One of Our San Diego Neighbors Uses Almost 38,000 Gallons of Water a Day

Despite receiving normal rainfall in the last year or so, we here in southern California have been trying to do our part to save water in a state that is experiencing one of the worst droughts in our history. So it is disheartening to read about one of our neighbors in Rancho Santa Fe who is using 13.8 million gallons of water a year.

            That comes out to almost 38,000 gallons of water a day. Almost 38,000 gallons a day! As our local paper, the Union-Tribune illustrates, that is enough water to supply the water needs of 110 single-family homes. The paper is leaving the name of the owner of the property unpublished.

            I can hear the argument, “Well, he pays for that water, so what is wrong with that?”

What could possibly be wrong with one southern California homeowner using almost 38,000 gallons of water a day?

The problem is that everybody else is paying for that water as well. We San Diegans are facing water rate increases, as much as 17 percent. Part of that increase would go to pay for the new water desalination plant in Carlsbad and the indirect potable reuse program, a plant and a program that would be unnecessary were it not for some folks using an enormous amount of water.

            The price paid by everybody else doesn’t stop there. We use pumps to bring water here from the Colorado River and the Sacramento River Delta, which uses energy. It is estimated that 20 percent of the energy used in California is to move water from one place to another. It also takes energy to desalinate water. That energy use translates into climate change.

            Maybe I shouldn’t grouse so much. The good news is that our neighbor has reduced his consumption of water down from last year’s 31.7 million gallons. I guess I should be thankful for that.

            How about you? What do you think when you read a story like this? Does it discourage you from conserving? Do you think there should be an upper limit on how much water one person or household can consume?

Global Warming Brings Air Conditioning to San Diego Schools

Global warming is melting glaciers and raising the level of the oceans, phenomena that, unless you live in the mountains or along a coast, may be obscured to you. Well, as in this story, climate change is coming home, or at least to school, here in San Diego.

            Responding to the rising temperatures in their classrooms, the San Diego Unified School District announced that it is installing air conditioning in the district’s schools. Parents and teachers complained that at the beginning of this school year temperatures in the 90s afflicted classrooms for several days. Children struggled to learn in the oppressive heat, and some fainted or fell ill.

            San Diego natives and folks who have lived here a long time have bragged that the weather here is so pleasant that air conditioning is never needed, even during the months of July and August when much of the rest of the country is sweltering. I’ve lived here for decades and have never lived in a house with air conditioning or an air conditioner.

            The obvious irony here is that the air conditioning will use electricity, the production of which is one of the drivers of climate change. The proposed program includes the installation of solar panels and thus promises to be carbon neutral. But the fact remains that the now needed air conditioning will be using electricity from those solar panels that could have been used for something else had we not been raising the thermostat on the planet with all the CO2 we’re throwing up in the air.

            And to those who have complained that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will adversely affect our economy, installing all that air conditioning in all to all those schools in San Diego will cost $204 million. That is $204 million in taxes. And all of it to be taxed and spent on something that would not have been needed if we had started reducing emissions when we first knew of the connection between burning fossil fuels and a warmer planet.

            Are you a San Diego schoolteacher? A parent? Student? Have you suffered through sweltering classrooms? As a taxpayer, what do you think?

Are the Cato Institute and Other Right Wing "Think Tanks" Criminal?

The Weekly World News has been around for a while. Started simply as a way to use the old black and white press tossed aside when the National Enquirer went full color 36 years ago, the former supermarket tabloid (the publication is now online) has introduced us to celebrities walking the earth long after their deaths, relics found and proven to be from the Garden of Eden or Noah’s Ark, and the best of the best of tabloid entertainment, Bat Boy, the half-human/half-bat wunderkind.

 

Bat Boy, The Alfred E. Newman of The Weekly World New

Bat Boy and insane religious relics aside, the publication proudly proclaims itself as “The World’s Only Reliable News.” Still, and despite the publication of an occasional story that is based in reality, since 2004 the publication has printed the wink and a nod disclaimer that “the reader should suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment.”

            For most folks leafing through Weekly World News is a pleasure similar to reading The Onion. There are a few individuals who wind up believing what they read in the paper, but these folks would probably fall for some other far-fetched story of alien abduction or that President Obama has issued an executive order to have his likeness carved into Mount Rushmore. Overall the general consensus would be that The Weekly World News is idiotic but harmless.

