Proof of Concept

Goin' up the country

Babe don't you want to go?
Going some place
I've never been before.
    - Canned Heat

Money, it's a crime

Share it fairly

but don't take a slice of my pie

     -Pink Floyd 

Greetings

     Seems like the time is right to look at some alternative ways of living.   Not merely reducing fossil fuel use, but living sustainability by other measures.  See e,g, "The Sustainability crisis didn't start and doesn't stop at climate change

        Why bother?   You can choose your own motivation.   Some might do it because its the right thing to do regardless of whether it will do any good.    Other may try to set an example and convince their neighbors.   Or perhaps you want to a model for folks for when people finally cone to their senses.  Others may want to "Collapse now, and avoid the rush"

     As noted before, the foot print analysis provides a reasonable measure for the sustainability or lack thereof, for any particular way of living.     Here is a short quiz to see where you stand.    If everyone lived like the average US citizen it would take 5 planets to sustain us.  

      Here's an interesting article about the foot print evaluation of the Scottish commune Findhorn Ecovillage  (Hat tip Christine)  Check out the full study here .     They use a variety of techniques to keep their footprint small.  They are mostly vegetarian, and have a substantial garden which provides about 70% of their food.  For energy they rely in part on a local wind power, and reduce energy needs by efficient buildings, district hearing, and shared facilities. 

        Its interesting to note, though, that despite theses measures, they are still unable to get their footprint within the sustainable limits.    As the article points it is mainly because of the private air travel that the residents engage in.

       Which may demonstrate the "old" adage "Its easier for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle, than for him  to become sustainable"   :-)

     Which brings us back to the "Al Gore problem".  If you are rich, what are you going to do?  Even if you ride the train, buy green power, stop buying stuff, and become a vegetarian, what do you do with your money?  Your friends are rich, everyone at the country club is rich.  What do you talk about?  Your last trip, your next trip.....

     Or As George Monbiot puts it in Addicted to comfort

"Had our ancestors been asked to predict what would happen in an age of widespread prosperity in which most religious and cultural proscriptions had lost their power, how many would have guessed that our favourite activities would not be fiery political meetings, masked orgies, philosophical debates, hunting wild boar or surfing monstrous waves but shopping and watching other people pretending to enjoy themselves? How many would have foreseen a national conversation – in public and in private – that revolves around the three Rs: renovation, recipes and resorts? How many would have guessed that people possessed of unimaginable wealth and leisure and liberty would spend their time shopping for onion goggles and wheatgrass juicers? Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chainstores.

   


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If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble

June 26, 2015 12.59pm AEST

We are used to hearing that if everyone lived in the same way as North Americans or Australians, we would need four or five planet Earths to sustain us.

This sort of analysis is known as the “ecological footprint” and shows that even the so-called “green” western European nations, with their more progressive approaches to renewable energy, energy efficiency and public transport, would require more than three planets.

How can we live within the means of our planet? When we delve seriously into this question it becomes clear that almost all environmental literature grossly underestimates what is needed for our civilisation to become sustainable.

Only the brave should read on.

The ‘ecological footprint’ analysis

In order to explore the question of what “one planet living” would look like, let us turn to what is arguably the world’s most prominent metric for environmental accounting – the ecological footprint analysis. This was developed by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, then at the University of British Columbia, and is now institutionalised by the scientific body, The Global Footprint Network, of which Wackernagel is president.

This method of environmental accounting attempts to measure the amount of productive land and water a given population has available to it, and then evaluates the demands that population makes upon those ecosystems. A sustainable society is one that operates within the carrying capacity of its dependent ecosystems.

While this form of accounting is not without its critics – it is certainly not an exact science – the worrying thing is that many of its criticsactually claim that it underestimates humanity’s environmental impact. Even Wackernagel, the concept’s co-originator, is convinced the numbers are underestimates.

