干旱会终结加州的繁荣吗

ANGELS CAMP, Calif. — IN a normal year, no one in California looks twice at a neighbor’s lawn, that mane of bluegrass thriving in a sun-blasted desert. Or casts a scornful gaze at a fresh-planted almond grove, saplings that now stand accused of future water crimes. Or wonders why your car is conspicuously clean, or whether a fish deserves to live when a cherry tree will die.

加利福尼亚州天使营——在正常年份里，加利福尼亚州没有任何人，会往邻居家的草坪多看一眼那荒漠骄阳下繁茂生长的六月禾草，也不会有人将鄙夷的眼光投向刚种下不久的扁桃树——现如今，这种树苗被指太过浪费水，会在未来导致水资源短缺。同样不会有人怀疑，你家的汽车怎么那么干净？或者去思考，该活下来的，是一条鱼还是一颗樱桃树？

Of course, there is nothing normal about the fourth year of the great drought: According to climate scientists, it may be the worst arid spell in 1,200 years. For all the fields that will go fallow, all the forests that will catch fire, all the wells that will come up dry, the lasting impact of this drought for the ages will be remembered, in the most exported term of California start-ups, as a disrupter.

当然，这场进入了第4个年头的大旱灾没有任何正常可言：根据气候科学家的说法，这可能是1200年以来最严重的连续干旱期。因为那些将会被迫停耕的农田、着火的森林和干涸的水井，本轮干旱的持久影响将被铭记良久。用加州初创公司最出名的用语来说，这是一种“干扰因子”。

“We are embarked upon an experiment that no one has ever tried,” said Gov. Jerry Brown in early April, in ordering the first mandatory statewide water rationing for cities.

在4月初的时候，加州州长杰瑞·布朗(Jerry Brown)史上首次下令施行全州范围内的强制性市镇用水配给制度。“我们正在进行前无古人的尝试，”他说。

Surprising, perhaps even disappointing to those with schadenfreude for the nearly 39 million people living in year-round sunshine, California will survive. It’s not going to blow away. The economy, now on a robust rebound, is not going to collapse. There won’t be a Tom Joad load of S.U.V.s headed north. Rains, and snow to the high Sierra, will eventually return.

不过，让那些对全年生活在阳光之下的3900万加州居民感到幸灾乐祸的人意外，甚或失望的是，加州将存活下来，而不会就此毁灭。这里的经济在强劲反弹，不会崩溃。也不会有成群结队的越野车像汤姆·约德（Tom Joad，《愤怒的葡萄》中的主角，因干旱、经济困难、农业变革、银行止赎和沙尘暴等原因逃离家园前往加州——译注）那样向北逃荒而去。雨水终将再次降临，内华达山脉的积雪也将重现。

But California, from this drought onward, will be a state transformed. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was human-caused, after the grasslands of the Great Plains were ripped up, and the land thrown to the wind. It never fully recovered. The California drought of today is mostly nature’s hand, diminishing an Eden created by man. The Golden State may recover, but it won’t be the same place.

然而，经历了这次大旱，加州将改头换面。上世纪30年代的沙尘暴属人为所致，是因为北美大平原的草地被毁，土地任由风化侵蚀。由此造成的损害从未完全恢复。加州目前的旱情则大多源于自然原因，破坏的是这座人造的伊甸园。人称“金州”的加州也许能够从中恢复过来，但一切都将不同于以往。

Looking to the future, there is also the grim prospect that this dry spell is only the start of a “megadrought,” made worse by climate change. California has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs. What if the endless days without rain become endless years?

展望未来，还存在一种严酷的可能性，也就是本轮持续的干旱不过是一次“特大旱灾”的起始阶段，并会因气候变化而恶化。加州的水库中目前仅剩1年左右的供水量。假如连续无降水的时间从按日子计变成了按年头计，又将如何？

In the cities of a changed California, brown is the new green. A residential lawn anywhere south of, say, Sacramento, is already considered an indulgence. “If the only person walking on your lawn is the person mowing it,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, then maybe it should be taken out. The state wants people to convert lawns to drought-tolerant landscaping, or fake grass.

