ASPEN — The plight of the Colorado River and the water crisis plaguing the West led a discussion Monday at the to a startling reality.
“It will rain again in California,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a climatologist at Stanford University. “We are not arguing there will be a drought forever in California. But we do have a new normal.”
This year, the festival made it a priority to tackle “wicked problems.” And a lengthy list of tough issues crystallized the first day of the week-long event at the Aspen Institute — from water and the economy to the Islamic State.
The conversations swayed between hope and pessimism and in a few cases served as a call to action.
“We in this country use more water per capita than any other place on the planet,” said Pat Mulroy, the former general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “And I think this is a transformational moment for all of us — not just the West. We need to knock it off. We need to get far more reasonable.”
Peter McBride, a Colorado conservationist and filmmaker, said a . “Most (of the) public have no clue when they turned their tap where it comes from,” he said. “If you look in seven states in the Southwest here, your water for the most part is coming from the Colorado River.”
The event, now in its 11th year, draws roughly 3,000 people, including leading thinkers from across the globe, to discussions on complex issues that seem far removed from this well-heeled mountain hamlet.
Earlier in the day, Karl Eikenberry, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, led a conversation on terrorism in the Middle East.
Eikenberry said the Islamic State “represents a danger to the extent that their ideology can spread to other countries and other regions.” But, he cautioned, President Barack Obama’s war on ISIS could prove problematic.
“For the United States to think that we can go in and, somehow inside of Iraq or Syria, that we can defeat ISIS, I don’t understand how we might actually get there,” Eikenberry said.
Instead, he advocated for a containment approach, not entanglement. “I’m very nervous about the United States getting ourselves now plunged into yet another Middle East war,” he said.
In a session on the economy, two experts presented competing views of the challenges faced by millennials, those age 18 to 34 who were hit hardest in the economic downturn.
“The kids are not all right,” said Steven Rattner, a Wall Street financier and leading economic analyst. “Millennials have very much taken it on the chin.”
He cited student debt, lower median wages, diminished savings rates and a drop in homeownership for this age group compared to prior generations as significant hurdles.
“History will tell you that people who start out behind, on average, never catch up,” he said.
Beth Ann Bovino, the chief U.S. economist for Standard & Poor’s ratings agency, took a more optimistic view, pointing to the rebounding economy and signals the millennials are starting to spend more.
“They were hit hard,” she said. “They got through school and expected doors were open and it was shut. … But I don’t think that is something they won’t be able to surmount.”
