My last post on water issues ( "Getting Real About Water," February 9, 2014) raised the discomfiting but inescapable prospect that the realities of water supply in our San Joaquin Valley region mean that some of the farming we now do will have to be scaled back. This raises the question of economic viability. Will the reduction in agriculture, the area's biggest industry, necessarily mean economic disaster?
The answer to that is an emphatic "NO!" It might instead be just the impetus that leads to the kinds of development that could revolutionize the economy for the better. A recent piece by a UCLA economist suggests four avenues of progress that could bring solid prosperity. Jerry Nickelsburg is Adjunct Professor of Economics and Senior Economist at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His open letter to "inland Californians" was published in the Fresno Bee. Here are his ideas for transformation.
1) Education. There are two University of California schools (Davis and Merced) and four California State University campuses (Bakersfield, Chico, Fresno, Stanislaus( in the Central Valley. With an underserved worldwide demand for education, and California already a "magnet" for students, each facility could be expanded to enrollments of 50,000. An estimated 80% of the additional 200,000 students would be out-of-staters paying full tuition. This would fund many thousands of good jobs in teaching, administration and support services, adding $20 billion to the economy. It would also create spinoffs, filling the area with researchers, entrepreneurs and cultural assets and the related climate of innovation they would foster.
2) Nickelsburg suggests a new major airport in the region, connected by the high-speed rail system throughout California. He sees this as a way to connect the cities of the Central Valley to "the people and markets of vibrant Pacific Rim cities such as Shanghai, Singapore and Guangzhou," replicating what the Interstate Highway System did for the U.S. economy in the 1960s and 70s.
3) Become a retirement mecca. The region should take advantage of and market its warm climate to "snowbound Easterners" from "weather-challenged parts of the country" now that "a record number of Boomers are preparing to retire." It would require a workforce trained in senior care, which the community colleges could supply. The university environments would could offer music, art, drama and intellectual stimulation. There would also be needed infrastructure improvements, as in hospitals. The rail upgrade would be an enticement, bringing accessible day trips to the Sierra National Parks, Pacific beaches, and the urban attractions of San Francisco and Los Angeles easily within reach. Why not lure a few million retirees this way rather than see them go to Florida?
4) Monterey shale. Nickelsburg feels the development of this resource will be too enticing to stop. And when it happens, he sees it as a potential economic boon. The fields themselves won't sustain very many jobs once the initial drilling is done. But the region should still benefit from refining and chemical industries, as well as distribution services.
Nickelsburg draws a sharp lesson from the experience of Appalachians when the coal business declined. They blamed government and environmentalists and did nothing, sliding into permanent depression. The Central Valley can do the same thing when ag begins to decline, or it can make use of the other considerable assets it has to ensure future prosperity. His thoughts deserve careful consideration.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
20,000 Page Views Reached!
Dear Readers:
I started this blog in December, 2007. This week, 585 posts and six years and three months later, Brave Gnu Whirled passed its twenty thousandth page view! Readership is growing. It took
495 posts and four years and seven months to get to the first ten thousand, but only 90 posts and one year and five months to record the second ten thousand! I sincerely thank everyone who subscribes or just checks in and looks around, either regularly or just every once in awhile.
Whether it's a comment on politics, society, the news, or a personal item, this blog is an outlet for me. I hope it's also a diversion for you. Whether it informs, amuses or exasperates, my object is that it always at least interests.
After the United States, the next most popular areas of readership have been France, Russia and China. More recently, a lot of readers have begun checking in from Germany, Brazil, Ukraine, Colombia and Peru. So, thank you, merci, spasiba, gracias, danke, Дякую and sheishei to everyone!
Steve Natoli
I started this blog in December, 2007. This week, 585 posts and six years and three months later, Brave Gnu Whirled passed its twenty thousandth page view! Readership is growing. It took
495 posts and four years and seven months to get to the first ten thousand, but only 90 posts and one year and five months to record the second ten thousand! I sincerely thank everyone who subscribes or just checks in and looks around, either regularly or just every once in awhile.
Whether it's a comment on politics, society, the news, or a personal item, this blog is an outlet for me. I hope it's also a diversion for you. Whether it informs, amuses or exasperates, my object is that it always at least interests.
After the United States, the next most popular areas of readership have been France, Russia and China. More recently, a lot of readers have begun checking in from Germany, Brazil, Ukraine, Colombia and Peru. So, thank you, merci, spasiba, gracias, danke, Дякую and sheishei to everyone!
Steve Natoli
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Getting Real About Water
I recently went to a most enlightening presentation by Bill Tweed, retired Chief Naturalist at Sequoia National Park, on the long-term water situation in California, especially Central California. I must say it's drastically changed my views. The bottom line is that we will not be able to keep intensively farming the entire Central Valley. Year after year, the process uses more water than nature provides. It's fundamentally unsustainable. Here is an outline of his masterful presentation based on my notes.
