Who’s Taking America’s Water? | Climate Town

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Host, Head Writer, Editor: Rollie Williams
Executive Producers: Rollie Williams, Ben Boult, Matt Nelsen, Daniella Philipson
Producer: Daniella Philipson
Writer: Matt Nelsen
Director: Matt Nelsen
Cinematography: Ben Boult
Additional Cinematography: Matt Nelsen
Assistant Editors: Laura Conte, Byron Leon
LA Producer: Brad Einstein
Production Assistant: Alex Call
Additional Research: Nicole Conlan, Ben Boult, Sophia Vanderheym

[akaviral]

I actually showed my parents your video on induction stoves a few weeks ago and just recently they moved to a much smaller house and requested an induction stove. They said they absolutely love the speed of it and their gas bill is non-existent now! Thanks for the perfect format to entertain and educate!

[realBeltalowda]

What’s worse, just like with recycling and emissions, they’re blaming us and telling us that we should conserve water at the tap.

[totaltechno]

As a Dutchman, this scares me. We have separate election for water management and was the whole basis for our democractic system. These days we have so much control over our ground water that a recent discussion between farmers and foristers was about lowering the levels so fields are not too muddy for tractors. This is a country that is basically a giant river delta and not an arid desert. Giving your water to the Saudis seems like the dumbest idea ever.

[drewcipher]

We export goods grown with "free" water??? America explain!
Why are politicians worried about immigration when there are foreign companies litterally draining our natural resources dry? I mean I know the reason... political donations sources are usually public.

[njdevilku]

I always hear how much water is need to produce soy milk, almond milk, etc. But they never compare it to how water is needed for real milk.

[cicero]

This poor use of water hits hard here in Brazil. But we use it for soy. And we feed foreign pork instead of cows.

[tomtom]

I live in Fresno it's 106° right now and everyone is watering the sidewalks with their sprinklers. God bless America

[badp]

Ah, yes, the good old "better things are not possible because any kind of agricultural regulation would mean instant, forever famine". There's a lot of that in Europe too

[amorphous_bones]

As a note on reducing beef and dairy consumption, just removing subsidies would go a long way. Without them, ground hamburger would cost about $30/lb. Also worth noting is that subsidies end up drastically reducing the impact of consumer choice to abstain. You’re buying beef via the IRS whether you like it or not.

[TheLegoJungle]

even tho Rollie is always walking towards me in every video, he'll never catch me

[Marconius]

"Hey America, where should we put all these farms to feed our cows?"
"Desert?"
"Desert!"

[jaredt.murphy]

"Mysteriously killed and turned into beef" made me full on snort out loud. Bless you, Climate Town

[JustinThorntonArt]

Fun Fact the idea of, as you put it “dibs”, came to be was not to settle disputes between farmers but miners. Small streams in the Rocky Mountains where used in small claim mining operations. Occasionally someone would make a claim above another claim, divert the stream, and leave the first miner without enough water to run a sluice box. This lead to some frontier justice that government officials did not want.

The laws made to manage this came in response to the Colorado gold rush that started in 1859 with the laws following shortly thereafter. These laws are referred to as the Colorado Doctrine. They are now the basis of the prior appropriation system to this day.

So our water laws were made to stop fighting between gold miners in the mid 19th century long before any serious agricultural operations were happening in the Colorado River water shed.

[sircrapalot]

*THANK YOU* for talking about the water-hogging elephant in the room: agriculture. I'm so sick and tired of arguing with misinformed Arizonans who think all the state's water is being wasted on chip factories and golf courses. It simply isn't -- in fact despite the Phoenix Valley's population more than tripling over the last 50 years, it actually consumes *LESS* overall water because urbanization took the place of thirsty farmland.

The Colorado River Basin's water problem is firstly a resource management problem. If farmers had to pay a real market rate for water, they'd surely innovate better conservation to stay in business. But nope, we're led to believe that taking shorter showers is going to save the Southwest

[Zeriador]

Just woke up, put on my Climate Town t-shirt, sat down at the computer and BAM. New video.

[GamblingTimeKaraoke]

As a Californian who also lived in AZ with a lot of passion and rage for this topic, thank you so much for making this. I'm so sick and tired of ignorant people claiming it's almonds and golf courses. It's fucking alfafa for American and Middle Eastern/Chinese cows and paper water rights from the early 20th century! These water rights are in dire dire need of being torched. Of the many disgusting things going on in the environment, the wanton and casual destruction of the Colorado River and SW watershed by "eco-green leader" CA is so appalling it defies language. These mega farms have been caught many times wasting as much water as they can. Arrowhead even recently (finally!) got kicked out of CA after something like 90% of their water was found to be mysteriously disappearing-- probably being fucked dumped just so they could maintain their water allotments! It's not small farmers who are doing this shit. It's gigantic megafarmers who own an absolutely mind boggling amount of land and water and waste the vast majority of it. Just google the San Joaquin Valley sinking and see how much it has sunk from groundwater pumping.

Saudi Arabia needs to be kicked the fuck out of AZ, we need to stop feeding foreign cows, Americans need to eat less cows and dairy products, and entirely new water rights need to be drawn up. Full stop. This madness needs to end.

[kezia]

Very much the same issue in Australia. We are obviously known for our water shortages and droughts, but then we also sell insane water rights to mining companies, and beverage companies like Coke and Nestle and these all end up draining one of the most scarce and valuable resources we have, for pennies on the dollar. It is criminal, it is evil, it is barbaric and backwards.

[attemptityourself]

Fun fact: "use it or lose it" is also how the govt does discretionary budgets. That goes about as well for govt spending as it does for water conservation.

[aajmgopher]

As someone who lives in Arizona, I appreciate the spread of this information immensely. Policy around here has to change.

[thedapperdolphin]

I feel like a lot of government can be described as 1. Government commissions a study 2. Experts in the field put a lot of work into finding good solutions 3. Government ignores it