Certainly you are right. If all the golf courses are closed and agriculture is transitioned to more stable locales, the Southwest would have a fighting chance.
However, when you take into account human nature, especially American human nature, the forecast seems darker. More and more, I believe that Collapse seems to be hard-wired into the human collective. It almost seems as if there is a number of humans (n) that serves as an under/over for inevitable collapse. One person can have foresight. Two people, 10 people, 1000 people even. But once you hit 10,000 or so the ability to sway public opinion with money and media becomes too strong. All it takes is a certain percentage of people to be convinced the problem is a conspiracy or a mirage. That is enough to sow doubt more widely, and to sink any efforts towards a reasonable conservation of resources.
The Southwest will collapse, and soon. And the number of people denying the existence of a problem will be non-trivial even as the last reservoir dries up. Itβs a shame, but it was as Cadillac Desert proves imminently avoidable.
I believe Los Angeles (like many coastal cities) still sends most of its stormwater to the ocean. Capturing more of it could reduce external water requirements.[1]
Some of this is being done already, with some 33 billion gallons captured during this current storm season, apparently enough to supply 816K people (of ~4M) for a year.[2]
It's an organization problem. Over time people are capable of organizing themselves to overcome pretty much any problem, including large scale environmental events. See eg. Water Boards[1] in the Netherlands for dealing with the inverse problem (regular flooding).
Possibly this takes multiple similar disasters in a row before people decide enough is enough.
However, when you take into account human nature, especially American human nature, the forecast seems darker. More and more, I believe that Collapse seems to be hard-wired into the human collective. It almost seems as if there is a number of humans (n) that serves as an under/over for inevitable collapse. One person can have foresight. Two people, 10 people, 1000 people even. But once you hit 10,000 or so the ability to sway public opinion with money and media becomes too strong. All it takes is a certain percentage of people to be convinced the problem is a conspiracy or a mirage. That is enough to sow doubt more widely, and to sink any efforts towards a reasonable conservation of resources.
The Southwest will collapse, and soon. And the number of people denying the existence of a problem will be non-trivial even as the last reservoir dries up. Itβs a shame, but it was as Cadillac Desert proves imminently avoidable.