Let me start by saying that California has been living beyond our means in terms of water pretty much forever. Especially in Southern California, where about 85% of our water is imported. I mean, forget it, it's Chinatown, right?
But . . . you're in denial and delusional if you think that California's drought is simply California's problem, even beyond the availability of CA-grown fruit in your neighborhood grocery store.
As Governor Brown pointed out, California's deepening drought is indeed the "new normal". It's not simply caused by overuse of water but by higher temperatures and lack of precipitation. The climate is changing. That's not a California issue; that's a global issue.
So if you drive a car powered by fossil fuel, or burn fuel oil, or your energy comes from coal, or you choose to run your heater all when you can put on a sweater, or your house has inefficient windows or insulation, or you eat meat (especially beef), or use styrofoam cups or plastic utensils, or get plastic bags at the grocers, or burn wood in your fireplace, or don't recycle or compost, or don't purchase food and products locally, or throw paper into a landfill after someone cut down trees and polluted a waterway to make it, if you buy anything packaged in one of those death-slice clamshells or other unnecessary packaging, and if you aren't running your house on alternative energy, you are contributing to California's drought.
And you are contributing to endless snow in Boston, and the size of hurricanes and typhoons in the rest of the world.
You are contributing to toxic fracking pollution and oil spills every time you put a time in an oil company's pocket. If no one bought oil, no one would suck it out of the earth to sell it to us.
So yes, California is nipping around the edges of a massive and devastating crisis when we should be banning lawns, utilizing recycled water (way cheaper than desalination) and grey water, have water usage limits (or make it WAY more expensive). We need to close down Nestle's water sleight of hand (by the way, if you buy bottled water you're doubly responsible . . .), and completely rethink how we can sustain our agricultural industry - or whether we should.
Yes, all that and more.
But California is just another canary in the coal mine - almost literally - and if the rest of the world thinks they are not contributing to the problem, they are in denial and delusional about California's drought as well.
We all need to rethink the way we live our lives and stop relying on politicians and corporations to do the right thing.
The climate is changing, and not just in California.