Bill began with 10 facts about California water:
1. Water here is variable. Precipitation varies on average from 4 inches a year in Coalinga on the west side to 9 inches in Visalia on the east, to 50 inches at Lodgepole in Sequoia at 7,000 feet. Much more falls in Northern California than Central and Southern.
2. Yearly rainfall is unreliable. From year to year it varies by a factor of 5 times.
3. The economic basis of the Central Valley region, agriculture, depends on reliable water-which is not the norm.
4. Only one-third of our needs are met by the natural flow.
5. There is insufficient water to maintain current usage.
6. The deficit is made up by importing water.
7. There is an annual overdraft of ground and imported water (as through the California Aqueduct) of 3 million acre feet a year-equal to the combined entire annual flows of the Kings and San Joaquin Rivers. The former 20-foot-deep water table is now more than 300 feet. The deeper you have to pump, the more you pay in energy. At some point, the ground water will be gone.
8. Not all current farmland is "prime." There is much marginal hard pan, alkaline and saline irrigation runoff land, for instance.
9. It's going to get harder, not easier. The warming climate will result in a reduced winter snow pack. All climate models agree that the warming climate will produce even more annual unpredictability.
10. It's going to get warmer. It's already 2 degrees warmer than the 1960's, more at higher elevations. That means more evaporation from lakes, rivers and vegetation.
Additional Considerations:
Sacramento Delta: It's a "broken system, about to fail." It's already below sea level and polar ice melt means the sea level is rising. The earthen levees that protect it are deteriorating. If we pump more water out of it or reduce the flow into it sea water intrusion will happen even faster. Saving Central Valley farmland would thus entail sacrificing Delta farmland.
Water Storage: We have already built and dammed the best sites. New storage will come at a higher marginal cost. Silting at existing sites is beginning to appreciably reduce current storage capacity.
Growing Population: California added over 3.4 million people from the 2000 census to the 2010 census. Usually, city water needs in the end win out over rural ones. Cities are where the votes are.
Desalination: It costs $1.01 per thousand gallons compared to 10 to 20 cents per thousand gallons for surface or ground water.
Fracking of the Monterey Shale: It takes a lot of water, already our scarcest resource. Do we use our water to get oil? If so, what water uses are we willing to do without?
Concluding Choices:
We need to rethink what we want for the Valley long-term.
We cannot continue to farm the whole San Joaquin Valley.
On the West Side we have created an artificial industry which is not sustainable.
We have many competing interests: Individual versus society, short term versus long term.
We cannot do everything. The resources are not there.
All current suggestions for ending the problem amount to "robbing Peter to pay Paul."
The Basic Question:
"How, in a democratic society, do we limit ourselves?" Political leaders, to stay popular, must promise all things to all people. Because we demand them to, they promise plenty of inexpensive water for all interests, urban and rural. In the long term this is not deliverable.
If I may summarize, the situation calls for realism. Do we go on the way we are until the wells run dry, devastating the region all at once? Do we quintuple the price of water, making all farming uncompetitive here? Or do we limit use according to a fair, sustainable and rationally planned program? It will be one of the three, whether intentionally or not. As the old saying goes, "Not to decide is to decide."
Bill began with 10 facts about California water:
1. Water here is variable. Precipitation varies on average from 4 inches a year in Coalinga on the west side to 9 inches in Visalia on the east, to 50 inches at Lodgepole in Sequoia at 7,000 feet. Much more falls in Northern California than Central and Southern.
2. Yearly rainfall is unreliable. From year to year it varies by a factor of 5 times.
3. The economic basis of the Central Valley region, agriculture, depends on reliable water-which is not the norm.
4. Only one-third of our needs are met by the natural flow.
5. There is insufficient water to maintain current usage.
6. The deficit is made up by importing water.
7. There is an annual overdraft of ground and imported water (as through the California Aqueduct) of 3 million acre feet a year-equal to the combined entire annual flows of the Kings and San Joaquin Rivers. The former 20-foot-deep water table is now more than 300 feet. The deeper you have to pump, the more you pay in energy. At some point, the ground water will be gone.
8. Not all current farmland is "prime." There is much marginal hard pan, alkaline and saline irrigation runoff land, for instance.
9. It's going to get harder, not easier. The warming climate will result in a reduced winter snow pack. All climate models agree that the warming climate will produce even more annual unpredictability.
10. It's going to get warmer. It's already 2 degrees warmer than the 1960's, more at higher elevations. That means more evaporation from lakes, rivers and vegetation.
Additional Considerations:
Sacramento Delta: It's a "broken system, about to fail." It's already below sea level and polar ice melt means the sea level is rising. The earthen levees that protect it are deteriorating. If we pump more water out of it or reduce the flow into it sea water intrusion will happen even faster. Saving Central Valley farmland would thus entail sacrificing Delta farmland.
