Super Eco

Photo credit: Ozyman, Flickr

There's a .999% chance that my daughter will melt this year. At least that's what she thinks. I blame Dorothy and her witch-dissolving water bucket, and another tempestuous "little girl" named La Niña—the weather-warping atmospheric culprit behind what's shaping up to be a third year in a row of bone-dry conditions in tinderbox California. Once again, hardly a raindrop is in the forecast. That's good news to my four-year-old ombrophobic niña, bad for everyone else who lives in the Land of Fruits and (extremely sun-dried) Nuts. Worse for the state's beyond tapped water reserves.

If rain doesn't fall soon—and for several desperately needed encore performances—Californians will soon be subject to yet more, stricter water rations. Shucks, nosy neighbors. Looks like I'll just have to keep neglecting my patchy non-lawn. Only now I have a state-certified excuse: early measurements show that our natural reservoir, the Sierra snowpack, is in dire straits. Actually, it's higher than it was this time last year but still severely lower than it should be—ever. My sources (because my chronic sidewalk-watering neighbors will surely pry): The New York Times and Elissa Lynn, California's official meteorologist. Need more? Think back to last June, when the Governator declared the first statewide drought since 1991.

In the coming months, we must conserve H20 as much as possible ... and cross our fingers that La Niña's mood swings bring Pacific rainstorms for our farmers, who are depending on them to make up for a record deficit that's cost them billions.

News of a third annual drought isn't surprising. What is is how many stubborn, so-called "green" Californians still insist on drenching their impeccably manicured green lawns twice a day, seven days a week. They urgently need to sober up from wasteful water intoxication now—or "someone" just might rat them out to the city. If I—uh, I mean, someone—can't guilt them free of their water-guzzling ways, this should.