8 ms·

This seems pretty innumerate to me. Just off the top of my head: ordinary people use over an order of magnitude more water in showers and toilets and lawn sprin

by taktoa 4y ago

This seems pretty innumerate to me. Just off the top of my head: ordinary people use over an order of magnitude more water in showers and toilets and lawn sprinklers than they drink (let alone the amount of _bottled_ water they drink), and farms in California use an order of magnitude more water than ordinary people and businesses (which is why low flow faucets and the like are not really doing much for California's droughts).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
phkahler 4y ago
Easier to regulate one company than millions of peoples shower habbits.
schimmy_changa 4y ago
Nestle specifically, yes, but Agriculture overall, no- check out PPIC for reports on this. The equivalent price that farmers pay for water is about 25 cents… you’d pay more for a shower as an individual I think!
mike_d 4y ago
The biggest consumer of water in the state (about half) is environmental concerns. Trying to maintain wetlands, fish populations, etc. Agriculture is 40%, and all consumer/urban consumption is 10%. The solution to the water problem is trivial, but quite unpopular. Tax crops by the gallons per human calorie. That would eliminate a lot of the feed crops that we grow using our water and ship overseas, as well as dumb shit like almonds.
- r00fus 4y ago
  Almonds pale in comparison to meat use of water. Your plan would work but CA milk/beef production would collapse - almonds would just get costlier (CA makes most of all almonds in the world).
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    > Your plan would work but CA milk/beef production would collapse Yeah, better to make beef for 10 more years and change your place into desert.
    - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
      Beef actually has a pretty moderate groundwater footprint, from what I've read it's less than half that of almonds per pound. That number is even smaller for grass finished beef. The numbers cited for water use for beef include rainfall that is incorporated into the grass that cattle graze, which is highly misleading.
      - ArnoVW 4y ago
        That's like saying : our nuclear power plant didn't have such a horrible accident, it has only released half of Chernobyl. It's the same sort of reasoning that is leading people to say that they shouldn't have to pay tax / reduce CO2 because "someone else is richer / more polluting".
        rhinoceraptor 4y ago
        Everything we eat has some groundwater use. I'm just saying that for its nutrient and caloric density, beef is vastly overrated in its water use. We tend to compare pounds of food to other pounds of food, but that is a misleading comparison. The nutritional value of meat has been very undervalued in the past few decades, and meat has a lot of nutritional value that we as humans cannot get on our own from plants. That's not to say you should eat it for every meal, but ethically, environmentally and nutritionally, I really believe it is the best choice in terms of meat. Even CAFO beef, which is ethically pretty bad, is still vastly superior in that dimension to poultry and pretty much everything else. Methane is another issue but I believe there is also a good argument in favor of it there as well. There is actually quite a lot of methane release from crops like rice which do not get media derision, as does the methane release from cattle.

by taktoa 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

phkahler 4y ago

Easier to regulate one company than millions of peoples shower habbits.

schimmy_changa 4y ago

Nestle specifically, yes, but Agriculture overall, no- check out PPIC for reports on this. The equivalent price that farmers pay for water is about 25 cents… you’d pay more for a shower as an individual I think!

mike_d 4y ago

The biggest consumer of water in the state (about half) is environmental concerns. Trying to maintain wetlands, fish populations, etc. Agriculture is 40%, and all consumer/urban consumption is 10%. The solution to the water problem is trivial, but quite unpopular. Tax crops by the gallons per human calorie. That would eliminate a lot of the feed crops that we grow using our water and ship overseas, as well as dumb shit like almonds.

r00fus 4y ago
Almonds pale in comparison to meat use of water. Your plan would work but CA milk/beef production would collapse - almonds would just get costlier (CA makes most of all almonds in the world).
- yetihehe 4y ago
  > Your plan would work but CA milk/beef production would collapse Yeah, better to make beef for 10 more years and change your place into desert.
  - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    Beef actually has a pretty moderate groundwater footprint, from what I've read it's less than half that of almonds per pound. That number is even smaller for grass finished beef. The numbers cited for water use for beef include rainfall that is incorporated into the grass that cattle graze, which is highly misleading.
    - ArnoVW 4y ago
      That's like saying : our nuclear power plant didn't have such a horrible accident, it has only released half of Chernobyl. It's the same sort of reasoning that is leading people to say that they shouldn't have to pay tax / reduce CO2 because "someone else is richer / more polluting".
      - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
        Everything we eat has some groundwater use. I'm just saying that for its nutrient and caloric density, beef is vastly overrated in its water use. We tend to compare pounds of food to other pounds of food, but that is a misleading comparison. The nutritional value of meat has been very undervalued in the past few decades, and meat has a lot of nutritional value that we as humans cannot get on our own from plants. That's not to say you should eat it for every meal, but ethically, environmentally and nutritionally, I really believe it is the best choice in terms of meat. Even CAFO beef, which is ethically pretty bad, is still vastly superior in that dimension to poultry and pretty much everything else. Methane is another issue but I believe there is also a good argument in favor of it there as well. There is actually quite a lot of methane release from crops like rice which do not get media derision, as does the methane release from cattle.