乾旱會終結加州的繁榮嗎

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.

加利福尼亞州天使營——在正常年份裏，加利福尼亞州沒有任何人，會往鄰居家的草坪多看一眼那荒漠驕陽下繁茂生長的六月禾草，也不會有人將鄙夷的眼光投向剛種下不久的扁桃樹——現如今，這種樹苗被指太過浪費水，會在未來導致水資源短缺。同樣不會有人懷疑，你家的汽車怎麼那麼幹淨？或者去思考，該活下來的，是一條魚還是一顆櫻桃樹？

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.

當然，這場進入了第4個年頭的大旱災沒有任何正常可言：根據氣候科學家的說法，這可能是1200年以來最嚴重的連續乾旱期。因爲那些將會被迫停耕的農田、着火的森林和乾涸的水井，本輪乾旱的持久影響將被銘記良久。用加州初創公司最出名的用語來說，這是一種“干擾因子”。

“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月初的時候，加州州長傑瑞·布朗(Jerry Brown)史上首次下令施行全州範圍內的強制性市鎮用水配給制度。“我們正在進行前無古人的嘗試，”他說。

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.

不過，讓那些對全年生活在陽光之下的3900萬加州居民感到幸災樂禍的人意外，甚或失望的是，加州將存活下來，而不會就此毀滅。這裏的經濟在強勁反彈，不會崩潰。也不會有成羣結隊的越野車像湯姆·約德（Tom Joad，《憤怒的葡萄》中的主角，因乾旱、經濟困難、農業變革、銀行止贖和沙塵暴等原因逃離家園前往加州——譯註）那樣向北逃荒而去。雨水終將再次降臨，內華達山脈的積雪也將重現。

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，經歷了這次大旱，加州將改頭換面。上世紀30年代的沙塵暴屬人爲所致，是因爲北美大平原的草地被毀，土地任由風化侵蝕。由此造成的損害從未完全恢復。加州目前的旱情則大多源於自然原因，破壞的是這座人造的伊甸園。人稱“金州”的加州也許能夠從中恢復過來，但一切都將不同於以往。

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?

展望未來，還存在一種嚴酷的可能性，也就是本輪持續的乾旱不過是一次“特大旱災”的起始階段，並會因氣候變化而惡化。加州的水庫中目前僅剩1年左右的供水量。假如連續無降水的時間從按日子計變成了按年頭計，又將如何？

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.

在經歷這種變化的加州大小市鎮，綠色植被正變成褐色。在諸如薩克拉門託以南的地區，家庭草坪已被視作某種奢侈品。加州水資源管理委員會(State Water Resources Control Board)主席費利西婭·馬庫斯(Felicia Marcus)說，“如果你家草坪唯一的過客是割草的人，”那也許就該放棄了。州里希望民衆把草坪的植被換成耐旱的品種，或者種上人造草皮。

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.

靠內華達山脈的融雪補充水源的人工湖將被曬成硬邦邦的土質谷地，四周滿是醜陋的污漬。一些河流會完全乾涸，而這種情況至少是要延續到雨水充沛的年份。就在幾天前，聖海倫娜附近的納帕河僅有一條涓涓細流，流經地球上最具價值的一些葡萄園。加州龐大的管道輸水系統位居世界前列，卻需要合適的雪量才能爲中央谷地的務農者和硅谷的技術人員提供服務。經歷了有紀錄以來乾旱程度最嚴重的冬季之後，加州內華達山脈今年4月份的積雪量創下歷史新低，僅爲正常年份的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.

對於因山頂光禿而感到震驚的加州人來說，近期公共生活中最荒誕的一幕莫過於，參議院環境與公共事務委員會主席、來自俄克拉何馬州的共和黨人詹姆斯·英霍夫(James Inhofe)在2月份的時候手拿一個雪球，以此證明在氣候變化的背景下美國仍水資源充沛。

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.

在中央谷地東部丘陵地帶的卡拉韋拉斯縣——馬克·吐溫(Mark Twain)讓當地的跳蛙出了名——可以看到連續多周晴朗無雲的天氣對新梅洛內斯湖的影響。這座湖是加州第四大的水庫，爲務農者和下游的魚類儲存水源，如今卻連20%的容量都沒達到。今夏結束的時候，它可能會完全乾涸。

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.

