As long as it’s fully consensual this is none of our business.
It’s humans or capitalism. The issue with water usage is it’s priority is controlled by private corporations that control our governments.
Don’t confuse this. Even with datacenters. The datacenters can be defeated and we will still face this issue with agriculture, golf courses, or whatever else. The issue is capitalism and the control of vital resources that we all need are being redirected to ensure the wealthy are profitable.
Fight the datacenters, fight the beef industry, but don’t get distracted by the “one thing” we need to defeat. Because we’ll all die of thirst if we don’t end the fundamental incompatibility of capitalism with the ability for human beings to live on this planet.
absolutely. essential resources like water should be nationalized and managed with extreme bias towards ‘the public good’. unfortunately in many places the public good isn’t even meaningfully defined and our courts prioritize the rights of capital/corporations above all else. I agree we need to keep fighting and pushing every overreach. poly-crises demand poly-solutions.
Plot twist: they are both going to lose to AI data centers!
And almonds or pistachios, I can’t remember which.
Almonds are grossly inefficient, yet California grows them in deserts.
Yay?
LOL, almonds are a huuuuuge red herring in discussions about water. Don’t fall for it.
It’s real and it’s a bad idea.
Does it stack up against 125 year old water rights allowing Nestlé to steal literal tons of water out from under us? Or golf courses? Or motherfucking data centers?!?!
Absolutely not. But any corporate water waste needs to be addressed in our upcoming climate catastrophes.
Almonds are still better than animal products, in terms of resource efficiency. But I prefer oat and soy milks over almond anyway.
Oats all the way, baby!
I enjoy oat milk for drinks and whole oats (groats) for oatmeal.
Replacing dairy milk with oat milk in nearly every confectionery is a game-changer
I haven’t gone that far yet. Still experimenting making existing things gluten free for my granddaughter.
I drink almond milk and have no qualms about it. I’ll drink oat and soy, too, but generally opt for almond. And I don’t feel any of the guilt that is trying to be redirected onto almonds, either, as I recognize it for the propaganda that it is.
Unless we zero out things like all the meat being consumed, I think almonds rank wayyyyyy down on the list of my concerns.
Once again, all of California isn’t a desert. Most of California isn’t a desert. The Central Valley, where most of the world’s almonds are grown isn’t a desert. The way water is used in California is fucked, but almonds in particular aren’t the worst offender (why does anyone care about food people can eat when we’re exporting fucking alfalfa?).
While not technically a desert, it’s hot and dry as all hell.
And yes, alfalfa entirely for export is grotesque.
I thought it was high desert, til
Almonds and Avocado’s are both huge draws of water. The central valley is such a massive farming community though yeah there are a lot of users.
But the almond guys get more than their fair share through corruption with state and local officials or some shit.
The ground has already sunk 30 some feet from overdrawing water from the aquifer in some parts of the central valley.
They make billions of year off of them, it’s big business. Substantially owned by a handful of families that haven’t seen a day of real farm work in their meaningless lives.
Almonds and avocados are both really bad. But doing things like hosting vegetable grows in the AZ desert just isn’t sustainable either to be honest.
Don’t forget that alfalfa
Cows it is
It’s disheartening to see a system’s flaw, see why the system persists, know how to fix the system and also know that the fix is impossible because people are how they are.
Your conclusion doesn’t really follow historical examples. People are “how they are” until they are not. Systems seem impossible to change until they very quickly do. The long part is the fight before that change occurs that sets up the organization and class solidarity that ensures that when that moment happens; what we have left after the smoke clears is better than before.
We are the generations of that slow building beforehand. We may be the generation that will suffer and fight so our childrens children are free to build.
Do not let the fallacy of “how people are” dishearten you. There is no “human nature” that keeps us from progress. If that was true we’d still be hunting and gathering in Africa.
The frustration is that it’s not going to happen in my lifetime. Things will get harder first if history is any guide. But we must plant seeds for trees that we know we’ll never enjoy the shade of. You shouldn’t be waiting for others to “get it”. You just need to accept our place in history and be inspired by the planting the shade for which we’ll be remembered.
People can be very adaptable. Over a generation or two. Humans aren’t generally built for what we today consider rapid change. More rapid than genetic evolution certainly, but people who can evolve their thinking in a single lifetime are pretty rare and special. Which is a shame when natural selection finally starts dealing cards fast enough to outrun our adaptability ceiling.
The whole place used to be covered in meat that took care of itself and tended the environment, perfectly, till you absolutely insane genocidal demons shot a billion of them out of spite and left them to rot on the ground.
Welcome to the hell you made.
Literally everyone who took part in massacre of the buffalo in the late 1800’s is dead; what is the point of your comment besides some jab at the common man?
The obviously live in a place that has nothing bad in it’s history.
I was talking to bloomberg.com. If you think bloomberg.com is “the common man”, I guess I’m talking to you too.
If you take offense at my comment about the buffalo, and think an indigenous american isn’t part of “the common man”, maybe you should be doing more to cleanse the pain from your heart, left over from your dead ancestors, who’s genocidal rampages very much still benefit you.
I was talking to bloomberg.com
That is not obvious to me from such a generic use of the word “you”. It never crossed my mind, considering only Lemmy users are reading that comment.
think an indigenous american isn’t part of “the common man”
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, as nothing I wrote could be construed as such from my own rereading.
