Article: Mythologies and Pathologies of the California Drought

The current drought is a product of nature, which has a bad periodic habit of withholding rain and snow over California, a natural occurring and long-recorded phenomenon that has nothing to do with global warming. We used to accept that fact and its corollary: most Californians preferred to live where there was the least amount of state rain and snow — and were willing to pay for the necessary infrastructure to make showering in Malibu or Monterey as natural as in Crescent City or Lake Tahoe.

The drought is caused by a long-term kink the Jet Stream. Air masses have become "stuck" and a dry one is over California for the time being. Sometimes these last for years. Sometimes for decades.

[T]he California coastal strip is an environmentally unwise place to locate millions of Californians; its swarms exist largely by water transfers from either Northern California or the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The Coast gets its water from the far eastern part of the state. In between is the "Central Valley" where so much of America's produce is grown using irrigation water. The same water the Coast wants. Who wins? A few farmers? Or the wealthy, populous, connected, wired Coast?