 

From The Weekly World News: Obama to join Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore

The fictions that The Weekly World News publishes are harmless, but in other cases we recognize that publishing stories or claims that are false is wrong and sometimes criminal. The Federal Trade Commission enforces “Truth in Advertising” laws, protecting consumers from false claims in ads. If you tell folks that your doggie waste bags are compostable and they aren’t, the FTC is going to do something about it. You also can’t publish untrue things that can damage a person’s reputation. That is libel, and it is a serious crime.

            So what about organizations like the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who have taken money from companies like Exxon and other oil companies so that they can spread lies and misinformation about global warming? Climate change can affect the lives of millions whose food supply is threatened by drought or whose homes and cities are inundated by rising seas. Lying about climate change, is that not as serious as when the National Enquirer was forced to pay $1.6 million to Carol Burnett because they said that the comedienne was seen drunk in public? Is that not as serious as a company having to pay out $45 million to consumers who were hoodwinked into believing that their more expensive brand of yogurt was more nutritious when it actually was not?

            Exxon knowing of the hazards of global warming while paying groups to deny or obfuscate those harsh realities could prove to be a crime. So far, from what I’ve read in the LA Times and Inside Climate News, it was certainly unethical. So what about Exxon’s enablers? If Exxon committed a crime, aren’t Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a lot of other organizations that took money from oil giants and other big polluters just as culpable?

Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Corporate Lies?

Possible Prosecution of Exxon and Possibly Falling Short

This is a great development. While the story was broken over a month ago, the headlines today tell us that Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general has launched an investigation into Exxon looking into allegations that the oil giant misled their shareholders and the public on the risks that global warming posed to the corporation’s business. Even the Wall Street Journal, which has ties to the global warming denial industry, printed the story.

            The corporate headquarters of Exxon in Irving, Texas acknowledged receiving the subpoena for internal documents, some of which go back 38 years, related to Exxon’s climate change research and business decisions.

            If Exxon actually knew of global warming and its dangers and paid off front groups to work at denying those hard facts, it may very well be the greatest wrong done to the world by a corporation. So it is a bit of an irony that the wrongdoing Exxon may wind up having to pay the piper for is that of their responsibility to their shareholders. Schneiderman is investigating Exxon under the Martin Act, a broad New York state law that allows for prosecution of companies for financial fraud, which includes the act of misleading stockholders.

            I don’t deny the importance of investors being properly informed of their financial risks when they put their money in a company like Exxon. After all, people rely on their investments to finance their children going to college or provide for a good retirement. But the people who are going to suffer the most from global warming are farmers whose lands may be hotter and drier and subject to more severe weather, coastal inhabitants who will have their beaches and bay fronts submerged under rising tides, and people who live on Pacific Islands, whose homelands may be lost to rising oceans.

            Isn’t there any law that can hold Exxon responsible for these people?

Exxon Trashes Planet and the Press Yawns

It has been almost a month since Inside Climate News and a partnership of the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism began publishing their findings that, while Exxon’s scientists had determined decades ago that the burning fossil fuels caused global warming, the large company funded groups like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute who dealt in the business of casting doubt on the science of climate change.

This is possibly one of the greatest scandals of our time; so it is maddening to observe the lack of press coverage of this story. A Proquest search of Donald Trump, only one of the GOP presidential candidates, for the month of October brings up 2043 newspaper stories. A Proquest search of Exxon and climate change brought up 84 results.[1] That is Donald Trump receiving 2,332% more coverage than one of the world’s largest corporations knowing that they are propelling the whole planet into a climate crisis and covering it up. If you like pie charts, here’s a pie chart of the respective press coverage.

You say, OK, but that’s Donald Trump, a headline magnet. A similar search on Carly Fiorina brought up 185 results, still way more than Exxon and their cover-up. Why is there such silence from the press on this? Tell me what you think.

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[1] For the Donald Trump search, I searched on the term “Trump” and restricted the search to headlines in the last 30 days. For the Exxon search, I searched for both the term “Exxon” and “climate change” occurring anywhere in the news story.