11 Western Democrats object to Feinstein water delivery plan — Michael Doyle, McClatchy Newspapers

“The escalating fight pits region against region, and some of California’s most influential politicians against one another. It’s already splitting fragile alliances among California water users, who in recent years have inched toward comity.”

Is global warming to blame? Who knows. The entire southwest of the US has been going through unprecedented droughts and water shortages for nearly a decade now. It could be that slightly increased prevailing temperatures have contributed a difficult duck to a dangerous row. It could be that precipitation would have dropped off in California even without an increase in worldwide temperatures. It could even be the case that global temperatures actually haven’t risen much yet. One thing is for sure: this is a template for the conflict we’re going to see even in western countries when resource scarcity and unpredictability does ramp up in our climate irked future. These days you don’t have to look around too much to spot quite a collection of those templates.