That is not obvious to me from such a generic use of the word “you”. It never crossed my mind, considering only Lemmy users are reading that comment.
It’s not obvious to you because you feel in some way responsible and felt called out because of, I’m going to guess, your ancestors.
Or are you telling me that when the OP is someone popping off and getting punched, you answer every comment of “that’s what you get” with “I didn’t do anything!”
When the OP is a politician speaking, and people in the comments call that politician out, you go around defending yourself against comments against that politician? “I didn’t zone that area for commercial property against the will of the town hall!”
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, as nothing I wrote could be construed as such from my own rereading.
If you included indigenous Americans in “the common man” you could never accuse me of calling out “the common man”. Or did you think I was calling out indigenous Americans for the destruction of the buffalo?
You’re putting a lot of words in my mouth to suit your own view point, I don’t understand the antagonism coming from you.
You’re the one that brought native Americans into this, when I said common man I meant anyone who’s not a billionaire/politician.
I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make with this continuation, it feels like you’re trying to “gotcha” me without using anything I’ve actually said.
when I said common man I meant anyone who’s not a billionaire/politician.
Oh shit, I didn’t realize that you thought I was calling out black and indigenous Americans and women of all types, for the destruction of the buffalo. I see where I was confused. That seemed so obvious that I didn’t think anyone could be confused at that point in particular.
Please disregard all the stuff I said. I’ll answer your original post again with this new information.
Literally everyone who took part in massacre of the buffalo in the late 1800’s is dead; what is the point of your comment besides some jab at the common man?
I am not calling out black and indigenous people or women for the destruction of the buffalo. I am not calling out anyone who fights for change. I am calling out the Bloomberg class and anyone who supports them either by their inaction or action.
If you do not support them in your actions, and you fight to push forth changes to remedy this great injustice, I’m not talking to you.
I’m sorry for the confusion and thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the work you are doing to help restore the North American continent to its former glory.
I never understood why more people didn’t ranch bison. I also wonder if there is bison cheese, (from those I know there are from asian buffalo.)
I mean, it’s not…
The reason the West is so dry, was the intentional wipeout of native animals.
The buffalo were wiped out first to remove the natives food source. Then beavers to hurt (mostly French) trappers.
Without them, the plants failed.
To fix it, honestly isnt hard:
First stack rocks in dry creek beds, the flatter the ground the longer you can go between them. Water still flows thru the rocks, but it does it slower sinking into the ground where it gets retained.
Doesn’t take long for grasses and plants to start establishing on those banks. Then small herbivores eat them and poop it out, fertilizing the area around the creek, and dispersing seeds from elsewhere.
The plants develop roots and suck water away from the creek bed, which now it can absorb more water.
Before long that creek that’s dry all but two weeks a year is now a permanent water, and where there’s running water beavers show up. They instinctively add to the initial rocks, turning them into full fledged dams and creating rivers and wetlands.
Add buffalo back on top of that once there’s enough greenery, and they’ll shit everywhere.
Freshwater constantly falls from the sky, the main problem is we fucked up the environment so most of it ends up going straight out to sea and becoming saltwater again. To refill aquifiers we just need to slow that flow down.
LA having “rivers” made of concrete is the dumbest shit ever
I was agreeing until the part where the water goes out to the sea. Less than 1% of the Colorado River reaches the sea. More than half is used for irrigating fields of live stock feed. So reducing beef consumption/cattle raising would have an outsized impact on water issues out west. As you mention, bison naturally work better with the environment of the western plains than European cattle.
There’s less water, and more than half of that lesser amount of water goes to cows thru their feed. If the environment recovered, they could just fucking graze. Even filling the nice of the buffalo
If we had more water retention, that would be a smaller percentage, and water would be flowing till the end. Increasing the less than 1%.
Like…
I’m talking about increasing flow by gallons, you’re talking percents…
Do I need to explain why that is always bad or has it clicked yet?
Quick edit:
And as always, if you think someone didn’t think of an obvious thing, it’s worth asking questions instead of just assuming anything that’s not mentioned wasn’t accounted for.
I didn’t say the earth orbits the sun, but it’s true.
It’s unfortunate that all I see growing in my imagination is a wasteland of invasive tumbleweeds, but I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
Data centers will dehydrate us and all the land. Cows don’t stand a chance.
When I looked up how the water in Colorado was divvied up, 90% was going to agriculture. Industrial was at 3%, municipal at 7%.
Data centers would make up part of that 3%, I assume, so they have a ways to go…not that I’m a fan, but it would make sense to have a sense of the actual data.
I keep seeing how datacenters are consuming all the water…but it’s for cooling purposes…they can’t hoard all that water indefinitely, it’s a heat sink. Once it’s performed its cooling job, where does the heated water go? Evaporated into the atmosphere? Re-injected to the ground or river?
All of the above, with there being a pretty wide variety of cooling designs in use. Most of the data center cooling water needs are actually in the power plants that supply them.
It boils down to what is making more money for those who are in charge. If industrial farming manages to cough up enough bribes to buy political power, you’re advised move to better areas if you still want to have access to potable water.
I’d like to give human meat a try /s