在经历这种变化的加州大小市镇，绿色植被正变成褐色。在诸如萨克拉门托以南的地区，家庭草坪已被视作某种奢侈品。加州水资源管理委员会(State Water Resources Control Board)主席费利西娅·马库斯(Felicia Marcus)说，“如果你家草坪唯一的过客是割草的人，”那也许就该放弃了。州里希望民众把草坪的植被换成耐旱的品种，或者种上人造草皮。

Artificial lakes filled with Sierra snowmelt will become baked-mud valleys, surrounded by ugly bathtub rings. Some rivers will dry completely — at least until a normal rain year. A few days ago, there was a bare trickle from the Napa, near the town of St. Helena, flowing through some of the most valuable vineyards on the planet. The state’s massive plumbing system, one of the biggest in the world, needs adequate snow in order to serve farmers in the Central Valley and techies in Silicon Valley. This year, California set a record low Sierra snowpack in April — 5 percent of normal — following the driest winter since records have been kept.

靠内华达山脉的融雪补充水源的人工湖将被晒成硬邦邦的土质谷地，四周满是丑陋的污渍。一些河流会完全干涸，而这种情况至少是要延续到雨水充沛的年份。就在几天前，圣海伦娜附近的纳帕河仅有一条涓涓细流，流经地球上最具价值的一些葡萄园。加州庞大的管道输水系统位居世界前列，却需要合适的雪量才能为中央谷地的务农者和硅谷的技术人员提供服务。经历了有纪录以来干旱程度最严重的冬季之后，加州内华达山脉今年4月份的积雪量创下历史新低，仅为正常年份的5%。

To Californians stunned by their bare mountains, there was no more absurd moment in public life recently than when James Inhofe, the Republican senator from Oklahoma who is chairman of the environment and public works committee, held up a snowball in February as evidence of America’s hydraulic bounty in the age of climate change.

对于因山顶光秃而感到震惊的加州人来说，近期公共生活中最荒诞的一幕莫过于，参议院环境与公共事务委员会主席、来自俄克拉何马州的共和党人詹姆斯·英霍夫(James Inhofe)在2月份的时候手拿一个雪球，以此证明在气候变化的背景下美国仍水资源充沛。

You can see the result of endless weeks of cloudless skies in New Melones Lake, here in Calaveras County in the foothills east of the Central Valley, where Mark Twain made a legend of a jumping frog. The state’s fourth largest reservoir, holding water for farmers, and for fish downstream, is barely 20 percent full. It could be completely drained by summer’s end.

在中央谷地东部丘陵地带的卡拉韦拉斯县——马克·吐温(Mark Twain)让当地的跳蛙出了名——可以看到连续多周晴朗无云的天气对新梅洛内斯湖的影响。这座湖是加州第四大的水库，为务农者和下游的鱼类储存水源，如今却连20%的容量都没达到。今夏结束的时候，它可能会完全干涸。

It’s a sad sight — a warming puddle, where the Stanislaus River once ran through it. At full capacity, with normal rainfall, New Melones should have enough water for nearly two million households for a year.

真是伤感——斯塔尼斯劳斯河曾经流经的地方，现在成了一座逐渐干涸的小池塘。容量饱和、雨量正常的时候，新梅洛内斯湖本应足以为近200万家庭供水1年。

Even worse is the Lake McClure reservoir, impounding the spectral remains of the Merced River as it flows out of Yosemite National Park. It’s at 10 percent of capacity. In a normal spring, the reservoir holds more than 600,000 acre-feet of water. As April came to a close, it was at 104,000 acre-feet — with almost no snowmelt on the way. (The measurement is one acre filled to a depth of a foot, or 325,851 gallons.) That’s the surface disruption in a state that may soon be unrecognizable in places.

更糟糕的是麦克卢尔湖水库。这里储存的是默塞德河流经约塞米蒂国家公园后剩下的规模不定的水资源。在正常的春季，这座水库的水量逾7.4亿立方米，而到今年4月将尽的时候，却只容纳了1.5亿立方米，而且几乎没有融雪可以补充。加州的不少地方可能很快就会变得面目全非，这些不过是表面的变化。

The morality tale behind California’s verdant prosperity will most certainly change. In the old narrative, the evil city took water from powerless farmers. Swimming pools in greater Los Angeles were filled with liquid that could have kept orchards alive in the Owens Valley, to the north.

加州繁荣的植被经济背后的道德逻辑也很可能会有所转变。旧日的说法是，邪恶的市政府从务农者手中抢夺水源。大洛杉矶地区的游泳池用掉的水，本可以让欧文斯谷往北的果园均得以健康生长。

It was hubris, born in the words of the city’s chief water engineer, William Mulholland, when he opened the gates of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913 with an immortal proclamation: “There it is. Take it.”