According to the most recent data from the Global Footprint Network, humanity as a whole is currently in ecological overshoot, demanding one and a half planet’s worth of Earth’s biocapacity. As the global population continues its trend toward 11 billion people, and while the growth fetishcontinues to shape the global economy, the extent of overshoot is only going to increase.

Every year this worsening state of ecological overshoot persists, the biophysical foundations of our existence, and that of other species, are undermined.

The footprint of an ecovillage

As I have noted, the basic contours of environmental degradation are relatively well known. What is far less widely known, however, is that even the world’s most successful and long-lasting ecovillages have yet to attain a “fair share” ecological footprint.

Take the Findhorn Ecovillage in Scotland, for example, probably the most famous ecovillage in the world. An ecovillage can be broadly understood as an “intentional community” that forms with the explicit aim of living more lightly on the planet. Among other things, the Findhorn community has adopted an almost exclusively vegetarian diet, produces renewable energy and makes many of their houses out of mud or reclaimed materials.

Findhorn Ecovillage in Scotland. Irenicrhonda/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Click to enlarge

An ecological footprint analysis was undertaken of this community. It was discovered that even the committed efforts of this ecovillage still left the Findhorn community consuming resources and emitting waste far in excess of what could be sustained if everyone lived in this way. (Part of the problem is that the community tends to fly as often as the ordinary Westerner, increasing their otherwise small footprint.)

Put otherwise, based on my calculations, if the whole world came to look like one of our most successful ecovillages, we would still need one and a half planet’s worth of Earth’s biocapacity. Dwell on that for a moment.

I do not share this conclusion to provoke despair, although I admit that it conveys the magnitude of our ecological predicament with disarming clarity. Nor do I share this to criticise the noble and necessary efforts of the ecovillage movement, which clearly is doing far more than most to push the frontiers of environmental practice.

Rather, I share this in the hope of shaking the environmental movement, and the broader public, awake. With our eyes open, let us begin by acknowledging that tinkering around the edges of consumer capitalism is utterly inadequate.

In a full world of seven billion people and counting, a “fair share” ecological footprint means reducing our impacts to a small fraction of what they are today. Such fundamental change to our ways of living is incompatible with a growth-oriented civilisation.

Some people may find this this position too “radical” to digest, but I would argue that this position is merely shaped by an honest review of the evidence.

What would ‘one planet’ living look like?

Even after five or six decades of the modern environmental movement, it seems we still do not have an example of how to thrive within the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet.

Nevertheless, just as the basic problems can be sufficiently well understood, the nature of an appropriate response is also sufficiently clear, even if the truth is sometimes confronting.

We must swiftly transition to systems of renewable energy, recognising that the feasibility and affordability of this transition will demand that we consume significantly less energy than we have become accustomed to in the developed nations. Less energy means less producing and consuming.

We must grow our food organically and locally, and eat considerably less (or no) meat. We must ride our bikes more and fly less, mend our clothes, share resources, radically reduce our waste streams and creatively “retrofit the suburbs” to turn our homes and communities into places of sustainable production, not unsustainable consumption. In doing so, we must challenge ourselves to journey beyond the ecovillage movement and explore an even deeper green shade of sustainability.

Among other things, this means living lives of frugality, moderation and material sufficiency. Unpopular though it is to say, we must also have fewer children, or else our species will grow itself into a catastrophe.

But personal action is not enough. We must restructure our societies to support and promote these “simpler” ways of living. Appropriate technology must also assist us on the transition to one planet living. Someargue that technology will allow us to continue living in the same way while also greatly reducing our footprint.

However, the extent of “dematerialisation” required to make our ways of living sustainable is simply too great. As well as improving efficiency, we also need to live more simply in a material sense, and re-imagine the good life beyond consumer culture.

First and foremost, what is needed for one planet living is for the richest nations, including Australia, to initiate a “degrowth” process of planned economic contraction.

I do not claim that this is likely or that I have a detailed blueprint for how it should transpire. I only claim that, based on the ecological footprint analysis, degrowth is the most logical framework for understanding the radical implications of sustainability.

