Here is Lake Powell, one of the two major reservoirs on the Colorado River, in 2017 and 2022 -- just a span of five years. (Image from NASA.) For some reason Lake Mead has gotten more attention, but it's happening to both of them.
The compact that allocates Colorado River water among the states was signed 100 years ago, and it allocated 20.3 billion cubic meters per year. But today, the total annual flow of the river is 15.1 billion cubic meters. The population of the Southwest therefore depends on billions of cubic meters of water every year that don't exist, for its cities and its agriculture. Oh, and by the way, these two lakes are major generators of electricity for the region. If warming continues -- which of course it will -- the flow could be reduced by another 30% by 2050. There's talk about prohibiting watering of "non-functional grass," such as highway medians, and shifting crops from alfalfa (believe it or not, alfalfa grown in California is put on container ships and sent across the ocean to feed Chinese cows) to more valuable and less water hungry crops.
But this is just a fart in a whirlwind. Nobody wants to confront the truth, which is that, just for example, the future existence of Phoenix is seriously in question. But yeah, let's stop shipping alfalfa to China. That's just insane any way you look at it.
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