1913年的时候，洛杉矶水务部门的总工程师威廉·马尔霍兰(William Mulholland)用一句传世的宣言开启了洛杉矶引水渠的闸门：“水就在那里，尽管取而用之。”此番话语，尽显傲慢。

But now, just about everyone in California knows that it requires a gallon of water to grow a single almond, or that agriculture accounts for 80 percent of the water used by humans here. Meanwhile, the cities have become leaders in conservation. It takes 106 gallons of water to produce an ounce of beef — which is more than the average San Francisco Bay Area resident uses in a day. Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles wants to reduce the amount of water the city purchases by 50 percent in the next decade, cutting back through aggressive use of wastewater and conservation.

然而到了今天，加州几乎每个人都知道：种出一粒扁桃，需要耗费1加仑的水（约合3.79升）；农业消耗了本州80%的人类用水量。与此同时，这里的各座市镇成为了节水方面的先锋。每生产1盎司（约合28克）的牛肉需要耗费106加仑的水，比旧金山湾区居民的人均日用水量还多。洛杉矶市长埃里克·加希提(Eric Garcetti)希望，在未来10年间将该市的购水量削减50%，而途径是大量利用回收废水及节水。

It’s outlandish, urban critics note, for big farm units to be growing alfalfa — which consumes about 20 percent of the state’s irrigation water — or raising cattle, in a place with a third of the rainfall of other states. And by exporting that alfalfa and other thirsty crops overseas, the state is essentially shipping its precious water to China.

城市里的批评人士指出，在降水量仅为其他地方三分之一的加州，让大农场养牛或种苜蓿实属荒谬。仅苜蓿种植就消耗了加州20%左右的灌溉用水。而通过将苜蓿等耗水作物出口海外，加州实际上是在把宝贵的水资源输送给中国。

Still, casting California farmers — who produce about half of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables — as crony capitalist water gluttons may not be entirely fair. Yes, the water is subsidized, through taxpayer-funded dams, canals and pumping systems. But that water, in some cases, ends up as habitat for birds and wildlife. As it drains away, it can recharge badly depleted underground aquifers. Farmers have already let more than 400,000 acres go fallow and took a $2 Billion hit last year. They may add 600,000 acres to that total this year. Almonds, after all, are a healthy food source.

然而，把承担着全国水果、坚果和蔬菜产量一半的加州农民，形容成吞噬水资源的裙带资本家，也许是有失公允的。没错，通过纳税人出资修建水坝、渠道和水泵系统，水是得到公共补贴的。但在某些情况下，这些水会成为鸟类和野生动物的栖息地。随着水渗入地下，严重退化的地下含水层可以得到喘息之机。目前，已有超过40万英亩的土地休耕，加州农民去年为此承受了20亿美元的损失。今年可能还会再增加60万英亩的休耕面积。而扁桃仁毕竟还是一种健康的食物来源。

The new morality tale becomes further muddled when you consider that San Francisco, praised for its penurious water ways, gets its life-supporting liquid from the Hetch Hetchy dam, in Yosemite. Many people, dating from the sainted John Muir, believe that flooding that mountain valley was one of the bigger crimes against nature in California history.

在用水方面以小气著称的旧金山，生活用水依靠约塞米蒂的赫奇-赫奇水坝，这就让眼下这则道义故事的情节愈发错综复杂起来。很多人认为，淹没那里的山谷是加州历史上对自然犯下的最严重罪行之一，这种说法最早出自如今已经被视为圣人的约翰·缪尔(John Muir)。

And not every city is Spartan with its water. On any given day you can find, as I did in a new housing development in the foothills east of Sacramento, water running down the street — at a flow rate that looked bigger than that coming from the anemic Merced River. It was pouring onto a grass median strip, and then spilling over, in a development called the Estates at Blackstone.

并非所有城市在用水上都能厉行节约。水在大街上白白流着的情形司空见惯，我在萨克拉门托东部山麓的一处新住宅楼盘中就看到了——流量似乎要高过日趋干涸的美熹德河。在一处叫做黑石庄园(Estates at Blackstone)的楼盘里，水被不断灌入一条绿化隔离带，然后满溢到路上。

Or consider that wealthy communities — say, Portola Valley, woodsy home to many an environmentally conscious tech multimillionaire — use far more water per capita than do the poor of Compton, in the Los Angeles area. When cost is no object, there is very little incentive to cut back.

