SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Recognizing that global collaboration is imperative for solving the world's greatest challenges has been a powerful paradigm shift in recent years. This global focus is important to create impact at scale, and also helps when solving pressing challenges within our own local communities; sometimes the solution is right at our fingertips, and other times, the idea is budding across a distant border.
Launched at the Second Annual Exponential Impact Day on June 15th, the 2015 Singularity University Impact Challenge is a new impact competition in collaboration with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. The goal? To help alleviate the severe drought in California by leveraging new and exponentially growing technologies.
"Water is certainly one of our Global Grand Challenges," says Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, chief impact officer at Singularity University. "And if you look at our mission, it embodies what we want to do as an organization, which is to leverage exponential technology to solve a Global Grand Challenge. What better way to do that than to solve the biggest problem in California right now and one that is in our backyard?"
Golden Opportunity, Soylentils: What's your technological magic bullet solve a problem caused by generations of water policy failures?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gravis on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:43AM
the drought in California is not the actual problem. the actual problem is greed. you can move agriculture to areas with sustainable water supplies but they dont because there is more profit in staying in that climate and pumping in water that heavily subsidized by the state. take away the water subsidies and agriculture will leave town overnight. as a result there will be plenty of water for everyone else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:09AM
move agriculture
To where? The Great Plains where they're pumping their aquifer dry?
...and where there is water, they are already growing other crops there.
You also don't appreciate the amount of sunlight that Cali gets or the long growing seasons.
Easy stuff on water use:
1) Outlaw grass permanently in SoCal.
Astroturf if you need green; native plants or shredded tree bark or pebbles (xeriscaping) only.
N.B. Watering plants during the heat of the day is currently forbidden for residential consumers.
Do farmers have the same limitation?
2) Forbid water-intensive crops (annuals) like cotton and rice.
Only allow those again after^W if the drought breaks.
...and stop using acre-foot as a unit for water measurement.
The summary doesn't make me want to go read the story.
Sounds like eggheads with double-talk.
The problem is defined simply: People are ignoring the fact that they live in a desert.
Any solution has to start there.
-- gewg_