The Land of Dreams and Drought
b"The California dream, with its promise of never-ending sunshine, fertile soil and rivers running with gold, has been beckoning people west for over two hundred years. But making that dream come true for an ever-increasing population has taken its toll on the landscape. Is the California dream coming to an end?\\n\\nWhen its current water system was built in the 1960s and \\u201870s, California\\u2019s population was about half of the forty million who live there today. And every one of its citizens needs water to drink, bathe and cook. Add to that the demands of agriculture, livestock and the natural ecosystem, and the pool of available water gets smaller and smaller. \\n\\n\\u201cWhen the resource is finite then you have to make choices,\\u201d says author Mark Arax. \\u201cAnd so in the San Joaquin Valley they're gonna have to choose which land deserves that water. It's alfalfa, it's Holsteins.\\u201d\\n\\nIn his new book, The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, Arax pulls back the curtain on the backroom deal-making between billionaire investors and regulators that has, in some cases, stolen the water right out from under our feet. Faith Kearns, a scientist with the California Institute for Water Resources, says it\\u2019s been going on for years. Even she has trouble keeping up.\\n \\n\\u201cI think there is a lot of stuff that goes on really behind the scenes and that is completely inaccessible to most of us, even those of us who work on this topic professionally,\\u201d says Kearns. \\n \\nCalifornia now experiences regular weather whiplash, amplified by climate change, careening between record drought and extreme rainfall. Diana Marcum won a Pulitzer Prize for her series of articles on California\\u2019s central valley farmers during the drought. Years of parched weather have taught her to appreciate the green times we do get.\\n \\n\\u201cI think that\\u2019s one thing I took away from the drought,\\u201d Marcum recalls. \\u201cDuring it I kept thinking, I wish I would've paid more attention. I wish I could picture the snow. I wish I could picture the grass. \\n\\nSo right now I'm trying to look so hard that it almost hurts\\u201d\\n\\nGuests: \\nMark Arax, Author, \\u201cThe Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California\\u201d (Knopf, 2019) \\nDiana Marcum, Reporter, Los Angeles Times\\nFaith Kearns, Scientist, California Institute for Water Resources\\n\\nThis program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on July 17th, 2019.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"