Tag Archives: california

Vaping Among Teens Skyrockets in 2014

by Jessie1861 Posted on April 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Is this chart on the right, from the Washington Post, good news or bad? On the one hand, teen cigarette use has plummeted from 16 percent to 9 percent over the past four years. On the other hand, the total rate of teen smoking—cigarettes plus e-cigarettes—has risen from 17 percent to 22 percent. The rise in e-cigarette use spiked especially sharply in 2014, more than tripling in a single year.

I’ve heard pros and cons about e-cigarettes for the past couple of years, and I can’t say I have a settled opinion about them. Taken in isolation, it’s safe to say that no kind of nicotine delivery system is good for you. But traditional cigarettes are certainly more harmful than e-cigarettes, so to the extent that vaping replaces tobacco smoking, it’s a net positive.

But that huge spike in 2014 is cause for concern. At some point, teen vaping starts to look like a serious net negative even if it’s accompanied by a small drop in traditional cigarette consumption. I’m still not sure what to think about this, but I’d say these latest figures from the CDC move my priors a bit in the direction of stronger regulation of e-cigarattes.

And if you don’t live in California and are wondering what the fuss is over my state’s anti-vaping campaign, here’s the ad that’s been assaulting my TV for the past couple of months. It’s paid for by revenue from good ol’ Proposition 99, I assume.

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Vaping Among Teens Skyrockets in 2014

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McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

by 0c4g78x Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here is a hilarious thing that I find hilarious. The first McDonald’s franchise opened its doors 60 years ago today in Des Plaines, Illinois. This is the day McDonald’s Corporation celebrates as its birthday. When you dive into Google to find the opening day menu for the McDonald’s that opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955, this is what you find:

source: kottke.com

Notice anything funny? On its opening day menu, McDonald’s bragged about having already served “over 15 million burgers.” So what’s going on? Is this just a hilariously transparent case of false advertising or something else?

It turns out something else. Though McDonald’s as we know it traces its origins to April 15, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, that was actually just the first franchise. McDonald’s had actually already existed for years in California. It was founded by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in the 1940s. The site’s official history explains:

Entrepreneur Ray Kroc pitched his vision of creating McDonald’s restaurants all over the U.S. to the brothers. In 1955, he founded McDonald’s System, Inc., a predecessor of the McDonald’s Corporation, and six years later bought the exclusive rights to the McDonald’s name. By 1958, McDonald’s had sold its 100 millionth hamburger.

So there was nothing nefarious about this claim, but it is still pretty amusing.

Correction: This post originally said Des Plaines was in Iowa. It is in Illinois. I’m dumb.

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McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

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Here’s The Real Problem With Almonds

by WinnieBachman Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Almonds: crunchy, delicious, and…the center of a nefarious plot to suck California dry? They certainly have used up a lot of ink lately—partly inspired by our reporting over the past year. California’s drought-stricken Central Valley churns out 80 percent of the globe’s almonds, and since each nut takes a gallon of water to produce, they account for close to 10 percent of the state’s annual agricultural water use—or more than what the entire population of Los Angeles and San Francisco use in a year.

As Grist’s Nathanael Johnson put it, almonds have become a scapegoat of sorts—”the poster-nut for human wastefulness in California’s drought.” Or, as Alissa Walker put it in Gizmodo, “You know, ALMONDS, THE DEVIL’S NUT.” It’s not surprising that the almond backlash has inspired a backlash of its own. California agriculture is vast and complex, and its water woes can’t hang entirely on any one commodity, not even one as charismatic as the devil’s nut almond.

And as many have pointed out, almonds have a lot going for them—they’re nutritious, they taste good, and they’re hugely profitable for California. In 2014, almonds brought in a whopping $11 billion to the state’s economy. Plus, other foods—namely, animal products—use a whole lot more water per ounce than almonds.

