"...water is effectively free..." yeah, until they deplete the groundwater. But until then it's good times! They should talk to farmers or more importantly, residents in central CA about how much fun it is to run out of groundwater. Good luck.
It's discussed at the end of the article. Water level is dropping at ~3m/year. One NGO estimates the boom will only last ~10 years before causing massive problems for everyone living there (not just the farmers). Ironically solar is the opposite of sustainable here. Diesel power would at least be more self limiting.
Humanity at its finest: depleting a potentially valuable resource forever so you can make more of a drug that ruins hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of lives a year.
Indeed and looking at the graph of heroin production - kinda makes the Taliban look like good guys as they stopped it until they got removed by America and the heroin production grew. So pretty messed up.
Why no incentives or drive to curtail production and shift to more useful crops is something that seems to be ignored as an approach in that area.
If anything - 10 years times - second hand solar panels will be epicly cheap in that area and more so, all the land used for heroin production will be barren and that water shortage will impact far further than people will think. All these bore holes - only increase contamination of the water table and that may go unnoticed for decades.
This whole situation is creating a perfect storm on many levels and I welcome the sudden demise of heroin production.
However - all the money spent on customs and border patrol against drugs like heroin - if just a small percentage of that was used to incentivise produces to shift crops and stop producing heroin. That would actually work and be better overall. Though still going to have that water table issue come along and that is ticking clock of not if, but when.
Note that solar panels have limited lifespans in use. The usual industry warranty is 25 years, and they will have lost a fair amount of capacity by the end of it.
We are talking about people who don't have access to the electric grid. Honestly I am not in the position to judge their choice and how they decided to provide for themselves.
If we (as relatively wealthy people in the world) really want to judge them, we should start by providing education and resources to sustainably earn a living.
Sending there our army and creating chaos was not a great idea.
It's a selfish motive, sure, but higher in this comment section, people are pointing to California as an example of people depleting groundwater. It's not just something that happens because of drug production, people are often depleting resources to live, especially in places that are less than optimal for human settlements.
Instead of demonizing them, think a little, inform yourself and try to understand why they are doing.
Afghanistan was at the center of multiple proxy wars between America and Russia, all because of America feeling threatened by communism. The US then helped fundamentalists get into leader positions which further threw the country into disarray. Then to top it all off they started another beautiful war to look for Bin Laden.
I haven't looked into it in a while, but maybe the US still isn't out of there because of a lacking exit strategy.
Imagine living in a country that has continuously been in the crosshairs of foreign fundamentalist, political and capitalist interests for the better part of half a century. Do you really think they know or even care about the effects of their actions? Do you vote caring about Afghanistan? Are you outraged when another cultural site is destroyed by foreign or local terrorism?
We have the luxury of lying back in a comfy bed with a roof above our heads, some form of stable income and not worrying that tomorrow a market square close by will be rubble. Our women can go to schools (and so can we) and we aren't at the mercy of crazy people who want to violently, actively overthrow our government.
Thanks for the same history lesson I got in high school. I know it's not in-vogue today, but I'm in the game of describing reality of what is and trying to address it. The history of how we got here is only valuable as a lesson to avoid doing it again in the future. Insofar is it's a pointless blame game, I don't care.
It's not just central CA in the US that we should be paying attention to. It's all over the states where multiple companies are abusing aquifers. I would love to see a plan come forth to actually protect our aquifers before we lose our water reserces.
Yup, Wichita Falls in Texas nearly ceased being a town due to the dire condition they were in during the last drought. Tons of people wanted to leave, but nobody was going to buy houses in a town with no water.