Can the descent from consumerism and growth be prosperous? Can we turn our overlapping crises into opportunities?

These are the defining questions of our time.

Hot times

Hotter than a match head

    - Lovin Spoonful

If I don't get some shelter

ooh, yeah, I'm gonna fade away

-Rolling Stones

Greetings

         Seems like were due for a scorcher this weekend.    By "we" I mean everyone from Alaska to California.  see .e.g.   Worst Fire Conditions on record etc..  (see below).  (For a nice discussion of heat and human health, see this interview with Dr Robert Kopp on ecoshock radio )

       I had the opportunity to go to the Oregon Forest Fair this weekend.  (Thanks Mark H!)   And one of the main topics was forest fires and how to pay for for putting them out.  It could be expensive.   Recently BC announced it was burning through its fire fighting budget and the fire season has barely started.

        Those of you paying attention, are aware that weird heat waves are probably  a result of the the warming of the Arctic.

  I came across an interesting lecture form  Dr James Anderson of Harvard, which discusses the arctic warming in some detail..  see here, as a part of Harvard Heat Week.   (Thanks to Radio Eco shock - which BTW also has a nice piece on Northwest protests.  )  Towards the end of Dr Anderson's  talk he makes a good pitch for Harvard to divest from fossil fuels. and encourages civil, as well as uncivil disobedience. !,   But what really caught my attention was his statement that the loss of the ice was non reversible.  

 "Of course the immediate question is can we lose 70 percent of the ice volume in 30 years and return to a stable condition. I don't know anybody who has suggested how heat can be extracted from this system to re-form the ice structure. All of these feedbacks are operating in the same direction. And there's no known mechanism that can extract heat to re-form these ice structures... and so when you look at this question [of reversing Arctic ice loss], the answer quite clearly 'no'."  
(Thanks to Alex Smith or Radio Eco shock for the transcription.)

        I'm not sure what this means for the weather.  But I have the feeling it isn't good.

       Speaking of who is going to pay, Lloyds of London released a very interesting study of the likelihood some extreme events that could affect the insurance industry.  see here.   The report was prepared by the Global Sustainability Institute and  explores a scenario where climate and weather related  problems affect the food production system is key areas, resulting in food riots and , basically, a breakdown in civil society.   This could happen any time, but as we see below becomes more and more likley as we approach 2040.

      Here is a very interesting article exploring the model used by  the Global Sustainability Institute, on behalf of  Lloyds, including a comparison with LTG's World 3.   The modelers reaffirm that World 3 , although tremendously simpler than current models, remains " largely correct".      Running their model , and assuming no policy changes, suggest that the Lloyds scenario could be in our future.        

       “We ran the model forward to the year 2040, along a business-as-usual trajectory based on ‘do-nothing’ trends?—?that is, without any feedback loops that would change the underlying trend. The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots. In this scenario, global society essentially collapses as food production falls permanently short of consumption.”

  (Joe Romm, at Climate Progress notes that this projection is consistent with a 2012 Oxfam study)

    

        Talking about bad things happening in 2040 is a lot different than talking about what might happen in 2100, or even 2050.   Perhaps this might get peoples attention?

        But, it is probably worth remembering that absent some magical new technology, the history of the next 40 years is already written as  Brad Plummer points out in his article EPA outlines our choices on global warmin, moderate disaster or major disaster.   The benefits of reduced carbon emissions don't show up until 2050.   

       What we really need is that brand new technology that sucks CO2 out of the air.   We are now betteing the farm on an untested technology called BECCS.   Will it work?  Here's Dave Robert's  assessment :

"But is large-scale BECCS plausible? There's the problem of finding a source of biomass that doesn't compete with food crops, the harvesting of which does not spur additional emissions, and which can be found in the enormous quantities required. The IPCC scenarios that come in below 2°C require BECCS to remove between 2 and 10 gigatons of CO2 a year from the atmosphere by 2050. By way of comparison, all the world's oceans combined absorb about 9 gigatons a year; all the world's terrestrial carbon sinks combined absorb about 10 gigatons a year."

