Shrinking Colorado River hands Biden his first climate brawl

 

A fracas among the seven states along the drought-stricken Colorado River is forcing the first major reckoning for the Biden administration over who should bear the pain of adapting to a changing climate.

At issue is whether it’s fair to use century-old rules, created during an era of relative abundance, to ration water from the rapidly shriveling river now that the West is on the precipice of climate disaster. With California and its six neighbors locked in a dispute over two competing approaches to divvying up the cuts in water deliveries, whatever the administration decides will almost certainly end up in court.

The dispute is an early glimpse of the type of fights the U.S. will face as the warming climate supercharges drought, wildfires, storms and floods, forcing wrenching choices over which communities get protected. Those decisions pose a political minefield — something President Joe Biden’s Interior Department is learning from the fight over the West’s most important river, which is creating existential risks for some of the country’s most economically and politically powerful states and industries...more