再看看那些富人社区——比如绿树成荫的波托拉谷(Portola Valley)，许多有环保意识的亿万富豪就住在这里——人均用水量远比洛杉矶地区的穷人社区康普顿要高得多。当费用不在考虑时，也就很难找到节水的动力了。

But there is no getting around the fact that agriculture, for all its water needs, still produces barely 2 percent of the state’s gross product, and employs only about 3 percent of its workers.

然而无法回避的事实是，水需求如此之高的农业，只产出了全州总产值的2%，雇佣了仅3%左右的工人。

Fair or not, it seems incongruous that farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are still planting new almond trees — they’ve nearly doubled the crop since 2005 — while people in the cities kill their lawns and dash in and out of low-flow showers.

公平与否暂且不论，圣华金谷的农民至今仍在增种扁桃树，这似乎是有些不合时宜的。自2005年至今，这种作物的规模将近翻倍，而城市里的人们却在放弃他们的草坪，或是在淋浴头的涓涓细流下匆匆洗澡。

The idea that California could have it all — a pool in every suburban backyard, new crops in a drought, wild salmon in rivers now starved of oxygen — is fading fast. There is only so much more “pop per drop,” as Marcus, the State Water Resources Control Board chairwoman, said, or neighbor snitching on neighbor, until the urban majority resists and demands a change in allocation.

在加利福尼亚州每个郊区居民的后院建一个游泳池，在干旱地区种植更多作物，拥有野生鲑鱼（它们现在正饱受缺氧之苦），这些想法目前正在迅速消退。这里现在只有加州水资源管理委员会主席马库斯女士所说的“珍惜每一滴水”，或邻里之间互相监督，直到城市中的大多数人进行抵抗并要求在供水配给上做出改变。

What will come, then, from this disrupting drought is likely to be a shift of power. The urban “almond shaming” chorus is quick to note that the crop uses enough water to support 75 percent of the state's population. In other words, there would be no water shortage in San Diego or Los Angeles if nut growers shut off the pumps.

这场严重的干旱所带来的很可能是力量的转变。城市中的“杏仁之耻”之歌（种植杏仁需要消耗大量水——译注）告诉人们，种植该种作物需要的水分足以支持加州75%的人口。换句话说，如果坚果种植者切断水泵，圣地亚哥或洛杉矶将不会有缺水问题。

“Imagine if somebody ever said, `Let's have a vote on how to use California's water,”' said Daniel Beard, a former Bureau of Recreation commissioner and a critic of federal dam building. “That's the last thing big agricultural interests would want.”

“想象一下如果有人说，‘让我们就加州如何使用水源进行一次投票’，主要的农业利益相关方是最不希望见到这种情况的。”丹尼尔·比尔德说，比尔德是前休憩局(Bureau of Recreation)专员，同时是一位联邦大坝修建的批评者。

The food industry is ripe for disruption. The land that has been left fallow now in the Central Valley is still less than 5 percent of all the irrigation acreage in California. Another 5 percent would leave most of the industry standing, and leaner. Low-value, high-water crops would disappear, as is already happening.

食品行业的变局时机已成熟。目前在中央山谷已经休耕的土地仅占加州灌溉面积的不到5%。再增加5%，行业的大部分将能存活下来，并且更加精练。低价值、高水耗的作物会消失，这一点已经在发生。

Absent a vote of the people, the free market could end up as the decider. The big city water districts have more than enough money to buy farm water in a freewheeling exchange. Indeed, they’ve been making numerous purchases for years — though limited by complex water contracts and infrastructure that makes it difficult to pipe large amounts from one place to the other.

在没有公众投票的情况下，自由市场会成为裁决者。在交易不受限制的情况下，大城市供水区完全有能力以任意价格购买农业用水。事实上，多年来它们已经做出了许多收购——尽管在复杂的用水合同和基础设施制约下，将大量的水从一处输送到另一处是有困难的。

In addition, one fear of making water an open-market commodity is that rich and politically powerful communities would get all the clean water they needed, while poor public districts would be left out. A class system around breathable air has already developed in China. Is abundant water the next must-have possession of the 1 percent?