.    

       

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“Worst Fire Conditions On Record” — As Heatwaves, Drought Bake North American West, Wildfires Erupt From California to Alaska

There are 146 wildfires burning in Alaska today. A total that is likely to see at least another dozen blazes added to it by midnight. A total that has already absorbed the entire firefighting capacity of the State and has drawn hundreds of firefighters from across the country in places as far away as Pennsylvania.

For Alaska, it’s a case of record heat and dryness generating fuels for wildfires.

(MODIS satellite shot of wildfires erupting over a sweltering Southwestern Alaska on Sunday, June 21. Wildfires in permafrost regions of the Arctic like Alaska are particularly concerning as they are one mechanism that returns ancient sequestered carbon to the Earth atmosphere. A sign of a feedback set off by human warming that will worsen with continued fossil fuel emissions. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

Deadhorse, at the center of North Slope oil fields above the Arctic Circle set an all time record high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 Celsius) on Sunday. That’s 3 degrees hotter than the previous all time record high of 79 degrees (26 C) set on August 16, 2004. The hottest reading for June at that location was a 68 degree (20 C) measure set in 2007. So, basically, Deadhorse just shattered the all-time record for June by 14 degrees (F) and the globally record hot summer of 2015 has only now gotten started.

Other locations experiencing new records for just Sunday included Kotzebue, which set a new all time record highest low temperature of 62 degrees (17 C). This reading broke the previous all time high minimum mark of 56 degrees (14 C), set in 1987. Bethel and Yakutat both tied their daily high minimum temperature records at 54 and 52 degrees (12 and 11 C), respectively.

And yesterday was just one day in long period of record heat for the State. Last month’s NOAA analysis showed temperatures fully 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 C) above average. It’s a record heating that is now setting off severe wildfires all over Alaska. According to the state’sWildland Fire Information Center, the relentless heat and dryness has turned spruce, hardwoods, brush, and tundra into dry fuels vulnerable to any ignition source. Over the past week, ignition has come in the form of lightning — with most of Alaska’s 2015 wildfires set off by nature’s spark.

As a result we are seeing nearly double the number of fires during June compared to a typical year. Fires that have already destroyed 30 structures, forced evacuations, and tapped Alaska’s firefighting resources to its limits.

Wildfires Burning in the Rainforests of Washington as Major Heatwave Approaches

Record hot temperatures and wildfires, unfortunately, are not just an issue for Alaska. They’re a prevalent concern all up and down Western North America. A zone that has seen several years of record hot temperatures and dryness. Extreme weather events fueled by such global warming-linked phenomena as a Ridiculously Resilient high pressure Ridge over the Northeast Pacific that has kept heatwave and drought conditions firmly entrenched throughout much of the region for months and years. An atmospheric condition that is also linked to a hot ocean surface water ‘Blob’ in the Northeast Pacific (which is itself implicated in a growing number of marine species deaths).

(Paradise Fire burning near a drought-shrunken creek in the rainforests of Olympia National Park, Washington. Image source: NPS and Wildfire Today.)

This week, the added heat also generated wildfires in unusual areas like the rainforests of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Driest conditions since 1951 have resulted in a great deal of fire resiliency loss for forests in the region (1951 was the year of the historic Five Forks Fire, one of the worst ever to impact Washington State). Already, a rare early summer wildfire (called the Paradise Fire) has burned through 417 acres of forest.

Firefighters are doing their best to contain the blaze. But the record heat and dryness are multiplying fuel sources. Fires are enabled by dried lichens growing high up in the trees. When flames touch the lichens they rapidly ignite sending sparks to other lichen-covered tree tops. In this way, flames can leap rapidly from tree to tree under current conditions.

