A harbinger of things to come?
California has long been considered a ground where trends are born and nurtured, whether it’s skateboarding, nibbling sushi, or, in the 1960s, hippie culture.
Unless we divert from our current course, we run the serious risk of something else from California worming its way out into the heartland, something few of us would welcome – water rationing.
For the first time in the Golden State’s history, mandatory restrictions were put in place Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown as a result of a drought that has stretched on for four years.
“People should realize we are in a new era,” Brown said. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”
And scientists said California’s drought is being made worse by climate change.
“The 21st century for sure is being characterized by persistent, ubiquitous drought in the West,” Deke Arndt of the National Climactic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., told The New York Times. The Natural Resources Defense Council has previously warned that nearly every corner of the United States runs the risk of experiencing droughts as a result of climate change. Some regions will be hit harder than others, but none will be a Garden of Eden immune from what is happening elsewhere.
Rather than emulating what is unfolding in California, this is one area where we need to see it as a harbinger of what could be coming and steer the ship in a new direction.