For a Thirsty West, It’s Either Cows or Humans

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1:28Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, radio, news You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio Christine, I have a simple question for you Do you eat steak? I do, but I'm trying to do less of it It's for environmental reasons? Yeah, for environmental reasons and just for, you know, humanitarian, well, no, not really humanitarian, but whatever the humanitarian equivalent is for animals. Well, you might stop eating it after reading Mark Gongloff's latest column. He's a Bloomberg opinion columnist. He covers climate change. He joins us from New Jersey.

2:09Mark, I know that that's not the point of the column by any chance. And by the way, I should note, I cooked two steaks last night and then I read your column today. So not so great, but I'm sorry. right? Nothing. Go ahead. I don't feel bad, but I'm joking. Don't feel bad. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. This is not about cow farts, okay? This is not about cow farts. As you point out in your column, it's about water and it's about alfalfa. What's the problem here? The problem here is that of the water that human beings use in the Colorado River Basin, which as we know is very dry, has been in drought for 25 years.

2:52The Colorado River itself is 20 % less of its historic flow. Lake Me, Lake Powell, record low water levels, all that stuff is happening. Meanwhile, a third of the water used by human beings in that basin, lower and upper, is devoted to cow food, period. 25 % goes to other human food. The other 23 % or so goes to every other human use. And that's cities, that's golf courses, that's data farms, all this stuff. Cow food makes up the bulk of what we're spending this water on. And this water is a dwindling resource. And in fact, the federal government is now calling for massive cuts in the amount of water that the basin is allowed to use, especially the lower basin, California, Arizona, where a lot of the alfalfa actually gets grown.

3:46And so they're going to have to make a decision. You know, do we keep giving water to people or do we keep feeding cows? And the cow food all stays in the U.S. and is fed to American cows that are then sold to Americans as sources of protein, right? We wish. But in fact, 26 % of the cow food that is grown in California and Arizona goes overseas. Ironic to China and Japan mainly, they're the biggest customers. And, you know, they have growing appetites for not just beef. We're not just talking about beef here. We're talking about dairy. We're talking about, you know, even I'm married to a vegetarian.

4:20She eats yogurt. You know, he eats cheese. You know, that's also a massive component of this. But some of that alfalfa we're sending overseas goes to Saudi Arabia, which actually outlawed the growth of alfalfa in its own country to save water. And so what we're doing is they're saving their water. We're exporting our water to them in the form of cow food. Yeah. Well, Mark, very interesting because you mentioned in your story, right, this is a result of a 25 year drought. But is there something now that's happening that's making it more front and center for policymakers, for the people who watch this stuff?

4:58You know, 25 years, not a short amount of time. But what makes it more urgent now? Well, you know, 25 years, you're right, is not a short amount of time. And we all kind of could have seen this coming. A lot of people did see this coming, but we've kicked the can and kicked the can down the road. And now we are actually in the crisis. Lake Mead and Powell are at levels below which, at a certain point, they're not going to be able to run hydroelectric power from their dams, like the Hoover Dam, for example. And massive amounts of water is going to get cut off for 40 million people. So the droughts have finally culminated in the fact that we just don't have as much water.

5:36But we've also hit these deadlines that the federal government has set for the states. There are a bunch of states up and down the river and native tribes and Mexico also has a little piece of this that are supposed to work out a deal to split the water. And they can't agree. Nobody wants to agree. The upper basin states aren't taking any cuts. Lower basin states taking all the cuts. There are all these ancient water rights that are, you know, Byzantine and you swap them and stuff. But so there are people, there are farms that are already not growing alfalfa or anything else because they have lower water rights than somebody else.

6:10uh so it's it's all a mess and and they're trying to work it out and recently the interior department just came in with a sledgehammer and said you're just going to cut three million acre feet of water which is a huge amount of water um in like the lower basin states by 2028 because you can't come to an agreement on anything else so that it's a political thing as much as anything else you you may have uh i don't know felt this when you were writing this column but when you're talking about acre feet, people's eyes might glaze over and their ears might close. But you do a good job of explaining what an acre foot is.