It’s very unusual to see fires in this rainforest zone. And when ignitions have occurred in those very rare cases, they have typically flared during late Summer and early Fall. So this June burning has fire officials very concerned — especially given the nearly unprecedented fire hazard conditions throughout the State. Conditions that are predicted to rapidly worsen as an extreme heatwave is expected to build through the coming weekend.

(A major heatwave is predicted to invade the US West and Northwest States this weekend. Washington and Oregon are predicted to experience temperatures more typical of desert sections of California and Arizona. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer.)

Temperatures over large stretches of Washington and Oregon are expected to climb into the 90s and 100s, possibly reaching the 110s (Fahrenheit — Celsius range from 33 to 45) by Sunday. For these typically cool, wet States, this brutal heat blow, should it emerge as predicted, will set off a spate of all time record high temperature readings, deepen drought conditions extending northward from California, and heighten fire conditions that are already in the range of worst ever experienced for sections of these States.

California Experiencing “Worst Fire Conditions On Record”

Moving further south along the U.S. West Coast we come at last to the drought hot zone that is California. A State that is now enduring its fourth year of drought. A drought that tree ring studies show is likely the worst such event in 1,000 years.

These harsh climate conditions were starkly highlighted this weekend as reports from State emergency planning officials now indicate that California is currently experiencing its worst fire conditions on record.

Ken Pimlott, Director of CAL FIRE noted:

We measure the fuel moisture content of all of the vegetation -the brush and the trees and we track that over the course of time and compare it month to month each year. And we put it through formulas and determine how much energy and how much heat it will put out when it’s burning. And we have seen -we saw it last year and we will see it again this year- we’ll be reaching records for potential heat output for times of the year that would normally not be burning in those conditions.

(Large wildfire burns in forests along the slopes of Sierra Nevada Mountains whose peaks are now entirely devoid of snow cover. Note that remaining glaciers are shown turning a dull brown in the June 21 MODIS satellite shot.)

So far this year over 1,100 wildfires have already ignited throughout the State. That’s nearly twice the typical number of 650 blazes popping up by this time of year. Exacerbating this stark context is a state water resource crisis compounded by non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpacks and dead trees that now number in the millions.

This is not Normal, Nor Should We View Widespread, Related Events in Isolation

Record and unusual Alaska, Washington, and California wildfires this season are, thus, not occurring in isolation, but as an inseparable feature of ongoing climate trends related to human-caused global warming. In this case, heatwaves are related to visible and extreme record ocean and atmospheric temperatures that have been ramping both globally and in the regions affected over past years and decades. And the fact that 2015 is continuing as the hottest year on record globally should also not be viewed as separate from the events witnessed all up and down the North American West Coast. Events that were largely predicted in many global climate models assessing the impacts of human based greenhouse gas warming on this vital national and global region.

We’ll end here by considering this thought — it’s only June, yet up and down the North American West Coast we are experiencing some of the worst heat, drought, and fire conditions ever recorded. It’s only June…

*   *   *   *

UPDATE NOON EST, JUNE 23, 2015: Satellite Imagery confirms that, over the past 24-48 hours, the wildfire situation in Alaska has continued to worsen. Widespread and large fires running throughout southwestern, central, northeastern and eastern Alaska today expanded and multiplied:

(Fires flared to dangerous size across Alaska on June 22nd and 23nd. Image source: LANCE-MODIS)

These rapidly proliferating fires cover a diagonal swath stretching about 800 miles from southwest to northeast across the state. The fires are burning through Alaska’s permafrost zone and current intensity in the satellite image is similar to some of the worst Arctic fires we’ve seen during recent years. A substantial number of these fires feature smoke footprints indicating 5-10 mile active burn fronts. Smoke plume size is now large enough to become caught up in the Jet Stream and impact visual features of skies across the Northern Hemisphere.

Based on these satellite shots, it appears that Alaska is experiencing a heightening and very severe fire emergency — one that shows little sign of abatement over the next few days.

