Water in the News--Local Reporting

My grandfather, like many community minded people, read the local newspaper every day. Ha also took the Wall Street Journal. A successful businessman, a golfer-par-excellence, a self-made man who, with a 6th grade education raised four children and was a grandfather 19 times over always drove a Chevrolet instead of a Cadillac because he "didn't want people to know how much money he had."
I think of my grandfather, born in 1900, when I think about how much the world has changed and how much it has remained the same. I read the local paper every day as well. And although I think the Wall Street Journal is a respectable paper, I choose, instead, to read the New York Times.
The political differences, perhaps, would seem obvious. And then again maybe not. My grandfather was conservative in the pre-Reagan era. He supported small busniess and abhored Big Business. He succeeded in business through intelligence, foresight and caring about his clients. I remembger hearing a story when I was a child recounting his actions to assist some of his customers make their monthely insurance premium payments because "times were hard." Everyone paid him back, or didn't. He kept his customers' welfare and well-being at the center of his insurance and reals estate business models.
So my grandfatgeher was a conservative. Simple guidelines prevailed: don't spend more than you have; invest in the future; abandon greed--it is a shortcut with disastrous consequences. Oh, and this: pass something of value on to the next generation.
Thursday, July 22, 2010 "The Desert Sun" featured a headling that caught more than my passing interest: "Study: County's Water Supply at Risk". The lead article in that day's paper provided two narrative lines. One, global warming studies project the Southwest and Great Plains States will, by the year 2050, experience an "extremely high risk" of water shortage "strangling economic development, agricultural production and affect communities" at an estimated cost 14 times greater than previously projected. The second and more illusory narrative was simple: in some arid regions, "including California and it's agricultural areas, water withdrawal is greater than 100% of the available precipitation."
That's today, not 2050.
Which narrative are we to discuss? Global warming and all the uncertainties surrounding the climate change debate--a deeply politicized issue--or the fact that we in the valley continue to use more water than is sustainable?
110 years after his birth I think my grandfather and I would still have something to talk about. In all likelihood he would question climate change, but certainly he would raise his hand at the local country club and say: "Enough. Let's do something about this."