So almonds must be worth all the water they require, right? Not so fast. Before you jump to any conclusions, consider the following five facts:

1. Most of our almonds end up overseas. Almonds are the second-thirstiest crop in California—behind alfalfa, a superfood of sorts for cows that sucks up 15 percent of the state’s irrigation water. Gizmodo‘s Walker—along with many others—wants to shift the focus from almonds to the ubiquitous feed crop, wondering, “Why are we using more and more of our water to grow hay?” Especially since alfalfa is a relatively low-value crop—about a quarter of the per-acre value of almonds—and about a fifth of it is exported.

It should be noted, though, that we export far more almonds than alfalfa: About two thirds of California’s almond and pistachio crops are sent overseas—a de facto export of California’s overtapped water resources.

2. While alfalfa fields are shrinking, almond fields are expanding—in a big way. The drought is already pushing California farmers out of high-water, low-value crops like alfalfa and cotton, and into almonds and two other pricey nuts, pistachios and walnuts. This year, California acreage devoted to alfalfa is expected to shrink 11 percent; and cotton acres look set to dwindle to their lowest level since the 1920s.

Meanwhile, the market is pushing almonds and other nuts in the opposite direction. At a recent confab in California’s nut-rich, water-challenged San Joaquin County, Stuart Resnick, chief of Paramount Farms, by far the state’s largest nut grower, explained why in a speech, as documented by an account in the trade journal Western Farm Press. Almonds, he said, deliver farmers an average net return of $1,431 per acre. Pistachios, another fast-expanding nut hotly promoted by the Paramount farming empire, net even more: $3,519 per acre.

Given that Paramount reportedly manages 50,000 acres of combined almonds and pistachios, it’s safe to say there’s big profits in growing those nuts. And the company, which also buys and processes nuts from other farmers and sells them under the Wonderful brand, plans to expand by fifty percent in the next five years. Currently the company farms 30,000 acres on its own and buys pistachios from farms occupying another 100,000 acres. By 2020, the company’s “goal is 150,000 partner acres, 33,000 Paramount acres,” which would be a 40 percent jump in just five years. And that’s on top of the 118 percent expansion in pistachio acres over the past decade, according to figures Resnick delivered at the conference.

3. Unlike other crops, almonds always require a lot of water—even during drought. Annual crops like cotton, alfalfa and veggies are flexible—farmers can fallow them in dry years. That’s not so for nuts, which need to be watered every year, drought or no, or the trees die, wiping out farmers’ investments.

Already, strains are showing. Back in 2013, a team led by US Geological Survey hydrologist Michelle Sneed discovered that a 1,200-square-mile swath of the southern Central Valley—a landmass more than twice the size of Los Angeles—had been sinking by as much as 11 inches per year, because the water table had fallen from excessive pumping. In an interview last year, Sneed told me the ongoing exodus from annual crops and pasture to nuts likely played a big role.

4. Some nut growers are advocating against water regulation—during the worst drought in California’s history. “I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,” one pistachio grower told the audience at the Paramount event, according to the Western Farm Press account. As for water, that’s apparently a political problem, not an ecological one, for Paramount. “Pistachios are valued at $40,000 an acre,” Bill Phillimore, executive vice president of Paramount Farming, reportedly told the crowd. “How much are you spending in the political arena to preserve that asset?” Apparently, he meant: protect it from pesky regulators questioning your water use. He “urged growers to contribute three quarters of a cent on every pound of pistachios sold to a water advocacy effort,” Western Farm Press reported.

5. Mostly, it’s not small-scale farmers that are getting rich off the almond boom. With their surging overseas sales, almonds and pistachios have drawn in massive financial players hungry for a piece of the action. As we reported last year, Hancock Agricultural Investment Group, an investment owned by the Canadian insurance and financial services giant Manulife Financial, owns at least 24,000 acres of almonds, pistachios, and walnuts, making it California’s second-largest nut grower. TIAA-CREF, a large retirement and investment fund that owns 37,000 acres of California farmland, and boasts that it’s one of the globe’s top five almond producers.

