Tag Archives: water

Dig This! California’s Water Is Going To China & The Middle East

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It’s not exactly a media blackout, but the true cause of California’s water shortage is not getting much play in the media.

Today my wife wrote another excellent post on California’s drought at her equally excellent blog, Vicious Vegan.

Here’s how it begins:

WORSE THAN BEING IN HOT WATER, IS HAVING NO WATER

By Leslie Goldberg

Since Gov. Jerry Brown has announced that the little people now should cut back their water consumption by 25 percent, the folks in the animal food industry must be popping the champagne corks. Not only has Brown declined to ask agriculture, including animal agriculture, to cut back, it looks to me like none of the major American media outlets are focusing on livestock and calling it out for the mega-sponge it is.

Instead, the press recently has managed to suggest the idea it’s fruits and vegetables that are the culprits and if we want to do right we should not only turn off the sprinklers but ditch the almond milk and maybe skip the salad. Ok, ok, we should definitely turn off the sprinklers and phase out those oversized spa bathtubs, I agree. But there has been scarcely a hiccup about animal ag with a few exceptions and that’s a serious bummer.

Animal agriculture deserves more than a hiccup! And hamburgers are costing us way more than $1 a piece. Forty-seven percent of California’s water is used for meat and dairy products, according to a study by the Pacific Institute.

California’s biggest crop happens to be not almonds, tomatoes or lettuce. It’s alfalfa. Michael Pollan said during an interview with phys.org, that about 25 percent of our water is going to raise alfalfa, which is primarily for animal feed – not avocado sandwiches. …

Read the whole post here.

– A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post –

The Environment: The True Cause Of California’s Drought (And It’s Not Almonds)

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Drawing by Leslie Goldberg

Note: Although this blog is primarily about art (music, film, literature, etc.), I have been concerned about the environment since I was a kid, and given that we have reached a point where climate change is seriously impacting the lives of humans and other animals (and fish and birds and insects)– in other words, it’s the biggest problem the world faces today and we can’t ignore it — I will be including articles related to climate change in the mix of my posts going forward.

My wife writes a great blog called “Vicious Vegan” that includes her humerous/serious essays along with her drawings.

Yesterday she posted an important piece about the true cause of California’s drought.

Here’s the first few graphs. (You can read the whole thing here.):

YUP, IT’S VEGANS WHO HAVE CAUSED THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

By Leslie Goldberg

Wouldn’t you know it? It’s the health food freaks, the almond milk guzzlers who are fueling California’s water shortage. Did you know that it takes a whole gallon of water to raise one almond?

A whole gallon.

Those self-righteous vegans who think they know something!

Since I happened to have a pound of almonds in the refrigerator I decided to count up those little water suckers and see how much water it takes to produce a pound of almonds. It was bad. Four hundred and thirty-three gallons of water.

Four hundred and thirty-three? Wait a minute. How about a pound of beef? (I dare say it’s a lot easier to eat a pound of beef than it is to eat a pound of almonds.) According to the folks at waterfootprint.org it takes between 3,000 and 5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.

“More than half the entire US water supply goes to livestock,” says the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“It takes a lot of water to grow grain, forage, and roughage to feed a cow, as well as water to drink and to service the cow,” says the US Geological Survey Water Science School.

“Meat processing, especially chicken, also uses large amounts of water,” says the Environmental Working Group…

Read the rest here.

– A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post –