Out here in California — for those of us now living directly “on the front edge of a climate crisis”, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes describes it in the interview below — it’s both extraordinarily unusual and incredibly welcome to hear a politician with ambitions for higher office speak as frankly as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) does here.
But with temps in the high 90s over the past week here in Southern California (in March!) and new data from NASA finding the state may well run out of surface water completely in just a year’s time, it’s very good to see someone with the courage to say what needs to be said.
Newsom describes the state’s voluntarily water conservation measures to date, in the face of our record-shattering drought, as “small ball”.
“I think we’re going to have to move to mandatory rationing,” he notes bluntly. Hayes appears surprised in response, noting that calls for mandatory rationing are “essentially anathema in American political vocabulary.”
“This is serious,” Newsom responds in turn, detailing the crisis the state is now facing. “This is Code Red”.
“We can call for voluntary rationing because that polls better, or we can lead. And I guess at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves ‘Are we just stewards? Or are we gonna step up and step in and actually share our private thoughts — trust me, private thoughts are ample around some requirements for mandatory reductions — or we can continue to play the finger in the wind politics that, frankly, has put us in this crisis in the first place.”
Watch:
It should be noted, of course, that Newsom has a record for leading where others have waited to follow more favorable political winds. You’ll recall that it was Newsom who, as Mayor of San Francisco back in 2004, first ordered his City-County Clerk to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, based on his belief that restricting marriage equality was in violation of the U.S. Constitution. In the 10 years and countless court rulings since, that legal position has proven to be both the Constitutionally correct and moral one, even as it was anything but popular — either nationwide or even within his own political party — at the time he stepped up courageously in 2004 to do the right thing.
One would hope that the very first action from CA ‘leaders’ would be an immediate ban on the water consuming and polluting process known as “fracking.”
“Last week, (October 2014) the California State Water Resources Board sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency confirming that roughly 3 BILLION GALLONS of hydraulic fracturing wastewater was illegally dumped into central California aquifers.”
Eagle Ford Shale News
3 Billion gallons is just the fraction used in fracking that was verified as contaminated.
Someone needs to dig up clips of CA politicians bleating about “jobs and revenue” as they allowed fracking. . Have a glass of water, free arsenic and thallium added, enjoy!
(Rat poison used to contain thallium but it was too dangerous for that.)
Our culture is in a trance.
As goes California, so goes the nation.
I went looking for official government statements about the drought and found this. Nothing about water conservation regarding the heaviest users: livestock/feed, hydraulic fracturing and farming. Sure there should be cooperation with everyone conserving water but where are the statements that include what is expected every user-not just the residential user?
I read that private consumers (aka citizens) account for approximately 4%-5% of California’s usage.
The rest goes to Big Ag and the like. The citizens could all move out of the state and stop using water altogether and it does nothing to solve the problem…
I wish Chris Hayes had pressed Newsom on whether restrictions should be mandatory for the agriculture industry or just for residential/business property.
Yes! There should be mandatory watering rationing. And it should be for residences, businesses and agribusiness. We should also ban fracking. The current restrictions are laughable at best. I’m not a Gavin Newsom fan but it is refreshing for someone to come out and say what everyone else is thinking.
Michael@4 and Kyle@5 make good points – all the residents of California could stop watering lawns and gardens, take up sponge baths, and flush their toilets only for #2, and it would barely be a drop in the bucket (pun intended), compared to water usage for agriculture and industry. California’s water crisis has far reaching consequences – I’m 2500km away from the Central Valley, but a lot of the produce in local supermarkets comes up the I15 to get to me. Without heavily irrigation-dependent California fruits and vegetables, there’s going to be lot less produce and higher prices at the market for a lot of people.
Effectively, it’s not just Californians that are over-exploiting California’s water resources, or who will feel the impact of a full-blown water crisis there. Although a long term spin-off might be increased reliance on more sustainable, locally produced agricultural products. There just won’t be near as much variety, and selection will be more seasonally-restricted. And Californians, whether in agriculture or not are going to face hard choices about what sorts of agriculture industry they will have or allow – a lot of water-intensive but lucrative crops are soaking up a lot of the limited water supply.
It is difficult to understand the imposition of mandatory water rationing for private citizens when fracking and golf courses, and I would throw in cemeteries, are allowed to use water pretty much unrestricted. I can condone some allowance for farming purposes, but believe quarterly audits & reviews of proper water conservation and reclamation for farming and industrial use. And when will the state start collecting and recycling water that presently flows into the ocean here in Southern California?