Then there’s Terrapin Fabbri Management, a private equity firm that “manages more than $100 million of farm assets on behalf of institutional investors and high net worth clients” and says it’s “focused on capitalizing on the increasing global demand for California’s agricultural output.” In a piece late last year, The Economist pointed out that Terrapin had “bought a dairy company and some vineyards and tomato fields in California, and converted all to grow almonds, whose price has soared as the Chinese have gone nuts for them.” The magazine added that “such conversions require up-front capital”—e.g., to drop wells—”and the ability to survive without returns for years.” Those aren’t privileges many small-scale farmers enjoy.

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Here’s The Real Problem With Almonds

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Marco Rubio Used to Believe in Climate Science. Now He’s Running for President.

by WarrenJevons Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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When the Florida state Legislature opened its 2007 session, Speaker Marco Rubio, a Miami Republican, took the stage to lay out his priorities for the year. Near the top of his list was a focus on clean energy.

“Global warming, dependence on foreign sources of fuel, and capitalism have come together to create opportunities for us that were unimaginable just a few short years ago,” he said, in a video recording unearthed by BuzzFeed. Rubio predicted that legal caps on greenhouse gas emissions were inevitable, and he argued that Florida should prepare to become “an international model of energy efficiency and independence” and the “Silicon Valley” of clean energy.

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Several years later, as a junior senator offering his party’s rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address, Rubio was singing a different tune. Solar and wind energy “should be a part of our energy portfolio,” he said, but the United States should focus its efforts on extracting coal, oil, and natural gas “instead of wasting more money on so-called clean-energy companies like Solyndra.” (Solyndra was a solar power company in California that failed spectacularly in 2011 after receiving a $500 million grant from the Obama administration. Republicans seized on it as a textbook case of the president’s foolhardy energy agenda, but in reality the company was just badly managed.)

Rubio’s comments since then have been more consistent: He argues that government policies to limit emissions are pointless in the face of rising pollution from developing countries. And, he says, such policies are certain to be “devastating” to the US economy.

He also rejects the notion that scientists are in agreement about the role humans have played in causing global warming. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he told ABC News last May.

On Monday, Rubio is expected to announce his candidacy for president. Check out the video above for a look back at his thoughts on climate change.

This story has been revised.

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Marco Rubio Used to Believe in Climate Science. Now He’s Running for President.

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Does GE Capital’s Demise Mean Financial Reform Is Working?

by Shavonn02T Posted on April 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Interesting post today from Paul Krugman about the shadow banking system and GE’s recent decision to get out of the finance biz:

GE Capital was a quintessential example of the rise of shadow banking. In most important respects it acted like a bank; it created systemic risks very much like a bank; but it was effectively unregulated, and had to be bailed out through ad hoc arrangements that understandably had many people furious about putting taxpayers on the hook for private irresponsibility.

Most economists, I think, believe that the rise of shadow banking had less to do with real advantages of such nonbank banks than it did with regulatory arbitrage — that is, institutions like GE Capital were all about exploiting the lack of adequate oversight….So Dodd-Frank tries to fix the bad incentives by subjecting systemically important financial institutions — SIFIs — to greater oversight, higher capital and liquidity requirements, etc.. And sure enough, what GE is in effect saying is that if we have to compete on a level playing field, if we can’t play the moral hazard game, it’s not worth being in this business. That’s a clear demonstration that reform is having a real effect.

Read the whole thing for more.

By the way: On the occasions when I come up for air and write blog posts, I’ll probably mostly be doing stuff like this. That is, quick links to something interesting without much additional commentary.

The reason is fatigue, which is nearly everpresent these days. Physically, this is a nuisance, but not much more. Mentally, though, it’s worse, because it leaves me without the—what’s the right word? Cognitive will? Cognitive ability?—to really think hard about stuff. And without that, I can’t blog much even though typing is, obviously, not a very physically demanding activity.

