Comment by ajross
1 day ago
> But that’s like telling a poor person to spend less money if you can’t tell them to make more money.
Not sure where you're going with this metaphor. We absolutely should be helping out people who are financially struggling with advice about how to manage their funds. Don't go clubbing if you're behind on your rent. Cook your own food instead of grabbing another burger. Talk to a bank about consolidating your credit cards.
And of course we do. And it works, and is helpful.
But somehow you don't see that, or how it might apply to thing like "change crop and livestock choices to reflect resource availability" or "change taxation strategy to the externalities are borne fairly and not by consumers"?
You can always use resources more efficiently, you just have to invest and make traeoffs. No one is saying that the region can’t live with less water, farmers just have to change to products that make them less money. So while California is the ideal place to grow walnuts, they need water so maybe the world can just do without? Yes, that’s always a possible answer, it isn’t a simple easy choice to make though.
You make it sound like there are easy things that can be done that are somehow win win.
It’s like telling a poor person that they should do an hour of cooking after their second 8 hour shift in one day rather than grabbing a burger and that will be better for them, no trade off at all.
> You make it sound like there are easy things that can be done that are somehow win win.
There are indeed easy things that can be done that make things better. There are harder things that can be done that make things better still.
Obviously everything has costs and tradeoffs. You're the one with the maximalist position that apparently no regulation of water usage in southern California is acceptable because of... something about being mean to poor people or whatnot.
I guess my point is that yes, there is a lot we can do to avoid using water but no, none of those options are free. It isn't fair to say that "this is just a made up problem" when the solutions have costs and you have to pick between them carefully.