The Straits of Dire

Chris Hayes interviews LA Mayor  Garcetti about water
I’ve had lawns and loved them for most of my life. When I was a kid of 11, it was a lawn of our own that announced most resoundingly that we had moved up and out of apartment living and into our own house. We strung our lawn together with three neighbor lawns to our east to create the field where I learned to play and love baseball and football. The neighbor lawn to the west of us was the size of all four of the eastern lawns and the owner paid me $5 a week to mow it…so a lawn was my first job.


When we started a family of our own, again it was a long, rolling New England lawn that reminded us that we were no longer tenants on someone else’s property. We turned part of that lawn into a large vegetable garden, played softball and picnicked on other parts of it, and generally let our kids roam free over the whole of it whenever it wasn’t covered with snow.
The most recent lawn…a California lawn…was the most impressive of all…the greenest and thickest. It was also the most expensive. When we called the water department about 7 years ago to assess how we might cut down on our $300 a month water bill, they said we could begin with ripping out the lawn, which would save us about 50%. The lawn served no practical purpose…not even impractical. We never had a picnic on it, played softball, croquet or bocce on it…hardly ever walked on it. It was a purely aesthetic pleasure, and tearing out something that lovely to look at took a good deal of friendly persuasion.

But then it was done…two years before everything turned really dire on the California water front, and before the persuasion would not have been so friendly. We would have had no choice but to rip it out under the current circumstances. Such a lawn is unsustainable in California’s drought crisis.  

Chris Hayes, whose All In is the best damned news show on TV (as long as he doesn’t talk about football), recently travelled to California to cover the crisis. Hayes often travels to where news is being made to offer viewers insight from beyond the scare headlines. He interviews people close to the ground who are actually grappling with issues, rather than merely inflaming them. His trip to California to view the water crisis up close is a typically excellent endeavor (save for the title…"Water Wars." Is there no civic argument in this country we can't turn into a frickin' war?) In one interview he speaks with a Central Valley farmer who tells us a few remarkable things. First is that his main crop, cantaloupes, don’t need water…don’t want it really. Second is that the root drip system he’s put in place will cut water usage while increasing yield…significantly in both cases. Third is that the reason for the rise in demand for water-sucking almonds is healthier, more sophisticated eating habits. People no longer see a salad as a piece of iceberg lettuce with dressing, he says. They want it with fruit and nuts…thus the increasing demand…thus the increasing supply…thus the increasing water usage. And thus another item to be filed away under “Unintended Consequences." 
The most compelling interview (above) is with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who in adding rich texture and nuance to the discussion proves to be the most convincingly optimistic politician I’ve ever seen. Garcetti genuinely seems to embrace the water shortage facing his city and state as a galvanizing challenge, not as an overwhelming one. He seems positively energized by the creative and resourceful ways in which Californians are going about meeting the challenge. He talks about the jobs the crisis is creating. He talks about the innovative methods cities and individuals are implementing to create more usable water out of the available water rather than waiting for a miracle from the skies. He expresses unabashed, old-fashioned American can-doism about beating the drought and coming out of it stronger and better on the other side.

I must confess, after the interview he had me looking at the glass half full of water rather than half-empty. There’s definitely a heightened consciousness about water use in our social circles. Everyone is either talking about recycling, or tearing out lawns, or putting in water-saving toilets, appliances, and gadgets. Garcetti says that over the past 45 years the population of LA has increased by one million, but water usage has remained the same. That’s a pretty amazing and encouraging fact…the kind you don’t get much in the sky-is-falling world of 24/7 fear on cable news. Every once in a while it’s good for us humans to remind ourselves that getting things right is not as impossible as we make it out to be.  Our lawn before and after we got with the program