
Would you rip up your lawn for $6 a square foot? Welcome to drought-stricken California
CNN
The megadrought affecting the American West has been record-breaking, with no tangible relief in sight. It's forcing cities to crack down on lawn-watering, and paying residents to replace their lawns with drought-resistant plants.
"My plants are suffering," Jansen said. "The animals, coyotes, rattlesnakes; they are all out in droves. It's dry and unusually hot."
The signs of drought are everywhere here, from the shrinking lakes to the deathly drained color of trees and earth. Jansen decided to rip out her grass and put in arid plants.

More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.