Still, I continue to keep up as best I can, and I really love to blog. I won’t quite say that being unable to blog is the worst part of this whole chemotherapy thing, but it’s close. I just hate having ideas about the stuff I read but being just a little too foggy to really be sure of my ability to say something useful and coherent about it. So I’ll continue pointing out items that interest me, but mostly leaving it at that.

In case you’re curious, I use crossword puzzles as a sort of rough guide to my mental fatigue level. This afternoon, for example, I finished one. Hooray! That means I’m at least moderately alert. However, it was a Thursday puzzle1 and it took me about three hours to finally get through it. That’s not so great. But who knows? Maybe it was just unusually hard. I’ll try another one tonight.

1For those of you who aren’t into crossword puzzles, the New York Times puzzle gets harder as the week progresses. A Thursday puzzle is a bit of a challenge, but usually not a big one. Good solvers can finish them in 5-10 minutes. For me, it’s usually 15-30 minutes. Three hours is well outside my usual range.2

2Hmmm. On the other hand, maybe this wasn’t my fault. I just checked, and the name of the third baseman in Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s On First?” sketch is indeed “I don’t know.” I kept trying to fit that in somewhere, but the answer in the puzzle was “Tell me something.” Where did that come from?

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Does GE Capital’s Demise Mean Financial Reform Is Working?

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Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

by Shella17Xguiwno Posted on April 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to have Cheryl Rofer, who for 35 years worked as a chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. If you don’t follow her already, be sure to check out her writing on national security, women’s issues, science, and nuclear power and weapons at Nuclear Diner.

When I started blogging in November 2004, Kevin was already defining the field with short, topical posts and Friday Cat Blogging. The internet was a smaller place then, and most of us knew all the others, or at least knew of them. We argued. We linked to each other, hoping to boost our SEO. We shared each others’ successes and mourned when Inkblot disappeared. Kevin has been a good companion over the years. His broad coverage of topics and to-the-point style are touchstones, even as I stray into the wonkier corners of the news.

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot about the recent negotiations with Iran. A few days past a deadline that had nuclear wonks on the edge of their seats, the talks between Tehran and officials from six other nations brought forth a plan for a plan.

That’s not nothing, although it sounds vague. Some vagueness is necessary to keep all sides happy—and that means that any description of the deal will sound vague. The United States and its partners in the P5+1 would like a neatly written-down to-do list (which they have sorta provided), and Iran’s Supreme Leader has decreed that all must be written down just once—exactly when isn’t yet clear. The results of negotiations must be spun by the sides to their very different bases.

In America, two consensuses are building. Most in the arms control community and a wide swath of foreign policy experts, including some conservatives, feel that the deal as described in that fact sheet is better than expected and should keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for the next decade or more. Not bad.

The more hawkish consensus ranges from bombing Iran now to leaving the talks in hopes of a better deal, which amounts to bombing Iran later. Why not, when you’re confident it would take only a few days of air strikes? They say the deal is no good because it does not guarantee Iranian compliance for perpetuity and does not totally destroy Iran’s enrichment and other nuclear capabilities. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is apoplectic, but what else is new?

The same hawks also assured us back in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk. Their arguments this time around are just as boneheaded. According to the fact sheet, Iran would enter into agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; that would be, as much in perpetuity as any international deal can be. Under that treaty, Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy, and, like any other country with smart scientists, can figure out how to make nuclear weapons. Bombs can’t change that.

The final deal remains to be negotiated. The fact sheet is only an outline, and some issues will be easier to solve than others. Still to be worked out: Sanctions, particularly the schedule on which they are to be lifted. A list of research and development activities that Iran is allowed to pursue may or may not have been drawn up in Lausanne. Details on how Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile will be reduced and the redesign of the Arak reactor are missing.

