities have had to resort to pumping groundwater less pure than the Sierra’s. They hadn’t touched it before now, this groundwater that often contains unpleasant deposits, or salt, that are costly to eliminate.

The water bills have already risen by a good third in three large regions of California, as much for private users as for farmers. In any case, at least when it comes to the private users, the increase in cost does not have much of an impact on household consumption. The rates would have to triple or quadruple to make a real difference.

People who already consume little water can hardly use less. And those who have great “needs,” who have to water vast lawns, fill pools or supply several bathrooms in their immense villa, they don’t care about paying $1,000 or $3,000 water bills each month.

Yet in Los Angeles, despite the constant increase in population – 150,000 inhabitants greater than in 2001 – water consumption has fallen. So people have already made an effort.

Three Good Resolutions To Make

They are going to have to continue to make it, because American demographers estimate that California will have 12 million more inhabitants by 2050 (including the exiled boho New Yorkers).

How the devil will a California suffering from chronic drought be able to accommodate such a population? Experts assure that there will always be enough water to ensure 50 liters per day for each person. It’s enough for survival, but little for a developed society. For the sake of comparing, a French person consumes on average 150 liters per day at home.

In California, paradise of rich wasters, there will be a job to be done: In certain districts in LA, people consume 1,200 liters per person. These are obviously the consumers who most need to change their behavior.

A very recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council list solutions that would allow California to ameliorate its situation, and even to resolve it:

• collecting water from storms in thousands of reservoirs;

• recycling used water;

• using water more wisely (by no longer watering lawns and eliminating golf courses, for example)

“In total, these 21st century water supply solutions can offer up to 14 million acre-feet in new supplies and demand reductions per year, more water than is used in all of California’s cities in a year.”

Cacti Instead of Grass

One of my friends who lives in urban LA was telling me the other day that she sees lots of people pull up their lawns to replace them with indigenous plants that need little water.

Besides making their gardens much prettier, these private individuals are often aided in their botanical reconversion by public financial incentives. Like in San Diego, where the county offers $11 per square meter of reconverted lawn. To tell the truth, this financial aid program has been temporarily suspended after the announcement of water restriction measures to private individuals at the start of April: the county could no longer deal with the influx of applications.

Still, private individuals and industry – including the shale gas industry, a subject that deserves another article – consume less, combined, than Californian agriculture. There again, I will be extremely brief: agriculture uses 80 percent of the available water. A Grist-Mother Jones article gives these numbers:

“California grows half of the fruits and veggies produced in the states, including more than 90 percent of the country’s grapes, broccoli, almonds, and walnuts. Alfalfa (used to feed cattle), almonds and rice are the thirstiest crops.”

When Farmers Water the Desert

Contrary to popular belief, even if farmers are far from being ecologically irreproachable, they constantly adapt their modes of production to consume less water. They change how they cultivate, let land lie fallow (sometimes covering it with solar panels to make it profitable) and modify their methods of irrigation.

And, as a matter of fact, farmers resell their “water rights” when they aren’t using them if they don’t they lose them the following year. It’s much better than watering the desert, as was customary until a 1980 law put an end to this wastage.

Whatever the progress acceded to by agriculture, California may not be able to continue to be North America’s kitchen garden and orchard forever. Many voices are being raised to push other, wetter southwestern states (see the maps in this article) to get involved in large-scale cultivation.

Once more, the Mother Jones magazine explains the economic and ecological gambles of the change that is occurring. Because look: Today, California has the best environmental protection laws, as well as the labor laws most favorable to agricultural workers.

Advice for Almond Lovers

Building a new farming economy from scratch in states with no agricultural tradition, which do not yet possess the storage and transportation infrastructure put in place decades ago in California, will have unexpected consequences. The price of food might rise.

In short, it is easy to denounce the greediness, waste and presumptuous rights of Californian farmers: All American consumers of fruits and vegetables, and even of beef and milk, are partially responsible for the inextinguishable thirst of the Golden State’s land.

And if you, in France, eat almonds because it’s good for your health, then you too are responsible for what is happening in California. Because 80 percent of the world’s almond supply comes from California.

There, the mouse ended up crushed in the trap having barely broached her subject!