It’s 2024 and Drought is Optional
In the early 20th century, the United States diverted and dammed nearly every major river that runs through the West, ushering in an era of unparalleled dominion of water. Today, California once again struggles with water scarcity — but solar energy could change all that.
The Western United States is famously dry. Despite a century of large-scale damming and irrigation, vast areas of land throughout California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and New Mexico remains uninhabited and undeveloped. Like 30% of Earth’s surface, it is a desert, comprising enormous tracts of land with almost no ecological productivity or population. In Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert, the seminal critique of the widespread development of the arid West, it is nature's indifference to water that sets a hard cap on the population — and potential — of America west of the Rockies.
Fortunately, the builders of the Hoover Dam never read that book, as it was published decades after the dam was constructed. Since the dam’s completion in 1936, the 80 million people who make their home west of the Rocky Mountains have benefited from generations of prosperity earned by its hard-won development and that of many dams like it. California’s world-famous climate, natural resources, and agriculture were unlocked by the delivery of relatively modest volumes of fresh water that were otherwise locked behind a few inconveniently located mountain ranges.