Coming of Age in the Anthropocene

Teach your children well

      - Crosby Stills and Nash

Tell the truth

       -Derick and the Dominoes

Greetings

   I just saw most recent video from Nate Hagens.   And I'm not sure what to say.

  I think it's the context that is throwing me off.  He is trying to give advice to young people, as how to handle the coming "interesting times"

  In the good old days, advising a group of young people was fairly simple.  Get a good paying job, raise a family, and be useful in the community.

  In the good old days,  we had not yet exceeded the planets carrying capacity.  We weren't yet in overshoot. We hadn't become Homo Colossus.    Now, how does that advice look?.   A high paying job means more consumption, more carbon.  And how about the high energy lifestyle of American kids?   

     Hagens also hints that even if they wanted those high paying jobs, they might not be there.  Its no secret that off-shoring and automation have already reduced the number of full time family wage jobs.  See here.  See Nearly 1/2 of American jobs will be automated in a decade or two. And how about those self driving cars?  and trucks?  And the people who insure them?  see here.   

           

       Interestingly,  Hagens doesn't devote much time to the "peak oil will crash the economy" meme.  Perhaps, like Gregor MacDonalnd, he has been persuaded that although the US will probably hit a peak by the end of this year.  see e.g.,  this   but that having survived 2008, the global economy has  adjusted, and can extend the the current system for a little longer, through the use of coal.  see e.g. What Happened to the Future?     

      This version of the future is, of course,  even worse than the crash    - more carbon,  more storms, more extinctions, but also less jobs

       Hagens has a pretty good grasp of what we used to call "human nature", but maybe now call something like "evolutionarily developed psychology".  He recognizes all those urges we have, that have served us so well in the past.  The urge to control and "have dominion of nature",   our urge to accumulate, to seek higher status than our neighbors, and to "be fruitful and multiply"  (NB  Pope blasts abortion and birth control in climate change  speech).

      And Hagens knows how difficult is to stop acting according to those urges.  But not impossible.  He says "We may not have "free will", but we have "free won't"  .   We just need to exercise it.   

    So, what would I advise?  Hard to say.   Maybe just show them this video.

What's in a name

Oh Lord, won't you buy me

a Mercedes Benz?

      - Janis Joplin

I, I, me,me mine

    - George Harrison

Greetings

       I just ran across an interesting article on the use of the term "Anthropocene".   It is argued that this seemingly neutral, scientific sounding notation, actually contains a hidden meaning - one which allows us to shrug off responsibility for the mess we are in.  For by defining this era as "human" caused  climate change, we tend to lump all humans together.  If there is blame to be , then blame all humans.

      However, the facts don't really support that view.  Its really a  very small minority of humans whose actions have created this mess.   Its not Homo Sapiens, but  Homo Colossus.    The authors note that the OECD countries account for 75% of all economic activity in the world, and 80% of the cumulative carbon.    But, the OECD countries comprises about 15% of the total world population.  So who is messing with the climate?    To put it simple terms, it is rich white people. It's us.  I am taking suggestions for a new name.  The albo-cene?   (BTW I'm not arguing that white people are wired differently, or anything like that.  Their dominance seems to me to be more a matter of luck. see e.g. Guns Germs and Steel.    I suppose  I'm arguing  "We broke it, so we need to fix it" )  

      Along similar  the Here's a thoughtful analysis of our conundrum.  Are we prepared to change to prevent climate change?   After noting that the problem will not be solved with "green growth" or lower "carbon intensity", the author notes: 

"At the same time it is not enough to point fingers at others and blame “the system” or “the industry” or “the politicians” when our own interests are deeply intertwined with that of the economy we are living in. Aren’t most of us quite happy in our comfort zones enjoying all the superficial pleasures the globalized consumer culture can provide? It’s definitely not those who are less fortunate and have to struggle to make ends meet who are to blame. It’s the average and above average consumers in the Global North and the rich in the Global South who are gobbling up resources that the earth cannot sustain.

