Ed Ballard
speaker
163 appearances
7 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 30 Aug
Ed Ballard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I definitely think in Europe this summer has been different, both in the sheer number of heat records that have been broken, the success of heat waves we've seen, and also I think people are starting to see this as climate change having an impact on their own lives in the in perhaps a way they weren't a few years ago.
People's lives are being disrupted in new and sort of startling ways.
Like everybody is getting an air condition if they didn't already have one.
We're just figuring out all the different ways in which our homes
our infrastructure are just not equipped for the kind of conditions that we're seeing now.
I mean, and just in general, it feels like the future has arrived and we were expecting it to arrive at a more convenient moment.
Yeah, that's right.
This problem was sort of there right from the start on the Colorado River.
Even at the beginning there was more water accounted for in the plan than the Colorado regularly supplied.
And that situation has become more and more acute, basically because snowfall over the Rockies has diminished and of course water consumption has gone up, especially in these fast growing cities of the southwest.
And now we're coming to the all-at-once part where
Where the two huge reservoirs that three lower basin states depend on, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, they're not so far above the level where they won't be able to generate hydropower.
And below that level, where they won't be able to actually discharge water on demand at all.
And that's why it's these lower basin states, which are Arizona, California, and Nevada, they're the states that can have cuts imposed on them by a federal authority in a way.
That doesn't apply to the upper basin state.
And now we're seeing all of these sort of long-term structural challenges are reaching an acute point where it's quite possible that we'll get to a point where those dams won't be able to discharge water on demand.
And this whole intricate system that's been run for decades for apportioning this sort of priceless reserve of water from the
Colorado Rockies just won't exist anymore.
You won't be able to have water on demand.
And then the scary prospect is there'll be some sort of chaotic process for deciding who gets water.
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