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Golf Courses vs. The Environment
Major steps are needed to reduce the game’s footprint to acceptable levels
Southern California’s Coachella Valley, a “land of permanent drought,” is home to . Some of these manicured desert oases guzzle of water per day.
But the drying Colorado River and other regional water supply concerns are creating an overdue in the Coachella Valley golf community. The days of limitless water might be numbered.
Golf’s environmental problems are acute in California, but they’re national issues. Golf is a global sport, but the US is home to . It makes sense. Golf is the ultimate sprawling land use, and nobody sprawls like Americans.
If you put the nation’s golf courses together, they would larger than Delaware. And yet, the game’s future is not entirely secure.
These days, it’s getting harder to hide environmental injustices in plain sight. Many communities are running out of water, lacking green spaces, and in need of new housing land. Where these scarcities exist, golf courses are in peril.
For generations, the sport has more or less been given a free pass for excessive consumption. The wealthy folks who own land and make the…
