Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach
California isn't the only place that needs water.
The US can get oil inside its own borders too, has that prevented them from invading foreign nations for it? De-salinization comes with its own challenges of energy production, environmental impact and waste. Is there enough plants to actually combat worsening conditions? It doesn't seem like there is or there wouldn't be drought problems. How long does it take to build enough to meet their long-term water needs? The thing about water is that it's something no one really worries about until it's a problem. It won't be "oh hey we got 10 years of water left, we should build more de-salinization plants." It will be millions of people running out of water at once. And then they all need water within 3 days. How expensive or convenient it is won't matter.
And the US isn't the only place on Earth with this problem. We can't afford to be naive about holding most of the world's most precious (and dwindling) resource.
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I think you're missing GGG's point. He is saying that the cost of building the infrastructure to move water from Canada's north, where the water is, to the USA is significantly higher than the cost of building infrastructure for desalination much closer to where the water is needed. Even if the water was needed in Arizona, the cost to build desalination plants in California or Oregon and then move the water to Arizona would still be cheaper than building a pipeline from Nunavut or the Yukon to Arizona.
To your point about people not caring about how expensive or convenient a solution is, I think you're really wrong about that. Time and time again, humans have proven that we would rather let people die than spend a lot of money on solving a problem (see Covid, climate change, famine, malaria, AIDS, etc)