Good PBS overview of the ways climate is pressuring water supplies, aquifers, and Agriculture in diverse regions of North America.
Good PBS overview of the ways climate is pressuring water supplies, aquifers, and Agriculture in diverse regions of North America.
It was generally good, and it’s great to see a series like this out there.
The part of the drone fertilizing operation in Michigan was fascinating, and that’s a great use of technology to limit damage and waste. But, the video itself was about water, and while highlighting the good of that tech, the video sort of sidesteps the main subject there.
It does go into one of our major problems with groundwater, which is that the vast majority of it is simply wasted on stupidly inefficient agricultural uses. The farm in the Southwest growing livestock feed in the desert is an ewxample. I do feel for them potentially losing a multi-generational farm, but that practice steals from the future to pay for the present. When it first started 100+ years ago, and it seemed like the water would never run out, perhaps it wasn’t an issue. It is now, and it’s only going to get worse.
The video perhaps unintentionally highlights how in America, an individual maximizing efficiency on their own property is considered a great thing (and it is), but a government or a group maximizing efficiency of a multiple properties over extended regions is taboo. We mostly cannot do it – even to suggest it is labeled as communist and foreign. But, it doesn’t change that fact that the vast majority of water waste in this country is down to inefficient and frankly stupid water usage. We can use our vast intellect to make a single property hyper-efficient, but we can’t use it for organizing a nationwide or even statewide plan of individual properties.