RSS Feed
Author Archive
Get ready for new normal: dry and drier
Posted by LA Times: William deBuys on August 16th, 2015
LA Times: California in the Great Drought is a living diorama of how the future is going to look across much of the United States as climate change sets in. Like hippies and "dude," wine bars and hot tubs, mega-churches and gay rights, what gets big in California goes national soon enough. Now, the large dark bruise spreading across the state on the U.S. Drought Monitor map is a preview of a bone-dry world to come.
Admittedly, recent summer rains have somewhat dulled the edge of this "exceptional" California...
Posted in 
The drying of the West
Posted by LA Times: William deBuys on July 29th, 2013
LA Times: John Wesley Powell, whose legendary descent of the Colorado River in 1869 brought the one-armed explorer fame and celebrity, worried about America's westward migration. The defining characteristic of Western lands was their aridity, he wrote, and settlement of the West would have to respect the limits aridity imposed. He was half right. The subsequent story of the West can indeed be read as an unending duel between society's thirst and the dryness of the land, but in downtown Phoenix, Las Vegas...