#FeelTheBern starts western wildfires, and urban ones

People cheer as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a rally at the Denver Convention Center, on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016, in Denver. (Photo: Evan Vucci/The Associated Press

As Common Dreams notes, Sanders drew 18,000 in Denver on Saturday night on his way to Nevada.

In Nevada?

This:

NEVADA: Bonanza HS is on FIRE for Bernie! 1,000s more waiting, hoping to get in. #FeelTheBern #WeNeedBiggerVenues!!! pic.twitter.com/odvm8vBtSF

— RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) February 14, 2016

And, these observations from Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada political coverage.
1. Clinton's nervous enough about Nevada to have cancelled a Florida appearance among other things.
2. Harry Reid, the man who got Dems to move up the Nevada caucus date because of its ethnic diversity, is upset about Clinton's lies about Nevada being "white" like Iowa and New Hampshire

And, the Nevada Democratic Party ain't Iowa's. It's pushing back hard against the Clintonite "white Nevada" claims.

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The urban wildfires?

Even as Rep. John Lewis has had to walk back his claim that "I didn't see Bernie Sanders" at any civil rights events, the mainstream black political establishment is being outflanked elsewhere. As that same Common Dreams piece notes:

Those coming out to challenge the idea that Clinton would be a better choice than Sanders included legendary artist and activists like Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte; former NAACP head Ben Jealous; prominent black intellectuals like Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, and Adolph Reed Jr.; prominent Ohio Democrat Nina Turner; both co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Reps. Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva; and Erica Garner, whose father Eric Garner became a household name for many black Americans after video footage showed him being choked to death by a police officer in New York in 2014.

 If you don't want to read, then listen:

And, keep reading below that.

Tea Party schadenfreude, dried out and warmed up

Arizona is of course a hotbed of illegal (and general) immigrant stereotyping, along with being near the top in birtherism, and home to one of our biggest political hypocrites, John McCain. Well Schmuck Talk Express and others better find a way to get one-third more water to their area. Ditto for Orange County denialists, as California is already the most "overdrawn" state by absolute water numbers as well as percentages.

The thumbnail is here.

All the details on how climate change will affect the Southwest are here (PDF).

Nothing short of cutting ag use by nearly 50 percent AND hiking prices by that much to push non-ag conservation will really help.

Going by value, the ag answer is simple - eliminate hay growing, at least the irrigated variety. Change rice to winter wheat followed by rapid-grow summer corn. Cut back on beans, which do OK as a dryland crop anyway.

The bottom-line question about water is not whether adaptation is difficult or expensive, compared to doing nothing. Rather, it should be compared to buying several trillion dollars worth of water over the next century; adaptation is a bargain that the region cannot afford to ignore. The implication for climate policy is similar: although doing something about greenhouse gas emissions is expensive, doing nothing would cost even more. Among the benefits of global emission reduction is a savings of hundreds of billions of dollars in the future cost of water, or the avoidance of water scarcity, in the five states of the Southwest.

Part of my solution?

Let's not try to "repair" Nevada's casino-based economy. If Federal job training includes moving people out of that state, with the nation's highest per-capita residential use, do it!

Second, find a way to undercut economic development corporations that don't adequately price water as part of their recruiting pitch.

That said, the authors wrote their study while ignoring the Colorado River Compact, and admit they did that as a simplifying measure. In reality, the "project" is even more difficult than they paint.

'New normal' on Colorado Plateau starts having results

As most environmentalists know, the "drought" in the Colorado River watershed is really closer to the basin's long-term normal. Now, the lack of water in the overappropriated, overdammed river is starting to have fallout.

Boulder City, Nev.,and other smaller communities south of Vegas are finding hydropower from Hoover Dam is harder to come by. At the same time, they're finding that their current supplemental supplier is too expensive.

Of course, the real story is the explosive growth of Boulder City, Laughlin and other cities that are in the middle of a freaking desert! The city's use of dam power has dropped from 80 percent to 50 percent in the last 15 years.

And so, you white folks retirees slumming at small-town casino cities are getting hoist by your own capitalist petard.

Once again, I quote Ed Abbey: "The desert always wins."

Retire in Mississippi, where there's water, and hit one of the oceanfront floating casinos if you have to. (And, get more schadenfreude from more Class 4-5 hurricanes, maybe.)

Hispanic GOP not worried about AZ law?

Why? Nevada Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval says his kids don't look Hispanic, so he doesn't worry about them visiting Arizona.

Shame on Univision for being cowardly enough to not release the video of this.

The future of California will only come up dryland roses

Don’t expect new drought-related restrictions on development to be just a passing fancy.

Assuming everything is correct about how climate change is going to affect the Desert Southwest, water in southern California will get even tighter in the future. And, in neighboring Arizona and Nevada, too.

Eventually, either the federal government will take the voluntary lead in renegotiating the Colorado River Compact, or else one state is going to sue.

In all likelihood, it would be California suing to try to force the other two states of the Lower Colorado Basin to implement similar governing restrictions on development.

More moronity from Adam Nagourney

Sorry, AdNags, but contrary to your claim, Mormons did not found Nevada. The miners of the Comstock Lode did.