Lake Mead -the nation's largest water reservoir - is only at 40% capacity
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Lake Mead - the nation’s largest reservoir - is at only 40% capacity, triggering a declaration of water shortage for the first time ever.
Arizona will lose 18% of its annual water apportionment and Nevada will lose 7%.
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water supply have been aware for a very long time that it would eventually be gone. It's not what you're talking about, but those responsible for keeping the water flowing so their regions don't die have been doing some of the jack shit they had the power and authority to do.
They've taken a whole range of steps over the decades to maximize the water they could get while it was there, from constructing giant tunnels drawing from the bottom of Lake Mead, to much more sophisticated plans for what comes next.
Those who have the authority to do a partial job have been dealing with a very imperfect situation, in of course imperfect ways, to meet their responsibilities to very imperfect "the people" who've been ignoring and refusing their responsibility all their lives.
vacuum. These are interconnected. And the reality is our institutions have failed to address climate change in the macro. The 2000s were pretty much time wasted, which we won't get back. The last 4 years were also a complete waste at the highest levels. Local institutions have to do what they have to do. But if this isn't treated holistically, we're pretty much fucked. We're way behind on this and the fact that large swaths of our population need this explained to them again and again, like they're infants. Keeps us from moving forward. If one can't even agree on obvious reality. How exactly is this going to be addressed?
So, right back at 'cha.
What you say is all so true, of course. We can't get around the reality that THE BIG WE, the electorate, are by far the biggest, controlling institution, the one that creates and empowers, or disempowers and destroys, all other institutions.
Baked into the problem of us is that democracies almost always let problems go until enough of us feel enough pain to start objecting. But we've fucked ourselves huge, not just pretty much, by this perfect storm of massive social dysfunction and climate crisis.
I have a lot more faith at this point in the judgement and willingness of people overall in our subordinate institutions to do what needs to be done than in the electorate overall. The right's been voting for decades to keep our institutions from doing their job properly and electing increasingly extremist anti-government politicians. Opposition has crippled much government action, a vacuum of leadership causing private industry to take some actions and also research solutions.
But among our resources, we've always had better people than we bothered to look for running our institutions because those fields tend to draw people who care about them. Real needs have also set much firmer, though low, limits on the take of corruption than citizens typically bother to; when the lights or water go off and stay off, the electorate starts caring BIG time. Many people have big plans and are eager to leap to them, once we let them. Also we do have much of the planet's most advanced private institutional resources.
And above all unfocused and unused electoral resources on the left. Look at the people we've known over the past 30 years who won't leave a faucet running wastefully and we probably have a fair estimation of how many have been conscientiously voting water and climate responsibility. We could always have been a far more powerful force. We still can and will need to be.
At this point the right seems to have decided that surrender to climate devastation, insisting that nothing can or should be done, is their best way to still "win" their insane factional war. But that's at least movement, and when it's their own asses on fire, there's going to be more movement. And when it's our own asses on fire, more of us are finally going to develop the conviction to vote for what needs to be done.
Anyway, that's my best prediction for how we're going to address this. We're in a godawful mess, fucked for life, but not without resources. "Optimism" 2021 style.
Lake Mead is the Colorado River reservoir for the Hoover Dam. In July, the water level at the Hoover Dam fell to the lowest level since the dam was constructed in the 1930s. (I don't know about since then, but I doubt that it's become significantly higher.)
What many people don't realize, however, is that the electrical output from the dam is partially based on the water level. And if the water level drops low enough, the dam's electrical output will need to be completely shut down.
So not only less water, but no electricity, too!
Twenty-nine million people get at least some of their electricity from the Hoover Dam.
Climate change is fun. 
Stay safe.