The extent of Iran’s past activity on nuclear weapons was relegated to the IAEA by the P5+1 throughout the negotiations, and is a lesser provision in the fact sheet. Do we have to know all Iran’s dirty secrets to police a future agreement? Probably not.

The Supreme Leader issued a tweet stream that seems to give his blessing for a deal to go forward, but his words were unclear enough that domestic hardliners could seize on them in an attempt to scuttle the deal. Iran’s President Rouhani has voiced his support. In Israel, even the general who bombed the Osirak reactor thinks it’s a good deal.

Stateside, President Obama is doing what he can to move the agreement along, talking to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the author of the bill most likely to throw a wrench in the machinery. Democrats who once supported that bill are now reconsidering that stance. The President has given major interviews to Tom Friedman and NPR. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who was part of the negotiations, is talking to the press.

Yes, if the sanctions are lifted, Iran might be able to make other sorts of trouble in the Middle East. But it’s doing that anyway. We won’t know for some time whether an agreement can mellow Iran by opening it to the world and better economic conditions.

If an agreement can be negotiated to completion, Iran can’t get the bomb for a decade or more. That’s enough for now.

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Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

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Let the 2016 Presidential Poster Wars Commence!

by EzekielFord Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Michael Mechanic

Is this the first salvo in the 2016 presidential campaign poster wars? This past week, somebody plastered this poster—guerilla style—at well-trod locations around San Francisco.

What was the artist thinking? Was this a subtle jab at Cruz’s hubris or a bona fide attempt to promote the guy—or just a cool design? I could see it psyching up the GOP base in Kevin’s Orange County stomping grounds. But in San Francisco? Only 13 percent of this city voted for Romney. A Ted Cruz fan hoping to boost the Texas senator’s presidential hopes would be wasting his time posting these around here—even if they are pretty cool looking.

Maybe the message was meant to reach rich tech libertarians who have moved north from Silicon Valley and might be game to donate. You know, the crew who admire Ron and Rand Paul and seem to have forgotten that the tech industry was built on massive government funding. Then again, given Cruz’s head-scratching position against net neutrality—he’s called it “the biggest regulatory threat to the internet”—he’s not likely to get much love from the tech world. Even the Obama-haters on Cruz’s Facebook page had to ridicule his position.

My favorite Cruz poster to date went up last March around Beverly Hills, where Cruz was slated to appear at the annual dinner of the conservative Claremont Institute. (The artists, being artists, got the hotel wrong.) But Cruz was indeed, as the poster joked, “loving it.” Here’s what he tweeted:

I just hope Bernie Sanders, the left’s favorite bomb thrower, decides to run. I’m dying to see what street artists will make of him.

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Let the 2016 Presidential Poster Wars Commence!

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The Link Between Fracking and Oklahoma’s Quakes Keeps Getting Stronger

by BrittSpargo Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

Over the last few years, Oklahoma has experienced an insane uptick in earthquakes. As we reported in 2013, the count exploded from just a couple per year back in the mid-2000s to over a thousand in 2010, growing alongside a boom in the state’s natural gas drilling industry.

There is now a heap of peer-reviewed research finding that Oklahoma’s earthquake “swarm” is directly linked to fracking—not the gas drilling itself, but a follow-up step where brackish wastewater is re-injected into disposal wells deep underground. It’s a troubling trend in an industry that thrives under notoriously lax regulations, especially when the risk to property and public safety is so obvious.

If those numbers weren’t dramatic enough, here’s another: This year, Oklahoma has experienced an average of two quakes per day of magnitude 3.0—enough to be felt and inflict damage to structures—or greater. That’s according to a deep, comprehensive report on the subject out in this week’s New Yorker.

But even freakier than the earthquakes themselves, according to the story, is the pervasive denial of science coming from state agencies like the Oklahoma Geological Survey, whose job it is to oversee the oil and gas industry:

The official position of the O.G.S. is that the Prague Oklahoma earthquakes were likely a natural event and that there is insufficient evidence to say that most earthquakes in Oklahoma are the result of disposal wells. That position, however, has no published research to support it, and there are at least twenty-three peer-reviewed, published papers that conclude otherwise.

