{"id":28631,"date":"2014-07-20T14:14:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T22:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/?p=28631"},"modified":"2014-07-20T15:44:48","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T23:44:48","slug":"rolling-coal-for-rich-assholes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/?p=28631","title":{"rendered":"Rolling Coal for Rich Assholes."},"content":{"rendered":"

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a typical house\/lawn in hancock park, a los angeles suburb<\/p>\n

Hi. How are you? Fine? Well that’s just dandy. Because I am not fine. I \u00a0am fucking weirded out and terrified. Did you know it hasn\u2019t rained in Los Angeles in, like, a million years? It\u2019s undergoing the biggest dry spell since prohibition. Southern California water managers are doing such a great job that you would hardly know we are in the midst of the worst drought since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. Most selfish, solipsistic Americans think water shortages only occur in third world distant lands; their faucet will always flow water on command. Maybe because on the surface, our LA’s landscapes look as lush and healthy as Kentucky. Fountains continue to shoot water in great arcs, our cars are freshly washed. This “drought-proofing” of SoCal is giving us a false sense of security. It is exceedingly difficult to convey the urgency of the situation when most everything around us is green.<\/p>\n

FACT: we have only enough water in storage to\u00a0get through the next 12 to 18 months, and that’s it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Californians has historically \u00a0made efforts at water conservation with our mandatory low-flow shower heads and toilets (we got them FREE), front loading washers, no lawns, etc. During the horrendous drought in the early 1990’s, you’d get scolded for leaving the water running when brushing your teeth, and homeowners would roll with it by replacing their lawns with sand dunes, cacti, and decorative cow skulls.<\/p>\n

Today, the state\u2019s driest year on record, and no rain in sight, the Dept. of Agriculture declaring a Natural Disaster for 27 California Counties, Gov. Moonbeams having begging us to take whatever steps we can to cut down on our water use and for us to take a moment to think about how we are all connected to each other in a time of water crisis, as well as to the plants and animals that live here….and our usage is going up.<\/em><\/p>\n


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We used to have a lot of water in California, but now we don’t. Without a few successive winters of above-average precipitation, we have only enough water in storage to get us barely through the next two years. Our state and local water managers have thrown up their hands because they just don’t know where our water is going to come from.<\/p>\n

Used to be in California, they couldn’t charge us for the water, only the means of delivery and wastewater costs.\u00a0But it’s now a commodity<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/strong>That’s OK. If that <\/span>asshole billionaire’s ballot initiative<\/span><\/a><\/strong> to divide California into 6 new states passes, the state of San Francisco will have all that delicious <\/span>Hetch Hetchy<\/span><\/a><\/strong> water to themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no defense against drought when there is no snowmelt to feed the rivers that normally refill our reservoir<\/em>s, or when groundwater \u2014 our buffer against dwindling surface water supplies \u2014 continues to disappear with over pumping. Our water has three main sources: snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada, local groundwater and imported water from the Colorado River basin.Unfortunately, all three of these sources are drying up. The amount of available freshwater from each has declined significantly during the drought. Even worse, best available forecasts indicate that the declines will continue for decades. Second, it is time, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, mandatory water restrictions, with enforcement and fines for violations.<\/p>\n

If SoCal does not stop wasting its water, and if the drought continues on its epic course, there is nothing more anyone can do for us. Water availability in SoCal will be drastically reduced. They farmers come here\u00a0because<\/em> of the weather.The farming practices are truly crazy–an entirely unsustainable system of rolling sprinklers and fire hydrant hoses over vast tracts of lettuce, broccoli, celery; efficient drip hoses in most orchards and vineyards, but EVERYTHING grown in SoCal\u00a0has to be watered. <\/em>The first rule for staying alive in a desert is not to pour the contents of your water flask into the sand. Yet that, bizarrely, is what the government has encouraged farmers to do in the drought-afflicted south-west. Agriculture accounts for 80% of water consumption in California, for example, but only 2% of economic activity. Farmers flood the land to grow rice, alfalfa and other thirsty crops. By one account, over the years they have paid just 15% of the capital costs of the federal system that delivers much of their irrigation water. If water were priced properly, it is a safe bet that they would waste far less of it, and the effects of California\u2019s drought would not be so dire.\u00a0I still don’t understand WHY anyone here is allowed to grow rice, but then the politic of California agriculture is mind boggling.<\/p>\n