Water Storage: We have already built and dammed the best sites. New storage will come at a higher marginal cost. Silting at existing sites is beginning to appreciably reduce current storage capacity.
Growing Population: California added over 3.4 million people from the 2000 census to the 2010 census. Usually, city water needs in the end win out over rural ones. Cities are where the votes are.
Desalination: It costs $1.01 per thousand gallons compared to 10 to 20 cents per thousand gallons for surface or ground water.
Fracking of the Monterey Shale: It takes a lot of water, already our scarcest resource. Do we use our water to get oil? If so, what water uses are we willing to do without?
Concluding Choices:
We need to rethink what we want for the Valley long-term.
We cannot continue to farm the whole San Joaquin Valley.
On the West Side we have created an artificial industry which is not sustainable.
We have many competing interests: Individual versus society, short term versus long term.
We cannot do everything. The resources are not there.
All current suggestions for ending the problem amount to "robbing Peter to pay Paul."
The Basic Question:
"How, in a democratic society, do we limit ourselves?" Political leaders, to stay popular, must promise all things to all people. Because we demand them to, they promise plenty of inexpensive water for all interests, urban and rural. In the long term this is not deliverable.
If I may summarize, the situation calls for realism. Do we go on the way we are until the wells run dry, devastating the region all at once? Do we quintuple the price of water, making all farming uncompetitive here? Or do we limit use according to a fair, sustainable and rationally planned program? It will be one of the three, whether intentionally or not. As the old saying goes, "Not to decide is to decide."
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Oxfam Study Highlights Global Inequality Crisis
A recent news item revealed a fact that strikes me as a moral obscenity. That was the Oxfam report Working for the Few: Political Capture and Income Inequality that found the richest 85 people in the world own as much as the poorest three and a half billion. That's 85 individuals whose resources equal those of half of humanity. If you broaden things a bit, the top 1% own 65 times as much as the bottom half, those same three and a half billion. In the United States, 95% of the post-crash growth after 2009 has gone to the top 1%, while 90 percent of the population has gotten poorer. Income inequality has grown faster--much faster--in the United States than any of the other countries. But it is not alone in the general trend. From 1980 to 2012, the richest one percent has increased its share of the wealth in 26 of 28 countries for which complete statistics are available.
By going to the link above you can learn the whole story in 32 pages. Or you can open the summary version and get the full outline in 6 pages. I highly recommend it; it's a real eye-opener. Oxfam has been fighting world hunger and poverty since it was formed as the Oxford Famine Relief Committee during World War II in 1942. It's now a world wide non-governmental organization.
The subtitle encapsulates a prime finding of the study. It raises the warning that by virtue of their wealth and influence over political systems around the world, this tiny minority could very well lock in a perpetual dynamic of increasing wealth for those at the top and increasing want for all or most below.
To avert this, it calls on governments and the wealthiest to support open and progressive taxation of wealth and income and for governments to ensure education, health care and social protection for their people. The report asks the wealthy to commit to having their companies pay a living wage, to not bending political processes to their narrow selfish ends, to not evading taxes, and to challenging other wealthy people to do the same.
The idea that we are a species that allows 85 single individuals to engorge themselves on as much as half the global population while a couple of billion live in abject poverty is morally indefensible, and frankly, sickening. One percent is worth $110 trillion. Fifty percent is worth $2 trillion. Even a modestly augmented amount of redistribution through services and a decent wage would provide plenty to eliminate desperate want on a global scale while still affording a luxurious lifestyle to the affluent. It's time to begin making that a reality.
By going to the link above you can learn the whole story in 32 pages. Or you can open the summary version and get the full outline in 6 pages. I highly recommend it; it's a real eye-opener. Oxfam has been fighting world hunger and poverty since it was formed as the Oxford Famine Relief Committee during World War II in 1942. It's now a world wide non-governmental organization.
The subtitle encapsulates a prime finding of the study. It raises the warning that by virtue of their wealth and influence over political systems around the world, this tiny minority could very well lock in a perpetual dynamic of increasing wealth for those at the top and increasing want for all or most below.
To avert this, it calls on governments and the wealthiest to support open and progressive taxation of wealth and income and for governments to ensure education, health care and social protection for their people. The report asks the wealthy to commit to having their companies pay a living wage, to not bending political processes to their narrow selfish ends, to not evading taxes, and to challenging other wealthy people to do the same.
The idea that we are a species that allows 85 single individuals to engorge themselves on as much as half the global population while a couple of billion live in abject poverty is morally indefensible, and frankly, sickening. One percent is worth $110 trillion. Fifty percent is worth $2 trillion. Even a modestly augmented amount of redistribution through services and a decent wage would provide plenty to eliminate desperate want on a global scale while still affording a luxurious lifestyle to the affluent. It's time to begin making that a reality.
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