And that’s where the great unmentionable aspect of 21st-century water wars comes in: climate change. Scientists have basically predicted this type of extreme weather shift for the past two decades. “Weather practically everywhere is being influenced by climate change,” said White House science advisor Dr. John Holdren on a conference call Thursday. While droughts in California are commonplace, their frequency, length and severity have increased with a warming planet, Holdren explained, noting that higher temperatures lead to more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, running off into rivers more quickly and evaporating faster. “The whole water season shifts earlier, and for communities relying on snowpack, in late summer you really find yourself in a bind,” adds Steve Fleischli, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s water program. Studies from the journal Nature and surveys of leading climatologists reinforce these fears.
It was hard enough to achieve an uneasy balance on water without climate change. Now that the consequences of a warmer planet are here, our politics simply haven’t caught up, experts say. “Politicians are still looking at the drought as a political issue and not as the environmental and economic nightmare that it could be,” says Dan Jacobson, legislative director for Environment California. “The ultimate question is, how do you get water into the state for the next 500 years?”
Some are heartened by the rare sight of President Obama connecting the drought conditions in California to climate change in his Friday speech in Fresno. But when it comes to a policy response, it’s all about the here and now. “During early phases of a drought, everyone walks around talking about short-term responses,” says Gleick. “Democrats, Republicans, everyone. They have different priorities, but they always look at the immediate crisis. It would be nice if we looked at long-term solutions to our problems.” The Obama administration does plan to include a $1 billion “climate resilience fund” in the next budget, to fund that kind of long-term planning. But the fund has about as much chance of making it past House Republicans as a run on snow-chains in Palm Springs.
The irony is that California has actually led on fighting global warming, with a statewide cap-and-trade system that is succeeding in bringing 2020 carbon emissions down to 1990 levels. But one state cannot do it alone. In fact, the drought shows that even the most responsible steward of the environment will suffer without a global effort. So while continuing to demand climate solutions, Californians of all stripes will have to figure out how to manage with less water, perhaps forever.
Paradoxically, Southern California, traditionally a villain in the state’s water wars (Los Angeles infamously grabbed water from the Owens Valley 100 years ago) offers a model for how to adapt to drought conditions over the long term. Twenty years ago, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California built new reservoirs to capture precious rain and increased water recycling programs. It also aggressively promoted conservation, both through changes to building codes and $333 million in rebates for water-efficient products. Ninety percent of Southern California residents now use low-flow toilets and shower heads, keeping demand steady since 1990, despite 14 million additional residents. The region will not need mandated rationing this year, because of available reserves. Governor Brown, taking his cues from the Southland, has called for a voluntary statewide 20 percent cutback in water usage, and experts like the NRDC’s Fleischli say Californians can probably squeeze out another few percentage points of conservation, as parched Australians and Israelis have.
Political debates over the drought, however, appear stuck in the past. In this election year, California Republicans believe they can score points essentially blaming incumbent Democrats for the weather. Governor Brown’s re-election opponents argue that the state does not have the infrastructure in place to deal with prolonged drought, urging construction of additional dams, canals and reservoirs. Holdren, the White House science adviser, rejects this, saying “the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough reservoirs, the problem is there isn’t enough water in them.”
The $24.7 billion Bay Delta tunnel project, which would funnel water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to public water agencies more efficiently, could prove part of a long-term solution. But state lawmakers have savaged the idea, pointing to potential cost overruns. Water agencies that supply farmers have doubted whether enough benefits would emerge to justify the funding. A water bond measure readied for the 2014 ballot could offset costs, but it would have to survive skeptical voters.
The next few weeks will determine the scope of the crisis—as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration notes, California gets more than half of its annual rainfall between December and February. A continued dry spell would make the water wars even more desperate over the summer, but also may offer the only opportunity to change the paradigm. Gleick sighs: “If the drought ends next month we’ll go back to doing the things we’ve always done.”
If all else fails, California can bring out the big gun. Lady Gaga, as payment for an upcoming video shoot at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, will donate $275,000 to repair the castle pool and support water projects in the surrounding area, and is shooting a public service announcement asking residents to conserve water. A celebrity-donation model of drought survival seems hopelessly inadequate to the scale of the task, but compared with the political class, Gaga’s being the constructive one.