A moral perspective

California is not alone in its obsession with liquid gold: water. Vast parts of the intensely beautiful American West are arid or desert; that hasn’t stopped millions of us from living and working there.

What we haven’t done, at least not in the last century of technological miracles, is pay the actual cost of water. This is as true here in the North State as it is in the Southern California metropolises, where water is imported from hundreds of miles away to serve the needs of an ever-growing, ever-thirsty population.

Gov. Jerry Brown hopes to leave a legacy for generations with his rather oddly named Bay Delta Conservation Plan, which backers promise will stabilize the ecosystems of the Delta while still delivering much-needed water to Southern California via two giant tunnels.

But let’s talk long-term, when Northern California will need to feed even more people than it does now, and when Southern California will have an even larger, thirstier population.

What we have here is an underlying question of morality. First, should we be encouraging the continuation—in fact, the expansion—of an already unsustainable population in an area that doesn’t have the resources to provide enough water? And second, should we continue to turn farmland into exurban housing when urban and suburban infill hasn’t even reached its saturation point?

The issue, from a moral perspective—one that considers the needs of the entire state, the needs of the land and the needs of the living things on it (including humans)—is whether we should be living in places that are environmentally fragile and unsuitable for our continued habitation, not to mention expansion. And whether our agricultural land and green space has value to future generations greater than its value to current homeowners.

For just a moment, we ask our governor, legislators, and local representatives and planners to think in geologic time when contemplating legacies. Will it be the short-term advantage of unchecked growth at the expense of the natural world? Or will it be telling the hard truth about the West, water and land: There isn’t enough to do everything.

In a thousand years, none of us will be here, but if we make morally sound decisions, the Delta and the surrounding rural valley just might.