article_snippet.sent: (CNN)Last week, California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered mandatory statewide restrictions on water use for the first time in the state's history.
article_snippet.sent: California Gov. Jerry Brown action was driven by a specific crisis unique to California at the moment -- the severe drought now in California fourth year there -- but California has significance for the whole nation.
article_snippet.sent: As California has in the past, California is leading the way in recognizing that population and economic growth has to respect the physical limits imposed by planet Earth.
article_snippet.sent: California developed the infrastructure and system of legal rights California uses to distribute water at a time when the population was much smaller than the population is today -- and when the climate was in an unusually wet phase, historically speaking.
article_snippet.sent: This led to a system that all but encourages heavy water use in dry parts of the state, with little consistency in allocation or pricing and little disincentive to waste.
article_snippet.sent: Brown's measures may be temporary, but we can hope that Brown's measures'll be a step toward a more permanent reformation of the state's water distribution system -- one that includes large agricultural users, who are not included in the current measures, although Brown's measures are the dominant consumers of California's water.
article_snippet.sent: What California does now has global significance: Lack of clean fresh water is a serious problem in much of the world.
article_snippet.sent: On the Indian subcontinent, where supply can't meet the demands of rapid development, groundwater is being depleted much as it is in California, and is an equally unsustainable practice in both places.
article_snippet.sent: Our energy systems, like Our water systems, are not sustainable.
article_snippet.sent: If California can teach the rest of We something about how to design and implement such measures for water, it will be an upside to what otherwise is nothing but a slow-moving disaster.