真是傷感——斯塔尼斯勞斯河曾經流經的地方，現在成了一座逐漸乾涸的小池塘。容量飽和、雨量正常的時候，新梅洛內斯湖本應足以爲近200萬家庭供水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.

更糟糕的是麥克盧爾湖水庫。這裏儲存的是默塞德河流經約塞米蒂國家公園後剩下的規模不定的水資源。在正常的春季，這座水庫的水量逾7.4億立方米，而到今年4月將盡的時候，卻只容納了1.5億立方米，而且幾乎沒有融雪可以補充。加州的不少地方可能很快就會變得面目全非，這些不過是表面的變化。

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.

加州繁榮的植被經濟背後的道德邏輯也很可能會有所轉變。舊日的說法是，邪惡的市政府從務農者手中搶奪水源。大洛杉磯地區的游泳池用掉的水，本可以讓歐文斯谷往北的果園均得以健康生長。

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年的時候，洛杉磯水務部門的總工程師威廉·馬爾霍蘭(William Mulholland)用一句傳世的宣言開啓了洛杉磯引水渠的閘門：“水就在那裏，儘管取而用之。”此番話語，盡顯傲慢。

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，加州幾乎每個人都知道：種出一粒扁桃，需要耗費1加侖的水（約合3.79升）；農業消耗了本州80%的人類用水量。與此同時，這裏的各座市鎮成爲了節水方面的先鋒。每生產1盎司（約合28克）的牛肉需要耗費106加侖的水，比舊金山灣區居民的人均日用水量還多。洛杉磯市長埃裏克·加希提(Eric Garcetti)希望，在未來10年間將該市的購水量削減50%，而途徑是大量利用回收廢水及節水。

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.

城市裏的批評人士指出，在降水量僅爲其他地方三分之一的加州，讓大農場養牛或種苜蓿實屬荒謬。僅苜蓿種植就消耗了加州20%左右的灌溉用水。而通過將苜蓿等耗水作物出口海外，加州實際上是在把寶貴的水資源輸送給中國。

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，把承擔着全國水果、堅果和蔬菜產量一半的加州農民，形容成吞噬水資源的裙帶資本家，也許是有失公允的。沒錯，通過納稅人出資修建水壩、渠道和水泵系統，水是得到公共補貼的。但在某些情況下，這些水會成爲鳥類和野生動物的棲息地。隨着水滲入地下，嚴重退化的地下含水層可以得到喘息之機。目前，已有超過40萬英畝的土地休耕，加州農民去年爲此承受了20億美元的損失。今年可能還會再增加60萬英畝的休耕面積。而扁桃仁畢竟還是一種健康的食物來源。

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.

在用水方面以小氣著稱的舊金山，生活用水依靠約塞米蒂的赫奇-赫奇水壩，這就讓眼下這則道義故事的情節愈發錯綜複雜起來。很多人認爲，淹沒那裏的山谷是加州歷史上對自然犯下的最嚴重罪行之一，這種說法最早出自如今已經被視爲聖人的約翰·繆爾(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.

並非所有城市在用水上都能厲行節約。水在大街上白白流着的情形司空見慣，我在薩克拉門託東部山麓的一處新住宅樓盤中就看到了——流量似乎要高過日趨乾涸的美熹德河。在一處叫做黑石莊園(Estates at Blackstone)的樓盤裏，水被不斷灌入一條綠化隔離帶，然後滿溢到路上。

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.

再看看那些富人社區——比如綠樹成蔭的波托拉谷(Portola Valley)，許多有環保意識的億萬富豪就住在這裏——人均用水量遠比洛杉磯地區的窮人社區康普頓要高得多。當費用不在考慮時，也就很難找到節水的動力了。

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.

然而無法迴避的事實是，水需求如此之高的農業，只產出了全州總產值的2%，僱傭了僅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.

公平與否暫且不論，聖華金谷的農民至今仍在增種扁桃樹，這似乎是有些不合時宜的。自2005年至今，這種作物的規模將近翻倍，而城市裏的人們卻在放棄他們的草坪，或是在淋浴頭的涓涓細流下匆匆洗澡。

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.

