Water, water, far from everywhere

Today's LATimes published an editorial about the need for desalinazation as an energy-intensive but necessary part of the mix needed to keep LA swimming in water...so to speak. The editorial also mentioned conservation, wastewater recycling...the usual.

But it still presupposed that people can plant houses--and housing developments--anywhere they please, and that people can choose to live anywhere they choose. Well, that was a great ride while it lasted. But it's just about over.

Nowhere did it mention that most illegal immigrants live in California. If silence is assent, does that mean the LATimes believe we have to go on water rationing to accommodate the needs of Mexican citizens who are squatting here?

That's unfair. Somewhat. Because 80% of California's water usage is by farmers, and if farmers planted more water-conserving crops and watered them in more water-conserving ways (such as with drip irrigation), people wouldn't have to worry about water at today's population levels. They don't because they've swung some sweet deals in Sacramento that gives them no incentive to conserve.

All of these things show the lie that Republicans have spent 80 years fobbing off on the public: that Government = Communism. They don't say so in so many words, but that's the subliminal message. Meanwhile we get to see what happens when Government is neutered: the current mortgage loan crisis, echoing the savings and loan crisis, sandwiching the corporatist theft schemes such as Enron (both what it did to its own employees and its holding up the entire state of California for ransom, all while the administration its lavish contributions helped put in power looked on serenely).

Now, in California and more and more in huge portions of the world, water is becoming the gating factor of all gating factors: no water, no anything else. And humanity's population explosion (from 1B in 1900 to 7B now and increasing everywhere but in a handful of advanced countries) is outstripping the world supply of potable water, along with polluting a lot of what we do have.

Sooner or later we'll have to recognize that the Republican boogeyman Government is going to have to act on behalf of all of us and do some very hard things.

Such as:

1. Developers and local governments don't have some kind of God-given right to add housing if we don't have the added water for the added housing. States must be able to tell local communities here's your share. If you want to add housing, great. But your share of the water stays the same.

2. Farmers are going to have to lose their sweet deals and get in line with the rest of us--and get allocated water based on what they should be growing, given the short supply of water, not on whatever they'd like to grow.

3. Water allocations can't include providing for illegal immigrants in a community. If there are 12 million illegal aliens living in America today--and there could be twice that, since we lack a universal ID system that would tell us for sure--millions of them are in California. Giving them our water is exactly the same as building a massive canal system from the Sacramento River into Mexico and diverting, say, 3% of California's water into Mexico and parts south. That 3% is the difference between what we've had and water rationing and no more lawns and fountains and limits on what farmers can farm. How did we become so obligated to Mexico? Did I miss the war?

4. How can we tell who's illegal, you say? For that we need universal biometric identification. Probably at the federal level. And don't give me that stuff about Evil Government. Anyone who's traveled in the third world as much as I have will know how incredibly lucky Americans are to have as honest and non-corrupt a government as we have. Last I heard it ranked #4 in the world for lack of corruption. That's not to say it doesn't need reform. It does. But few Americans realize how good we have it already.

Do these things and we won't have to resort to desalinization. That's what Dubai needs. At least until the oil runs out. Then the Middle East will return to its true destiny: dusty oblivion.