         As  noted before, the planet could support 7 billion, at a moderate lifestyle, in a manner that would no exceed the carrying capacity of the planet.  Thus the footprint folks, have noted that if everyone lived like Cuban's or Costa Rican's we would  be very close to that ideal.    

            One approach to this goal is found in a paper A Net Energy-based Analysis for a Climate-constrained Sustainable Energy Transition.   (open access).  In it the authors find a solution to the needed energy transition - one which  is consistent with a reasonable carbon budget, takes into account EROI, and produces a result in which the provides a reasonable life style for all (2000 W).    Obviously, Homo Collusus would need to seriously curb his appetite.   But  the alternative is a lot worse.  And when the grandkids ask "Who trashed the planet?  We'll have to answer with the words of Mick Jagger,  " After all, it was you and me"

PS  This just in : http://www.climatecentral.org/news/carbon-goal-may-come-too-late-19086

Cat Con Draws 10,000

Its the year of the cat

    - Al Stewart

Out in the distance

a wild cat did growl

two riders were approaching

and the wind began to howl

  -Bob Dylan

Greetings

      I got this in my inbox from the New York Times this morning.  

"This was the first CatCon, billed as a celebration of the stylish side of cat fancying. More than 10,000 people crowded into a downtown convention hall here over the weekend to shop for cat-centric merchandise (for people, mostly), have their pictures taken with celebrity Internet cats (such as Lil Bub, famous for her dwarfism),"

(A recent Climate Change Rally, drew 8000 -"one of the biggest Climate rallies California has seen")

       This was just what I needed to get my mind off another Califonia story.  Climate Change could overwhelm California, Obama science adviser says.

 "California can do many things to adapt to the challenge of a drier environment, from pricing water more realistically to increasing conservation and efficiency and building more dams, White House science adviser John Holdren said in an interview with The Chronicle. [...] if greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current course, he said, such efforts are “ultimately going to be swamped by the changes in climate".

As the drought continues in California more and more farmers are tuning to groundwater. see California Farmers Dig Deeper for water, sipping their neighbors dry.  (NYT).  

In a normal year, Mr. Famiglietti says, 33 percent of California’s water comes from underground, but this year it is expected to approach 75 percent. Since 2011, he says, the state has lost eight trillion gallons from its overall water reserves, two-thirds of that from its underground aquifers.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Mr. Famiglietti says.

..... 

    When it comes to drilling for water, there are few rules and no boundaries. Generally, farmers who follow a set of modest regulations can drill on their own land.

California passed stronger regulations last year that are intended to govern underground drilling. Details of the rules are still being worked out. But even then, the rules won’t have any real effect for 25 years or more, says Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Of course the same thing is occurring in the midwest, home of the Ogalalla Aquifer.  see e.g. How long before the midwest runs out of water  (Wa Po).    For an international perspective you might try this 60 Minutes story Depleting The Water

            Is this something that can be addressed through democratic politics?  See e.g.  here's one candidate for the Senate in California who has made climate change his main platform.  I recently read an article in the London Review of Books, about the fate of the green party in the UK.   In order for the green platform to  gain some traction, they need to appeal to the average voter.. But this is difficult, given the average voters priorities 

   "On environmental issues, the feeling is that politics more generally has failed. The Greens have tried to respond to this mood with a brand of left-wing populism. But many of the voters the party is chasing don’t share its more radical ideas about the economy, while the changes the Greens believe are necessary to save us from our environmental predicament have barely filtered through to the electorate at all. The weak environmentalism that most people subscribe to – a mixture of technological change, renewable energy and recycling – is on the classic Green view only a little better than business as usual."

So, what should we think about all of this?   Citizlens are chasing jobs, farmers are chasing water.  Very few are thinking long term.    What's the Anthropocene going to be  like?  In the words of one Cat,   "Oh, baby, baby its a wild world"