此外，将水变成一种自由市场商品的办法还存在一个隐忧，那就是届时权贵阶层也许能尽情取用清洁的水，而贫穷的公共社区就无缘消受了。在中国，围绕着可呼吸的空气已经形成了一个阶级体系。充足的用水会成为又一个权贵的身份象征吗？

Agriculture will not give up its perch atop the power pyramid without a fight. Water that goes from the mountains to the sea is a waste, farmers say. The drought is “a man-made” disaster, as Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard executive who will likely run for the Republican presidential nomination, claims. She blames environmentalists for blocking major dam projects.

农业不会将自己在权力金字塔尖的地位拱手让出。农民们说，让水从山间流向大海是暴殄天物。可能会角逐共和党总统候选人提名的前惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard)高管卡莉·菲奥里纳(Carly Fiorina)声称，旱灾是“一场人为”灾难。她将此归罪于阻挠大型水坝工程的环保人士。

“California is a classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people’s lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology,” she said on Glenn Beck’s radio program a few weeks ago. Of course, one of those elites was Ronald Reagan, who as governor signed legislation in 1973 that protected the Eel River in Northern California from dam builders.

“自由派会用他人的生命和生活作祭品，供奉自己的意识形态，加州就是一个经典案例，”她在几周前参加格伦·贝克(Glenn Beck)的电台节目时说。她说的那些精英人士，当然就包括罗纳德·里根(Ronald Reagan)了，他在1973年作为州长签署了一份法案，旨在让北加州的鳗河免遭水坝建设者的侵扰。

“The environment is already taking a big hit in this drought,” said Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California. “My sense is that Californians are pretty supportive of both a strong agricultural economy and a healthy environment.”

“在这次旱灾中，环境已然遭受重创，”加州公共政策研究所(Public Policy Institute of California)的水政策中心(Water Policy Center)主任艾伦·哈纳克(Ellen Hanak)说。“我的感觉是，加州人对强劲的农业经济和健康的环境都是非常支持的。”

Big new reservoir projects — a return of the concrete empire — are doubtful. Without a government subsidy, cost is the biggest obstacle. Farmers certainly aren't going to pay the billions now footed by federal taxpayers. And then: Where is the “new” water going to come from? Underground, wells are probing ever deeper, sucking aquifers dry, the land sinking at a dramatic rate. Overhead, the sky is unreliable.

新建大型水库工程——回到混凝土帝国——同样受到质疑。没有政府的津贴，成本将是最大的障碍。农民当然不会自掏腰包出资亿万美元，这些钱现在是由联邦纳税人支付的。那么，“新的”水源从哪里来呢？在地下，地下井被前所未有地深挖，地下砂石含水层变得干旱，地面沉降速度可观。在头顶上，天空同样不可依靠。

Desalination, making seawater potable, is another option, which Carlsbad, north of San Diego, is pursuing with a huge plant under construction. Australia went down this road during its epic drought in the 2000s. But the plants proved to be so prohibitively expensive to run that four of them were mothballed. Billions were spent without producing a drop of clean water.

将海水脱盐以便饮用是另一个选择。圣地亚哥北部的卡尔斯巴德就正在建造一个大型的海水脱盐工厂。澳大利亚在21世纪初的大干旱时期也走过这条路。但此类工厂已被证实造价过高，他们其中的4个已经封存。花费数十亿元却没有造出一滴纯净水。

What California still has, in great supply, is ingenuity. Three years ago, Mitt Romney compared the state to bankrupt Greece. It was laughed at and written off by conservative pundits. California now has a budget surplus and led the nation in job growth last year — far outpacing Texas.

加州依然拥有取之不竭的创造力。3年前米特·罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)将这个州比作破产的希腊。保守派的专家大老对它大加嘲弄和鄙夷。如今的加州已经实现预算盈余，去年的就业增长全国领先——远超德克萨斯。

The drought may indeed be a long overdue bill for creating an oasis civilization. But therein lies a solution. The Golden State is an invention, with lives to match. If the drought continues, California will be forced to rely even more on what has long sustained it — imagination. Not a bad thing to have too much of.

也许这场旱灾的确是对多年来建造绿洲文明所欠债务的一次清算。但它是可以解决的。“黄金之州”是一个发明，这里的生活是与此相称的。如果干旱继续下去，加州将比以往更加依赖一直在支撑它的东西——想象力。这东西是不嫌多的。