Did Climate Change Cause the California Drought? Or Big Government?

While scientists continue to debate global warming, it’s undeniable that the federal government has had an active hand in exacerbating California’s drought. President Obama flew to Fresno, California, last Friday to announce a drought relief package and speak on climate change’s influence. Although no single weather event can be attributed to climate change, the White House painted the drought as part of a larger picture of the devastation wreaked by global warming. Is it, though? Amid environmentalist litigation in 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recalled a permit allowing farmers to use irrigation pumps in the Sacramento Delta, claiming that the pumps were a direct threat to the delta smelt fish. A previous permit had come to the opposite conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of acres of water have since been diverted from farmlands. The Farm Bureau predicts that between 400,000 acres and 500,000 acres of crops will be lost. Department of Water Resources director Mark Cowin estimates that if it weren’t for the federal government’s irrigation restrictions, the number would be 200,000 acres less. In the wake of the drought brought on by the water diversion, unemployment and food prices have soared in some areas. As Reason reports, in 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced “a bill that would turn the pumps back on.” Had they been successful, the drought might not have inflicted as much damage as it is currently doing...more