"Objections to the amount of water used in fracking verge on trivial given that electricity generation and irrigation account for more than 70% of water used nationwide. By the time the mighty Colorado River reaches Mexico, for example, it is reduced to nearly a trickle by all the dams and irrigation outlets upstream. Clearly, food and power production are where the conservation potential is, but both industries are big, capital-intensive, essential to the economy and slow to change.
That leaves lawns way ahead of fracking in the line of ripe targets for conservation. If people in dry areas, like my neighbors in Texas, didn't insist on green lawns, the country would save trillions of gallons of water. The good, sustainability-concerned folks at Ceres, and everyone who has a lawn, should concentrate their energies on converting all that grass to something far less thirsty. To paraphrase Mao, let a million cactus gardens bloom"
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