Good-Bye Flush, Hello Nukes

El Niño brought far too little moisture to the south of California — where all the people live. We need to start thinking about what drought, as climate change makes it worse, will mean to us on a day-to-day basis.

Flush toilets will need to go. We can get back to outhouses or maybe the compost toilets used on boats. We use the toilet maybe four times a day for both functions. Think of 39 million people using that amount of water daily and what we will be forced to do to save that precious water. For a new, low-flush 1.5-gallon tank toilet, that’s 234 million gallons per day, or 7 billion, 409 million gallons per month saved with outhouses or compost toilets.

Diablo Canyon will soon make and send desalinated water to local cities. The carbon-free electricity Diablo Canyon contributes to desalination does not cause more climate change and drought. We need more nuclear plants contributing to making more desalinated water for our state, and we need to build them quickly. Lake Lopez, San Luis Obispo supervisors say, will be dry in two years.