The story goes on to detail super-cozy relationships between top regulators and drilling company executives; the state’s ongoing and systemic habit of dismissing or ignoring the rapidly accumulating pile of evidence about the quakes; and a failure by regulators and the state legislature to take any meaningful steps to address the crisis. It’s really quite damning.

As a reporter covering the fracking industry, I’ve found that a lot of the problems associated with the technique aren’t necessarily inherent to it, and could be resolved with more pressure on companies to behave responsibly, or laws requiring them to. Better zoning regulations could keep wells out of neighborhoods. Stricter well construction standards could cut down on the leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and help ensure that gas or chemicals don’t contaminate groundwater. In other words, while industry may resist them, there are ready solutions at hand to many of the most cited drawbacks. And the same could be true in the case of earthquakes: while many geologists have now found that drilling wells into deep “basement” rock can set off temblors, there still isn’t a law in Oklahoma that simply requires locating disposal wells elsewhere.

Their state’s lack of basic engagement on the fracking-and-earthquakes issue is, understandably, a source of great frustration to Oklahomans, including those who are otherwise totally supportive the drilling industry. They’re worried not only about above-ground damage, but about how quakes might effect the state’s vast network of oil pipelines and underground aquifers. It’s hard to imagine the nightmare that would result if a serious earthquake ruptured these pipelines and caused a major spill. That sentiment was nicely captured in the New Yorker by a quote from the town manager of Medford, a hamlet outside the oil center of Cushing:

“We want to be a good partner for the oil companies—it’s exciting for us that they’re here. But if they can move the disposal well even just three miles, what a difference that would make.”

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The Link Between Fracking and Oklahoma’s Quakes Keeps Getting Stronger

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This New Country Blues Compilation Is the Best Kind of History Lesson

by TameraT93qf Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

Various Artists
The Rough Guide to Unsung Heroes of Country Blues
Rough Guide

There are any number of ways to approach this fine 24-track compilation of performances from the ’20s and ’30s. First, it’s an intriguing history lesson, showing how ragtime, jazz, folk, and other styles were blended to create the music that would ultimately become the blues. If that seems too much like eating your vegetables, instead consider it an exploration of the roots of more celebrated artists. The Lovin’ Spoonful covered Henry Thomas’ “Fishing Blues,” while Cream updated Blind Willie (Joe) Reynolds’ “Married Man Blues” and Muddy Waters turned Hambone Willie Newbern’s “Roll and Tumble Blues” into a landmark of the genre.

It’s easy to imagine the Stones cribbing from any of these songs. But the best way to appreciate The Rough Guide to Unsung Heroes of Country Blues is on a strictly musical level. There’s infinite variety and subtlety to be found in the artful singing and inventive acoustic guitar playing of the men—and a handful of women, including the elusive Geeshie Wiley—represented on this excellent set. Start with Lane Hardin’s spooky “California Desert Blues,” or practically any other song, and prepare to be hooked.

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This New Country Blues Compilation Is the Best Kind of History Lesson

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7 Key Facts About the Drought

by GrazynaGuffey Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the drought in California, especially since this past week, when Gov. Jerry Brown introduced mandatory water cuts for the first time in the state’s history. So what exactly makes this drought so bad? And what are people doing about it? Here are a few important points to keep in mind:

Drought is the norm in California. How bad is this one? There are always wet years and dry years, but the past three years have been among the driest on record—and state officials worry that 2015 will be even drier. Last week, for the first time in the state’s history, Brown imposed mandatory water restrictions, requiring all cities and towns to cut their water usage by 25 percent. Though agriculture uses more than 80 percent of the state’s water, the regulations merely require farmers to submit “water management plans.”