6:43And it actually is pretty logical. I didn't realize that until reading your column. Can you just explain like an acre foot when you're talking in these big numbers and contextualize it for us with like, okay, how much water is that for like an American home? Yeah. So sorry, you know, acre feet, liters, gallons, all these numbers get thrown around. An acre foot is literally what it takes to flood an acre of land or roughly an american football field under a foot of water and that is should be enough theoretically to supply one u.s household for three years that acre foot of water supplies one household for three years so if you're talking about cutting off three million acre feet you're talking about cutting off per year by the way that's per year uh you're talking about cutting off millions of households and also many many acres of these alfalfa farms so again that's one big reason you know the the The amount that's being taken away from Arizona in just the next two years is enough to supply 2.3 million households for a year.

7:38So, you know, it's a significant amount of water, and they're going to have to make some really hard choices. You know, again, cows versus people is being the big one. Yeah. Well, yeah, you mentioned Arizona. I mean, one of the states that is probably set to be affected by this the most. What sort of action are we seeing from there? And, I mean, we know that, for instance, Nevada is suing the federal government. Arizona is thinking of joining the fray. Are we seeing other measures to kind of mitigate the impact of all this? Yeah, Arizona's thinking about joining the lawsuit, but Arizona has actually been sort of progressive about managing water.

8:14I mean, they live in a desert after all, for God's sake. And so, you know, they use about the same amount of water as they used decades ago. But their population has boomed, you know, from six million to like seven, seven and a half million people. And so they're doing a good job of managing their municipal water. They've got all kinds of restrictions. The agricultural water doesn't have as many restrictions. Now, some of that is, as I said, already being cut off. And in some places where it's being cut off, where the farmers are having to do more with less or just survive, they are actually taking their own initiative to stop growing alfalfa.

8:49They've turned to barley or something else that uses less water. So, you know, on a hopeful note, some of this stuff is just going to take care of itself. But ultimately, what we need to do is, A, have a big agreement, have a big water czar for the West that will settle this stuff. And the other thing is to start pricing this water effectively. You know, I eat beef, too. But like you, Christine, I'm trying not to eat as much of it for various reasons, including health reasons. But, you know, if Americans, you know, Americans eat more beef than anybody else in the world, that we just ate as much as French people, for example, we would eat so much less beef and it would be better for our bodies and better for the planet.

9:26And we'd use less of this water. I'm all good with giving up beef. But like your wife, I eat a lot of yogurt, too. I mean, is it just as bad as the protein source? It's yeah, I don't know if we can get into the health stuff. I don't know as much about the health. Oh, no, I don't mean the health. I don't mean the health wise of it. I just mean from an environmental perspective, like those cows need to get fed too. Right. You're feeding the cows, keeping them alive to burp more methane into the air and also eat more alfalfa while they produce this milk and yogurt and cheese and butter. Mark, before we let you go, we don't have much time left, but could we see, I mean, I could be just dreaming here, but could we see this drought get solved by just a couple years of great rain?

10:09No, not necessarily. We are about to get a year of decent rain slash snowfall because we have a historic El Nino, and that tends to make the southwest wetter. One big issue, though, is if it doesn't make the northwest, the upper basin wetter, then you don't get the snowpack that you need, which melts into the river, which is a big part of the problem. A big part of the reason why we're seeing this problem now is we had a terrible year for snowpack. So we're so deep in deficit, so deep that one or two years of good rainfall is not going to make up. We don't even have time for me begging you for any good news here, Mark, but that's OK.

10:46You'll have to come back. Just have me back and I'll find some good news in the meantime. OK, I appreciate that. Mark Gongloff is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion who covers climate change. He joins us from New Jersey this afternoon.

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