by Daniel Brouse
There is a lot of misleading information trending in social-media about Nestle and the California drought. The facts of the matter are:
Most of the water in California is used for agriculture. Nearly 50 billion cubic metres (13 trillion gallons) of water is used in California each year. Nestle bottled water plants only use 705 million gallons a year. Almond growers use about as much water each year as the entire city of Los Angeles. What percentage of California’s water is used by agriculture? 80 %.
The real cause of the problem is Human Induced Climate Change. As droughts increase in frequency and intensity, the sea level is rising. So not only are the droughts a problem, but salt water intrusion is also a problem. As these problems worsen, the solution is not to blame bottled water companies. Nor is the solution to build desalination plants. Not only do desalination plants contribute to global warming, they also are devastating to the ocean. “Fish and other marine organisms are killed on the intake screens (impingement); organisms small enough to pass through, such as plankton, fish eggs, and larvae, are killed during processing of the salt water .” [Heather Cooley, Newsha Ajami, Matthew Heberger, The Pacific Institute December 11, 2013]
The solution is for humans to take responsibility for the climate change and take action.