What are some of the alternative sources of water for people in the region?
There is talk of building desalination plants along the coast in California. Arizona can pump water from under the ground, from beneath Phoenix and other areas, but that’s fossil water that has been there a million years. The sources for water are obviously limited. What kind of water wars might we see? Does your study look at the potential political and societal fallout from all of this? No. We’re scientists, not policy makers. We present the numbers and the timing for the problem. We’re not the ones to solve it. But what can we do to prevent this from happening? Is it preventable? A lot of things will have to change, from a policy standpoint. Water rights will be an issue. Global warming is not preventable. This will happen compared to the time it would take us to impact the CO2 burden in the atmosphere. Adaptation is the word here. How will our desert Southwest civilization adapt with a third less water from the Colorado River? Consumption, of course, is something that can always be
