About water and California...

It's not just the almonds that are using "unsustainable" amounts of water,
everyone and everything is.

Much like the water shortages in each region being the proximate cause of
both the Rwandan Genocide and the war in Sudanese Darfur, California is
simply using more water than it has, or can expect to get from the annual
snowfall in the mountains.

So what's the Harvard endowment doing?
Buying vineyards in California, and with them, the right to drill really
deep wells:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/01/wine-water-harvards-move-cal
ifornia-farmland
http://tinyurl.com/oo6nujo

Now this is written by Tom Philpott, who has never written a single accurate
word about the plight of bees and beekeepers, so I don't know any specific
reason to believe him here, but no one is contradicting him, and Harvard has
not unleashed a brigade of Harvard Lawyers to sue, so I guess there is some
truth to it.

I remember when the county YMCA wanted to put in a facility near my Dad's
farm, they were going to drill a similar "deep well" to assure them of
plenty of water for the pool, and the showers in the locker rooms, and so
on.  The deeper wells can "kill" any wells in the area shallower than
itself, so it was off to the courthouse for Dad, the State Park, and his
other neighbors, who all said "no way" to such a deep well so close.

So Harvard has figured out that water is the key factor, but they also want
to realize the added value of turning water into wine.

"Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over."
- attributed to Mark Twain, but everyone was drinking heavily at the time,
so no one is sure

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html