The California drought is a developing story I’m following closely as it has ramifications for the nation that are much larger than people currently grasp. I’ve done recent posts on this topic, but this commentary will include some options for California to help improve its situation–if that state would get realistic about how severe the crisis really is. Earlier posts have warned that if this mega-drought continues, California will experience cities and towns having to be abandoned because of losing all water supplies, an out-migration of people from California to other destinations, the steady reduction of the USA’s supply of vegetables, fruits and nuts in our food supply, massive financial losses, eventual sinkholes forming as the water table gets depleted, etc.
California needs to shake itself out of its slow and ad-hoc way of facing this crisis. The state faces an existential crisis, but seems unwilling to start taking the draconian steps it needs to take in order to limit future damage. My previous posts have cited Deuteronomy 28, a chapter that warns when a nation or people abandon God and his laws, there will be serious consequences as the Creator God is compelled to punish such nations and peoples. He is especially focused on nations descended from “Covenant” people, which includes the USA (see my article, The USA in Bible Prophecy). California’s rejection of biblical laws and values is well-known and longstanding. Indeed, California’s celebrities and its entertainment industry’s products have long mocked biblical values. Therefore, California should expect to finally reap the consequences of its actions. Deuteronomy 28:23 promises extreme droughts as one of God’s methods of punishing sinful nations and regions to try and wake them up to their need for repentance.
However, it would be wrong to think that only the Bible has warnings about severe droughts. The secular scientific community is warning that California is facing a mega-drought that will worsen and last for decades. The first link details secular scientific warnings to Californians about what a dire drought situation they face in the future. It includes such comments that the current California drought is already the “worst in modern US history,” but that it will get so much worse that “the United States hasn’t seen anything yet.” It adds that it will be the worst drought in 1000 years and that it will affect not just California but the American Southwest and Great Plains states as well. So this will affect far more people than just those living in California. The first link is a subscription-limited link which allows only a few free accesses before one must subscribe. Therefore, some readers may be able to access it while other readers cannot. The second link offers many media reports about the fact that scientists are warning of a dire and prolonged drought crisis for California and neighboring states, and readers may read as many of them as they like.
The third link offers some practical suggestions in how California could lessen the effects of this worsening drought. It is a USA Today article from last month which discusses drought-coping measures pioneered by the nation of Israel, and how California could learn and apply these same lessons. Israel is in a perennially-dry climate and has had to learn how to maximize its use of water. They have extensive water recycling and water education programs as well as desalinization plants. Indeed, the article notes that about 40% of Israel’s fresh water comes from desalinization plants, and that percentage could rise to 70% by 2050! Interestingly, an Israeli company is already building a water desalinization plant in California that will provide 300,000 people with 50 million gallons of fresh water per day. Israel has even been able to plant and sustain forests with amazingly-low amounts of water. The article documents that California is going to have to dramatically change its water-usage laws in order to lessen the effects of the mega-drought. In a bit of irony, it is California’s environmental laws which are worsening the water shortages! California has a bureaucratically slow process of granting permits for water desalinization plants, while Israel’s legal system accelerates their construction. It will be a huge environmental catastrophe for California if the prolonged drought kills the state’s foliage, animals, fish and birds, but California’s legal system hinders the construction of vitally-needed water desalinization plants.
If the scientists quoted in the first and second links are right, California is heading into a calamity. If it gets as bad as predicted, millions of Californians will eventually have to migrate out of the state and that could set off conflicts between states as many states will assert that they can’t handle any more people due to the droughts in their own territories. Other states will assert their internal infrastructures cannot accommodate a tidal wave of drought refugees coming from California and will seek to stop them at their borders. Food will get scarce all over the USA as California agricultural producers eventually lose all their water sources. This is just what Revelation 6:5-6 prophesies for the latter days: That food will get scarce and be rationed by price. Let’s be blunt: if the mega-drought gets as bad as the scientists predict, the current crisis of tens of thousands of refugees heading from Libya into Europe will be a cake-walk compared to the refugee crisis that will be created when millions of Californians flee the state to seek refuge in other states that do have water. One of the worst refugee crises in recent global history could occur within the borders of the USA as millions of people flee water-less, drought-ravaged regions for other locations. Even those areas within California that do have the foresight to build desalinization plants could face a major future crisis. What will they do when millions of their fellow Californians know that some California cities have water supplies and they try to force their way, en masse, into those water-rich cities? It could get very ugly.
In ancient Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel was once governed by a particularly wicked power-couple named Ahab and Jezebel. As punishment for their evil deeds and governmental administration, God’s prophet, Elijah, sent a three and one-half year drought to punish that entire nation (I Kings 17-18, James 5:17). As my above-recommended article confirms, many modern Americans are descended from people who lived in Israel at the time of Ahab and Jezebel. God does not change (Malachi 3:6), so we can expect him to do now what he has done in the past. The Supreme Court of the USA has just ruled that homosexual marriage must be permitted in all 50 states, a move applauded and wanted by President Obama. This is like sticking a thumb right in the face of the Creator God and it is an open affront and defiance vs. God. The politically-correct elites that have seized control of the USA’s levers of power have essentially “dared” God to do something about their open rebellion vs. Him. God is likely to take that dare. God now has more reason to punish America than he did before than ruling. This makes it more likely that the scientific predictions of a worsening drought in California and western America over the next few decades will prove to be true. As climate scientists have warned (see first link), Americans “haven’t seen anything yet.”
Brace yourselves, my fellow Americans. The ripple effects of an unending drought in California that spreads to more Western states will be far worse than you are prepared to accept or even think about yet. When the leaders of a very blessed and protected Covenant nation (like the USA) openly rebel against God, the consequences can be grim indeed when God’s blessings and protections are withdrawn.
- http://www.newsweek.com/coming-us-megadroughts-will-be-worse-any-drought-seen-past-1000-years-306585
- https://www.google.com/search?q=SCientists+predict+megadrought+for+California&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/05/07/israel-drought-california-desalination/26923503/
