The 21st century may turn out to be the time in history when we hit the natural resource limits of the planet. Despite the technological innovations of the last century, natural resources – from fresh water to and forests, to healthy soils and fisheries-are becoming exhausted as we rely on them to meet the food, water and and energy needs of a global population that is expected to exceed 10 billing by 2050.
Climate change is dangerous, and it’s happening now. It threatens wildlife and the ecosystems they live in. It will make life harder for billions of people, with the greatest harm hitting the world’s poorest people. It may make some parts of the world uninhabitable for humans, and will almost certainly drive many species to extinction. But there are a half-dozen other environmental threats that are even worse. That’s according to a study published this month in Nature, generally considered the world’s most respected scientific journal.
The governor’s $68 billion California Delta twin water tunnels project cannot be economically justified, says a new report from the University of the Pacific. The tunnels scheme, promoted by Gov. Edmund Brown Jr. as one of his legacies to the people of California, would be the most costly water proposal in California history, the report says. But the new independent research, released Wednesday, shows that the tunnels’ costs are four times larger than its benefits, “and thus the project is not is not economically justified.”
As most of California recovers from this historic drought, one thing we can count on is that history will repeat itself. Californians can take full credit for willingly sacrificing landscape and adjusting habits to save water supply for another year. Toilets have been replaced, lawns have been converted to plastic, leaks have been fixed, prime agricultural land has been fallowed, and we have learned to be more efficient with our water supply. So, fast-forward to the next drought. What’s next?
When the Drought hit hard in 2014, Dublin San Ramon Services District (DSRSD), a water and wastewater utility, learned that it would receive only 5 percent of its typical water allocation for the 2014 water year. This meant that outdoor irrigation had to be severely curtailed in DSRSD’s service area and customers would likely need to let their lawns die. DSRSD operations manager Dan Gallagher came home and said to his wife “we might not be able to water the yard.”
The costs of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed Delta tunnels vastly outweigh the benefits of building them, according to an analysis released Wednesday by University of the Pacific economist Jeff Michael.“I don’t think there’s a project that’s economically feasible here. And it’s not close,” said Michael, director of the university’s Center for Business and Policy Research. Michael has long been critical of the $15 billion tunnels. His latest review finds 23 cents of benefits for every dollar that would be spent — or, under a more optimistic scenario, 39 cents of benefits per dollar spent.
A decade ago, Ben Ray had hoped to ease into retirement at his two-story wooden house nestled in the heart of the Sequoia National Forest. But the 79-year-old central California general contractor, who built homes for his future neighbors in Sierra Nevada Mountain communities such as Ponderosa and Pierpont, and his wife, Michelle, haven’t had the luxury of relaxation. That’s because hundreds of once verdant pine and cedar trees, stretching far beyond their 5 acre spread, have perished at a rate so fast he’s lost count of the carnage.
In 1922, seven Western states agreed to divvy up the water in the Colorado River, paving the way for giant dams, reservoirs and aqueducts to move and store it. Over the next century, the arid region, prone to erratic storms and punishing droughts, saw farms and cities grow and grow — with the belief that the water they relied on so heavily was inexhaustible.
A prominent Sacramento-area economist says Gov. Jerry Brown’s $15.5 billion plan to overhaul the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta doesn’t make financial sense, with costs far outweighing the benefits. Jeff Michael of the University of the Pacific, who has been a persistent critic of Brown’s plan to build a pair of massive tunnels beneath the Delta, said the project would likely deliver just 23 cents worth of economic benefit for every $1 spent.
In 1987, California was at the beginning of what would be a six-year drought — the second driest in the state’s history. Fittingly, that same year Peter Gleick helped to co-found the Pacific Institute, a global think tank that would become a leader in global environmental and California water issues. In 1987, Gleick had just finished a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in the Energy & Resources Group, where his dissertation was the first to study the impact of climate change on water resources.
