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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

California drought is the worst perhaps but we will recover.

Just look at the history of California and the way people reacted to a crisis.

1989 Loma Prieta earth quake caused damage but very few people died. Building construction standards and codes were improved.

1994 Northridge earthquake most people died in the collapse of a single apartment building.

California responded.

"Advances in the technology associated with testing systems, design and seismic modeling software, structural connections, structural forms, and seismic force resisting systems have accelerated dramatically since Northridge."

California had energy crisis in 2000-2001.

What did we do? Replaced halogen and incandescent bulbs in a big way. Deployed solar power. In fact utility companies really do not want residential customers to install solar. They try to discourage but people are smarter. I paid $14k for solar and got back my money in 5.5yrs of a 25yr life of the solar system. No one talks about energy crisis anymore.

Forget about natural disasters. Think about the dot com bust back in 2001.

Nasdaq Index which exploded from 2500 to 5000 collapsed to about 1100 and there was lot of unemployment. Real estate slowed down as well. Every state wanted to claim that they can do better than CA. Look what happened. Companies re-tooled. Innovations like iPhone, Android, Tesla, Facebook, Google happened. Nasdaq Index is now 4500 in 2015. Real estate tripled since 1996.

Just how bad is the drought?

Drought5
 http://cdn.visualnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Drought4.png

So what is California going to do about it?

People found that lawns really do not need that much watering to keep them alive. They cut lawn watering 30 to 50% in 2015 compared to 2014. All toilets are lot more efficient. Lot of people have replaced their landscape to use much less water. Gray water is used lot more. You can expect a lot more innovation in agriculture and in residential use. Moisture sensors and water use monitors will come to identify when and if to water and how much. Eventually the drought will end but just like we replaced incandescent and halogen bulbs with CFL and now switching to LEDs, we will continue the conservation and we will overcome. That is the spirit of people who live in California. People here accept and respond to change much faster even by US standards. 

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