The enormous energy cost of importing water into Southern California, 60% of which goes to irrigating landscaping, primarily\u00a0lawns,<\/em> is staggering. The lawn i<\/em>s a visual reference to other places and other times and\u00a0to make the illusion that we don’t live in a desert\u00a0that we carry along like a security blanket that literally\u00a0no one needs.<\/em> I am\u00a0aware<\/p>\n

that I live in a relatively unfancy place with more cement than yard unlike your mansions, which Zillow leads me to believe are each worth upwards of $4 million. with all your fancy stuff, can\u2019t see clear to TURNING OFF THE FUCKING SPRINKLER SYSTEM. Because we\u2019re in the midst of\u00a0the worst drought in California. Los Angelenos walk around like it is NORMAL that it hasn’t rained in 2 years. Nobody \u00a0seems bothered by it. AND YOU WON’T STOP WATERING YOUR FUCKING LAWNS.<\/p>\n

I’m talking to you, Hancock Park.<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Monday – Friday, \u00a0as I drive my stupid Prius through your stupid neighborhood, I see your sprinkler systems going on. This is at around 10AM. Your lush, green lawns (all planted with non-native grasses obviously) suck in all the water that does not evaporate into the thin air before it hits your grass blades. Gov. Moonbeams declared a state of emergency in January. IN JANUARY! And you\u2019re still watering your lawns in JULY?? I don’t know what sorts of laws apply to your fancy neighborhood, but if you live in the city of Los Angeles, there is in effect a restriction on the watering of lawns<\/em>. Odd numbered homes can water on MWF, even homes on TTHS. Also, only before 9AM or after 4PM, only for eight minutes.\u00a0Why don\u2019t you take all the filthy lucre you use to send your kids to Oakwoods and shove it up your well-hydrated asses? Or, better yet, just set the money on fire in your green green lawn and then demand the fire department show up to put out the fire with gallons of water and then hire a landscaping company to reseed and regrow the same fucking unnatural alien grass you\u2019ve been growing for years?? \u00a0 If you want a lush green lawn, move the fuck to Connecticut, already.\u00a0There’s nothing like living in SoCal and wanting your lawn to look like Downton Abbey.<\/span><\/p>\n

You rich, selfish fuckers know that no matter how high crop failures drive food prices, you’ll always be able to afford your organic meatloafs. Everyone else can starve and die, your kelly green lawn is more important than their dinner. The thing that amazes me is that you can grow a thousand different things here that are delightful and require little or no maintenance – and instead, you dumb people waste money, effort (not your<\/em> effort), and our precious water trying to propagate little patches of Greenwich, or Kentucky, in your LA neighborhood. They need to start handing out $500 fines the way they’ve been handing out parking tickets. Just start slapping every bright green lawn with a $500 citation, the only way these people will change their selfish habits in the short run is to make their actions illegal and expensive, and make very visible examples of offenders. It takes an enormous amount of cheating to keep a giant lawn green in a very dry area and that takes lots and lots of dumping of chemicals. So every time that yuppie Hancocksucker makes the poor gardener (who will eventually bang his plastic-enhanced trophy wife because there has to be SOME benefit to work for a racially condescending asshole WGA member), go fertilize the lawn or treat it for weeds and then water it, all those chemicals get to seep down or during a rainstorm they get washed into sewers which go into the ocean. So really it’s an asshole two-fer.<\/p>\n

