The Tamarisk Hunter by Paolo Bacigalupi (A glimpse of the future?)

[YankeyMCC]

This story reminded me of the "Grapes of wrath" right down to the scene with the local boy working as a guardie (like the locals taking $3/day to bulldoze homes in Grapes of Wrath)

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(snip)
A big tamarisk can suck 73,000 gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bounty, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long.
(snip)

(snip)
When California put its first calls on the river, no one really worried. A couple of towns went begging for water. Some idiot newcomers with bad water rights stopped grazing their horses, and that was it. A few years later, people started showering real fast. And a few after that, they showered once a week. And then people started using the buckets. By then, everyone had stopped joking about how "hot" it was. It didn’t really matter how "hot" it was. The problem wasn’t lack of water or an excess of heat, not really. The problem was that 4.4 million acre-feet of water were supposed to go down the river to California. There was water; they just couldn’t touch it.

They were supposed to stand there like dumb monkeys and watch it flow on by.
(snip)

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The rest at: http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16378

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Excellent story. K&R.

Just read it -- especially if you live in the Southwest.

--p!

[phantom power]

2. That second paragraph about "showering" illustrates a problem with his story.

Only 10% of water use is residential. The other 90% is industrial (30%) and agricultural (60%). By far, the biggest impacts of water shortages will be on our food and our economy, as in the expense and availability of goods and services.

Another implication is that stuff we do at home is by definition limited to a 10% impact, and of course it will be less than that, since we can't actually stop using water altogether. Unless we die, which is of course a going concern.

I thought it was a good story, though. He's a talented writer.

[evlbstrd]

3. Your breakdown may be correct.

But who will be asked to sacrifice? Residents.

[phantom power]

4. I think home conservation is important.

We should just keep in mind how it's impact will fit in the bigger scheme of things. That old issue of "problem scale" that we talk about here in E/E.

[evlbstrd]

7. Of course it is.

When the squeeze comes, we'll be the first to feel it, not industry.

[YankeyMCC]

5. Those numbers sound correct but just like in Grapes of Wrath

where it was the land owners who really were getting hit by the dust bowl it was the leasers and renters that were made to feel the most pain. I think his point with the showering thing was that it would be the least powerful - even though they were the least responsible for the problem - who would feel the most pain in their daily lives.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. If the Southwest dries out, this will be pretty accurate.

An area-wide drought will force industry (and most of the population) to leave the Southwest. California would, indeed, become aggressively fascistic, and so might Nevada.

I personally think that in such a position, California and Mexico would start setting up solar desalinization plants all along the coast. Mexico especially, since the oil they have will be expensive to exploit and they will be at the mercy of the oil industry. With water, they could conceivably thumb their noses at the expanding Great Sonoran Desert.

Solar de-sal also offers the potential of recovering uranium at 1 kg per 9 million gallons, and about twice as much thorium -- at minimal cost. There would also be a small amount of gold, platinum, and other precious metals recovered.

And if the Pacific thermohaline current stops, there will be plenty of salt for the roads.

--p!

[Javaman]

8. That would be possible but Mexico's largest oil field is failing

at a rate of 15% a year now.

Things are going to get much worse there before they get here.

And, the largest desalinization plant in the world only provides water for 200,000 people and it's a big time energy hog.

bottom line: people will die.