Living Like Ed - (Page 43) Concerns About Water Water use—or rather water waste—is a hot topic in our house. Rachelle still doesn’t seem to understand why I keep after her about wasting water. Well, here’s why. Many experts theorize that water is going to be our next crisis, because of global climate change. If there is less snow in mountainous regions, which most climatologists agree is going to happen, then a water shortage will come. There will be periods of rain, certainly, but right now we have a big savings account banked in all that snow. With global warming, we’ll have less snow in the future, so this “cash” in the form of rain will be passing by quickly. Instead of freezing and staying in a “snow bank,” it will wash right on by and we won’t be able to use it fast enough. Those same experts say there will be flooding and other problems, too, but the worst part is there will simply be a lot less water, and we won’t have this wonderful reserve. Nature has been doing it this way for years: Build up a stockpile and then release it when the snow melts from the Sierras and our other water storage banks. Year in, year out, you could pretty much count on it. But that cycle has been broken, many experts feel, and if they are correct, it will be very, very dicey for places like Southern California, where nearly all of our water comes from other areas. We get it from the Owens Valley, from the California Aqueduct, we get it from the Colorado River. And if one leg of that stool gets shaved off, we’re going to teeter and eventually fall. Water comes at such high environmental cost for the fish, and for the people, too. In the Owens Valley lots of folks have respiratory problems and what have you. A bit of a dust bowl thing has occurred there. It’s been an ongoing problem for many, many years because of the way they sold off their water rights so we could thrive here in Southern California. But the plant and animal species, as well as the human population, are paying dearly for this transaction. Water also requires a great deal of energy to move from place to place. One of the biggest enTurn off the Tap ergy bills for the infrastructure of COST: free the State of California is pumping water. Certainly it takes a great 43 1: home window coverings—can physically reduce the amount of heat that escapes through your
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