Comments on: NY Times Magazine: “The Future is Drying Up” http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/25/ny-times-magazine-the-future-is-drying-up/ The Official Weblog of The Long Now Foundation and Friends Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:49:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.3 By: Mary W http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/25/ny-times-magazine-the-future-is-drying-up/#comment-2808 Mary W Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:10:14 +0000 http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/25/ny-times-magazine-the-future-is-drying-up/#comment-2808 Speaking as somebody who grew up in West Texas (and who can tell from the muddy taste of the tap water when drought means the water systems are sucking dry) -- Mulroy's comments are right on. Lots more people can live in the Western US. But people won't be able to live here with the lifestyle expectations that are applicable to wetter climates: residents who want lush green lawns, pool in every backyard, tropical foliage, traffic medians with watering systems to make the flowers look pretty; or farmers who want to grow water-thirsty crops like rice. One example per the CA wildfires: builders are researching how houses catch fire and burn. Their goal is to create new approaches to construction, in order to keep houses from burning during the inevitable chapparal burn season. The chapparal and certain other Western ecosystems are designed to burn; demanding that government agencies prevent fires from happening in the first place, isn't feasible, and demanding that people not live in burn areas isn't feasible either -- there are millions of people already living there. So IMO those are the kinds of things we need to learn, as a society in the American West: water frugality, better adapted construction techniques, etc. Speaking as somebody who grew up in West Texas (and who can tell from the muddy taste of the tap water when drought means the water systems are sucking dry) — Mulroy’s comments are right on.

Lots more people can live in the Western US. But people won’t be able to live here with the lifestyle expectations that are applicable to wetter climates: residents who want lush green lawns, pool in every backyard, tropical foliage, traffic medians with watering systems to make the flowers look pretty; or farmers who want to grow water-thirsty crops like rice.

One example per the CA wildfires: builders are researching how houses catch fire and burn. Their goal is to create new approaches to construction, in order to keep houses from burning during the inevitable chapparal burn season. The chapparal and certain other Western ecosystems are designed to burn; demanding that government agencies prevent fires from happening in the first place, isn’t feasible, and demanding that people not live in burn areas isn’t feasible either — there are millions of people already living there.

So IMO those are the kinds of things we need to learn, as a society in the American West: water frugality, better adapted construction techniques, etc.

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