Gas comes from the gas station, milk comes from the store

I was discussing with my buddy David Hover on the train this AM (I got bumped from SB 230 btw) the state of play in the US today. It's pretty grim. One of our conclusions was the downhill slide will probably be very steep and that it didn't haev to be, but we've just become so dumbed down that many people only react when things hit crisis level.

One topic involved is one very dear to my heart - water. It's not raining in California (and it's snowing in London - Climate Change people). Sonoma County announced water restrictions up to fifty percent. I'm not sure how exactly they enforce this - the most obvious solution with stupid Americans is to jack the price of water usage above some nominal level by 1000%. Of course, even though a lot of press will go out, some people won't react until they get their first $900 water bill.

In our case, our vacation rental house is on a well, so we aren't "subject" to these restrictions, of course if our well runs dry we are completely screwed. I am trying to find the cycles in amongst the time spent preparing for our baby - there I go contributing to overpopulation, but at least we aren't popping out 8 kids via IVF like the woman in LA - I am looking at a hot water recirculating pump and greywater reclamation for our commode. The problem of course being that our next door neighbors could be drinking our milkshake!

Anywho, the other day I was discussing this with a guy at work. He stated in no uncertain terms that the problem is that we need to get off our butts and start building desalinisation plants! 2/3rds the planet is water and we're complaining that we are out of water! I gave him the "Holy Raised Eyebrow" look and said "How exactly do you plan on powering these plants?" "Same way the Saudis do it!" he replied. I decided not to go any further discussing that the Saudis have far less population than the state of California, and they aren't trying to feed the USA by farming semi-arid land - which isn't anywhere near the coast where this magical salt water is. The energy needed to desalinate and pump this water to where it's needed (would this include things like obscure coho salmon runs?) would only exacerbate the initial problem - if you believe the whole Global Warming Climate Change thing.

Wonderful.