California's Dustbowl

ENVIRONMENT - The photo on the right is a farm in California that has been put up for sale. Its just one of thousands of farms that are now facing desertification. California's drought is now in its 5th year and farmers are becoming desperate as California increasingly starts to look like a dustbowl from the 1930s.

Climate change will effect farmers most of all and in this case California farmers are getting an early taste of it as their climate becomes more like the Mojave Desert. In this case the desert is getting bigger every year and there's little farmers can do about it. There isn't any water. Wells have gone dry and its not worth it to truck fresh water in from Canada (the only place in North America with an abundance of fresh water usable for drinking/agriculture).

There are water pipes for bringing water in from northern California, but they're old, rusty, falling apart and can't deal with the sheer bulk demand that farmers are facing as the Mojave Desert spreads. There simply isn't enough water to do the job. Those farms that can afford to import water are suffering hugely because water now accounts for 30% of the operating costs and it gets worse every year.

California's Central Valley is already one of the poorest regions in the United States and if weather patterns don't change soon it will become a whole region of ghost towns as farmers leave to find work and the local economy collapses.

California's once snowpacked mountains are also feeling the heat. None of the ice caps remain. Long dry spells have been killing off the trees, causing the treeline to move an average of 213 feet up the mountain (according to a 2008 UC Irvine study).