The Environmentalists' Solution

Lake Oroville resembles a puddle (NBC news)

All that needs to be said about California's drought problem (or for that matter its cost of living, unemployment, and poverty problems) [bold added]:

Israel, for example, has built large desalination plants that helped the country, which is 60% desert, cope with a seven-year drought between 2004 and 2010 and the driest winter on record in 2013-14. In California, desalination is harder because electricity is costly, thanks to a renewable-energy programme. And green rules make building anything slow.

If the drought were truly a life-or-death crisis, desalination and nuclear energy plants to power them would be under construction today, as well as reservoirs and pipelines to water-rich states. Instead, state and local governments are imposing cutbacks, fines, and other penalties.

The environmentalists' solution: always reduce demand and never increase supply.

[Update - 4/11/15: "A $1 billion desalination plant to supply booming San Diego County is under construction here and due to open as early as November." OK, perhaps there are islands of sanity in our fair state.]