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Farmers are losing their shit, firefighters are fucking worried as hell, and assholes want their fucking lawns to be as green as Vetearn’s Stadium in the 70’s? It totally psychotic. No one ever actually even uses <\/em>front yards! It might as well be green-painted asphalt! It is a waste of water up there with golf courses. It’s only grass,<\/em> and not even the good kind! No one dies if the lawn isn’t green. Grass is one of the most water intensive plants out there so having a giant lawn in a drought ridden state is pure asshollery deserving of being pushed upon the wall. There is absolutely no reason to water grass with potable water. If you can’t find an acceptable drought-resistant grass, then let it go brown.<\/span><\/p>\n


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The economy-crippling droughts in the southwest are depleting the vast Lake Mead \u00a0to levels not seen since Hoover Dam was completed and the reservoir on the Colorado River was filled in the 1930s. Well, shit. Eventually the water supply to Greater Los Angeles from Lake Mead will just stop and The Great Water War will bubble up between California and Arizona. WAKE UP, SHEEPLE! Why aren’t you scared? Why isn’t the fact that it hasn’t rained in two years keeping YOU awake at night? Ypu need to understand what NO WATER will mean: enormous wildfires trying to swallow the entire state back into the earth, skyrocketing water, food and energy prices, the demise of locl agriculture,\u00a0Rand Paul in the White House denying us federal assistance and giant fire-killing drones.\u00a0Oh and the Colorado River? Yeah it’s going to be gone unless California starts building desalination plants and everyone tells Vegas to get fucked. Oregon is going to eventually look like So. Cali if we don’t tell the billionaires to drink their own polluted run-off (ya see kids, it’s not just that they water their lawns but all that chemical fertilizer? Yeah it’s toxic and is a bonus byproduct for groundwater and the oceans) and go fuck themselves.\u00a0But it’s ok to have my Tahoe LTZ washed every day,…right?<\/p>\n

Tragically, it looks like the our old savior El Ni\u00f1o will NOT be helping California out, after all. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center is still projecting that sea surface temperatures will rise, but will likely be “weak to moderate”, \u00a0As hopes for a boost to next winter’s rains fade, 2014 is on track to become California’s hottest year, and among its driest, on record. IT JUST KEEPS GETTING HOTTER AND DRIER.<\/p>\n

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Reclamation (FBR), which oversees its use, cut the release of water from Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border to Lake Mead, America\u2019s largest reservoir. It has never done this before.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can try the more popular “Jesus Route” \u00a0to moisture, calling for \u00a0prayer vigils in the hopes that the heavens will unleash the rain. But be warned! Jesus may only give you locusts or cicadas, which\u00a0are far worse. <\/em>How many tears can God pour out?\u00a0You might recall that Governor of the great state of Texas Rick Perry prayed to the Lord Jesus and\u00a0demanded<\/em> rain be poured from Heaven directly to Texas, to stop the multitude of plagues \u2014 wildfire, drought, literacy \u2014 threatening the Texas way of life. And denied him<\/em>, repeatedly. God heard Rick\u2019s prayer, and God said NO! If God answered prayers Sarah Palin would slide under a gasoline truck, tasting her own arterial spray (what God actually said was, “I wouldn’t piss down Rick Perry’s throat if his heart was on fire”). Like many a town in Texas, at some point they will need to drink recycled urine. When that runs out, three days later, give or take the heat, they die. If instead they choose to drink the oil or gas instead, they die faster.<\/p>\n

Maybe if we gave droughts names, like we do with storms, and the drought was named “BARACK”, residents of drought-prone areas would just climb up on their roofs and start shooting into the sky, screaming about their freedom from clouds.<\/p>\n

It is time for Los Angelenos to wake up and smell the dusty, dry air that has turned the rest of our State brown. We are in big trouble. I will be leading the great out-migration east, where I have a farm with it’s own well and 53 acres to grow food and raise cows on. We\u2019ll be Climate Refugees.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a typical house\/lawn in hancock park, a los angeles suburb Hi. How are you? Fine? Well that’s just dandy. Because I am not fine. I \u00a0am fucking weirded out and terrified. Did you know it hasn\u2019t rained in Los Angeles in, like, a million years? It\u2019s undergoing the biggest dry spell since prohibition. Southern California […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28631"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28789,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28631\/revisions\/28789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}