在加利福尼亞州每個郊區居民的後院建一個游泳池，在乾旱地區種植更多作物，擁有野生鮭魚（它們現在正飽受缺氧之苦），這些想法目前正在迅速消退。這裏現在只有加州水資源管理委員會主席馬庫斯女士所說的“珍惜每一滴水”，或鄰里之間互相監督，直到城市中的大多數人進行抵抗並要求在供水配給上做出改變。

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.

這場嚴重的乾旱所帶來的很可能是力量的轉變。城市中的“杏仁之恥”之歌（種植杏仁需要消耗大量水——譯註）告訴人們，種植該種作物需要的水分足以支持加州75%的人口。換句話說，如果堅果種植者切斷水泵，聖地亞哥或洛杉磯將不會有缺水問題。

“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.”

“想象一下如果有人說，‘讓我們就加州如何使用水源進行一次投票’，主要的農業利益相關方是最不希望見到這種情況的。”丹尼爾·比爾德說，比爾德是前休憩局(Bureau of Recreation)專員，同時是一位聯邦大壩修建的批評者。

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.

食品行業的變局時機已成熟。目前在中央山谷已經休耕的土地僅佔加州灌溉面積的不到5%。再增加5%，行業的大部分將能存活下來，並且更加精練。低價值、高水耗的作物會消失，這一點已經在發生。

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.

在沒有公衆投票的情況下，自由市場會成爲裁決者。在交易不受限制的情況下，大城市供水區完全有能力以任意價格購買農業用水。事實上，多年來它們已經做出了許多收購——儘管在複雜的用水合同和基礎設施制約下，將大量的水從一處輸送到另一處是有困難的。

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，將水變成一種自由市場商品的辦法還存在一個隱憂，那就是屆時權貴階層也許能盡情取用清潔的水，而貧窮的公共社區就無緣消受了。在中國，圍繞着可呼吸的空氣已經形成了一個階級體系。充足的用水會成爲又一個權貴的身份象徵嗎？

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.

農業不會將自己在權力金字塔尖的地位拱手讓出。農民們說，讓水從山間流向大海是暴殄天物。可能會角逐共和黨總統候選人提名的前惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard)高管卡莉·菲奧里納(Carly Fiorina)聲稱，旱災是“一場人爲”災難。她將此歸罪於阻撓大型水壩工程的環保人士。

“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.

“自由派會用他人的生命和生活作祭品，供奉自己的意識形態，加州就是一個經典案例，”她在幾周前參加格倫·貝克(Glenn Beck)的電臺節目時說。她說的那些精英人士，當然就包括羅納德·里根(Ronald Reagan)了，他在1973年作爲州長簽署了一份法案，旨在讓北加州的鰻河免遭水壩建設者的侵擾。

“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.”

“在這次旱災中，環境已然遭受重創，”加州公共政策研究所(Public Policy Institute of California)的水政策中心(Water Policy Center)主任艾倫·哈納克(Ellen Hanak)說。“我的感覺是，加州人對強勁的農業經濟和健康的環境都是非常支持的。”

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.

新建大型水庫工程——回到混凝土帝國——同樣受到質疑。沒有政府的津貼，成本將是最大的障礙。農民當然不會自掏腰包出資億萬美元，這些錢現在是由聯邦納稅人支付的。那麼，“新的”水源從哪裏來呢？在地下，地下井被前所未有地深挖，地下砂石含水層變得乾旱，地面沉降速度可觀。在頭頂上，天空同樣不可依靠。

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.

將海水脫鹽以便飲用是另一個選擇。聖地亞哥北部的卡爾斯巴德就正在建造一個大型的海水脫鹽工廠。澳大利亞在21世紀初的大幹旱時期也走過這條路。但此類工廠已被證實造價過高，他們其中的4個已經封存。花費數十億元卻沒有造出一滴純淨水。

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.

加州依然擁有取之不竭的創造力。3年前米特·羅姆尼(Mitt Romney)將這個州比作破產的希臘。保守派的專家大老對它大加嘲弄和鄙夷。如今的加州已經實現預算盈餘，去年的就業增長全國領先——遠超德克薩斯。

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.

也許這場旱災的確是對多年來建造綠洲文明所欠債務的一次清算。但它是可以解決的。“黃金之州”是一個發明，這裏的生活是與此相稱的。如果幹旱繼續下去，加州將比以往更加依賴一直在支撐它的東西——想象力。這東西是不嫌多的。