California’s reservoirs have about a year’s worth of water left. Groundwater levels, seen as a “savings account” that the state can draw from in dry times, are at an all-time low. The US Drought Monitor comes out with weekly drought maps based on satellite imagery, precipitation, and water flow data; the Central Valley—America’s bread basket—is covered in dark red, “exceptional drought.”

What exactly is groundwater, and why are people in California freaking out about it? Groundwater is the water that seeps through the ground when it rains. Over the centuries, it accumulates in vast underground aquifers, with older water found deeper in the earth’s crust. Accessed through wells, groundwater is often compared to a savings account in California—good to have in dry times but difficult to refill. The issue now is that with reservoirs (above ground) so depleted, groundwater use is spiking. Farmers are drilling deeper and deeper for water—using water that fell 20,000 years ago. Usually, groundwater makes up about 40 percent of the state’s freshwater usage, but with the recent drought, that number has leapt to 65 percent. This year, it may rise to 75 percent.

What are the state’s biggest water users? Farming in general, and alfalfa (used to feed cows) and almonds in particular. California grows half of the fruits and veggies produced in the States, including more than 90 percent of the country’s grapes, broccoli, almonds, and walnuts. Here are some of the state’s most thirsty crops:

Alfalfa is a superfood of sorts for cows, and it’s in high demand in the Golden State, which leads the country in dairy production and is also a major beef producer. (Fun fact: It takes nearly 700 gallons of water to grow the alfalfa necessary to produce one gallon of milk, and 425 gallons of water to produce 4 ounces of beef.) Almonds are second from the top, both because it takes a lot of water to produce nuts (a single almond takes a gallon of water) but also because the crunchy snack is in vogue in the United States and abroad. The water that’s used to grow the California almonds that are exported overseas in one year would be enough to fuel Los Angeles for nearly three years.

What about fracking? Fracking uses a lot of water, since the process involves injecting water and chemicals into the earth to release oil and gas. According to a recent Reuters article, California oil producers used about 70 million gallons of water in 2014—about the amount that San Francisco homes use collectively in two days. But that’s just the water from fracking. The amount of water that was produced by California’s oil and gas production in 2014—which is to say, the groundwater that bubbled up during production and wasn’t returned to the original aquifers—was about 42 billion gallons. That’s enough to fuel San Francisco homes for 3 years.

Will we get back the water we lose? Your elementary school teachers didn’t lie to you—the water cycle is really a thing. But as Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute, explained, the water that California is losing “is still falling—it’s just falling somewhere else.” It’s impossible to know exactly where the water that would normally fall in California is going, but there are plenty of places, especially in the North and Northeast, that have been having abnormally wet years. Scientists are also concerned that climate change is both increasing the likelihood of drought and accelerating its effects: As the earth warms, water evaporates more easily from reservoirs, rivers, and soil.

California is on the coast. Can’t we desalinize the ocean? Because desalinization technology is so expensive and energy-intensive, most water officials—and taxpayers—don’t see it as a viable option. The latest attempt is the Carlsbad desalinization plant, just outside of San Diego, which will be complete in 2016. The project will cost taxpayers $1 billion and produce 50 million gallons of water per day—the largest desalinization plant in the Western Hemisphere—and it will provide just 7 percent of the county’s total water needs.

Well, this is depressing. What are viable solutions? There’s no silver bullet, but the good news is that there are some good solutions. This chart, part of a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Institute, sums up some of the options. California could reduce its water use by 17 to 22 percent with more efficient agricultural water use, including fixes like scheduling irrigation when plants need it and expanding drip and sprinkler irrigation. Urban water use could be reduced by 40 to 60 percent if residents replaced lawns with drought-tolerant plants, fixed water leaks, and replaced old toilets and showerheads with more water-efficient technology. And instead of channeling used water into the ocean, the state could treat it and reuse it—a practice that tends to gross some people out (because of the “drinking pee” factor) but has long been used in Orange County and is becoming more popular as the drought continues.

This article has been updated.

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7 Key Facts About the Drought

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