The analysis found that 10 percent of the breast-milk samples tested contained bovine DNA, meaning it was not 100 percent human milk but rather was tainted with cow’s milk products. California’s crippling four year drought will soon be relieved by snow shipped from Boston. This was the news on April 1st and it was a joke, but it turns out that some people have considered what it would take. If that won’t work, how about a water pipelines from Alaska? Or what about towing down some icebergs?
The April 1st Executive Order from Governor Jerry Brown, on the other hand, was no joke. It contained new and mandatory regulations and restrictions on water use in the hopes of achieving a 25% reduction in the use of potable water by 2016. The “mandatory” part is important, as it follows a similar Executive Order from January 2014 that called for voluntary reductions and which achieved very little. With only one year of stored water remaining and with only about 6% of the usual snowpack available to replenish it, the time seems right for stronger action.
But many are already questioning if the new regulations are going to be enough. Agriculture, which consumes about 80% of the state’s water, remains largely untouched. Much water is spent on speciality crops mostly intended for export. Eighty-four percent of the world’s almonds are grown in California, for example, and it might take as much as 1.1 gallons of water to produce a single almond. Ten percent of all water in California may be consumed solely by almonds. And what about California’s five millions cows? It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef. Water intensive producers are raking in profits even as they pump more and more water out of ancient aquifers. At a conference in March, pistachio growers celebrated a record year by playing “Show me the money!” clips from Jerry McGuire. While some are enriched, agriculture only contributes about 2% to California’s economy.
And while lawns and golf courses will now be well regulated by the state, much remains in the hands of local authorities and water boards, some of whom have a patchy record of enforcement. The confusion is evident in the city of Dublin, which has broken ground on a large new water park. It is currently illegal in Dublin to fill empty swimming pools. “When we finish the project and it’s still in a drought and we can’t fill the pools, we’ll address it at that point in time” said the city’s parks director.
California’s new regulations are certainly an important step, especially since the water crisis is not restricted to the state’s borders. The entire American west is drying up, and with no end to the drought in sight California may be soon set the example for everyone else.
But do you think these new regulations do enough? What should be the priorities for water conservation? Who should be in charge of writing and enforcing regulations? What compromises are you willing to make to save water?
The researchers noted that their analysis was not able to determine whether the adulterated breast milk contained cow’s milk itself or another product, such as cow’s-milk-based infant formula.
The biggest danger for the coal miners is that capital ceases to flow their way. Investors can cope with a cyclical business, but the fear now is of a structural shift, in which China follows the rich world in beginning to phase out coal, India increasingly produces its own, and a plentiful supply of cheap gas keeps prices low everywhere. If so, new coal-mining investments would risk becoming stranded assets, and older deep mines would be even more uneconomic than now. Carbon Tracker, a non-profit group, reckons that more than $100 billion-worth of planned capital spending risks being stranded by 2035. A prospect as black as a miner’s lungs.
The Carbon Tracker Initiative describes itself as “a team of financial specialists making climate risk real in today’s financial markets,” adding, “Our research to date on unburnable carbon and stranded assets has started a new debate on how to align the financial system with the energy transition to a low carbon future.” The reference to unburnable carbon highlights a primary problem of fossil fuel industry denial: ignoring the fact that the vast majority of carbon fuel reserves can never be burned, if civilization is to survive. This “unburnable carbon” is a particular example of a broader financial phenomenon, that of “stranded assets,” assets of any form that for whatever reason can no longer be productively employed.
Business concerns about climate change aren’t new. But CTI represents a much more aggressive, pro-active presence making rock-solid business arguments against the fossil fuel status quo. The fact that an organization like CTI even exists is a telling sign of how much things have changed—and how much more they’re likely to change in the years to come.
Despite CTI’s warnings, at first glance, things don’t look nearly as bad for the oil companies. They’re only facing a relatively recent price plunge, for which a number of causes have been blamed. But author Michael T. Klare (Resource Wars, Blood and Oil, The Race for What’s Left) recently honed in on “The Real Reason Behind the Oil Price Collapse,” which he described as “the complete collapse of Big Oil’s production-maximizing business model,” and that’s a very serious matter indeed, which suggests a broad dovetailing with the arguments CTI is making.
As Klare explains, a decade ago, Big Oil faced a world of declining proven reserves, rapid growth in China, India and elsewhere, and growing pressure for alternatives based on concerns over global warming. Their response was a profit-maximizing strategy based on going after hard-to-reach, more expensive reserves (which Klare himself dubbed “tough oil”). The strategy worked wonderfully, as long as the price of oil remained high. “This meant that no fossil fuel reserves, no potential source of supply—no matter how remote or hard to reach, how far offshore or deeply buried, how encased in rock—was deemed untouchable in the mad scramble to increase output and profits.” This is what lead to deepwater drilling, of the kind that BP Deepwater Horizon blow-out made infamous, as well as Canadian tar sands, and Artic oil fields. But as the price plummeted, “the very strategy that had generated record-breaking profits has suddenly become hopelessly dysfunctional.” As Klare explains: