With the drought in California reaching critical status, we could see much higher prices for all kinds of products. Believe it or not, a shutdown of food production in California could lead to shortages of many food products across all of North America.
In the last half century, California has become the agricultural giant of North America. Most of the vegetables, nuts, and fruit consumed in America come from California. Milk, grapes, and almonds are among California’s lead exports. California grows nearly all of the America’s olives, kiwi, pistachios, prunes, raisins, and walnuts, among other products. Even the majority of our strawberries—1,400,000,000 pounds of strawberries—come from California.
Currently, much of that food production is grinding to a dusty halt. News anchors gleefully talk of “potentially higher prices,” while the reality of potentially empty shelves, gets swept under the newsroom rug.
Now there are arguments about who is causing the drought in California. Environmentalists claim it’s all man made global warming’s fault. If only there were less humans, then none of this would have happened. Their ultimate solutions usually sound similar that of savages claiming human sacrifices to their volcano or sun god will remove his wrath.
Others point out that environmentalists have successfully blocked every major reservoir and dam project in California for 40 years, and that during this drought 70% of California’s water—because of regulations—goes straight into the ocean. They also point out that environmental regulations have prevented desalination plants from releasing water reserves from an entire ocean into the drought stricken state.
In the here-and-now, California has a major water crisis, no matter who is to blame. Californians are rationing water, and the shutdown of food production is spreading. Much of California suffers, and even if the water became plentiful again today, the damage to agriculture will take years to heal.
As many critics point out, California knew this was coming. You can’t experience 40 years of massive population growth and make it illegal to build supporting infrastructure and then feign surprise when population expands past the old infrastructures capabilities.
California pretty much doubled its population from 20 million in the 1970’s to nearly 40 million in 2015. However, in the 1970’s down to the present, environmentalists have managed to prevent water and other infrastructure projects from keeping up with population. Certainly, rain has decrease over the last decade in California, but the effects could have been mitigated with proper public works projects.
How does this apply to the rest of us?
California regulated itself into worsening this drought. The same regulatory mindset that stifled California’s public water works projects, resulting in the destruction of California’s agriculture, has spread to most of the states in the union, and definitely has a chokehold in Washington, D.C.
It’s easy to blame government, but voters (better known as all of us) put every one of the politicians in government, whether through a direct vote, or voting someone in that appoints the regulators.
Don’t expect voters to change who they vote for any time soon. Our generation is already indoctrinated, and the upcoming generation will have more thorough indoctrination than ours. Children from an early age are taught directly or indirectly that humankind must diminish (or die) to save the planet. Our children begin their indoctrination into the dimish-or-die mindset in most kindergartens, and have it enforced by most teachers all the way through college. Hollywood laces movies, cartoons, and documentaries with the mindset. Video games base their backstories on this mindset.
Environmental regulation without regard to human needs is destroying agriculture and food production in the US. Don’t believe it? Check out the last few years of news on Nevada’s endangered desert tortoise and what it’s doing to ranches. And that’s only oneexample.
We can point the finger at California and say, you destroyed your own food production, but the same mindset is busy setting up a similar agricultural collapse across the entire USA. Stacks of new environmentally friendly regulations are created every year. So much regulation is created that many farmers see the EPA and other government organizations come in and shutdown their farms and ranches or make them so unprofitable that they give up.
It’s only a matter of time before most Americans see empty shelves at the grocery store. Devout socialist and environmental regulators will ensure that, and unfortunately, that is the privately (if not publicly) stated goal of many of the activists behind the coming regulatory caused shortages. They want to save the planet through regulations, and don’t see why humans shouldn’t suffer.