Golfers Beware: ‘Brown is the New Green’

(This one’s for you, Andrew Horsfield!) The Pinehurst #2 golf course in North Carolina has cut its annual water use from 55 to 15 million gallons a year, heralding an era when brown will be the new green for golf enthusiasts. “We happen to think that, long term, water is going to be the biggest obstacle in the game of golf,” U.S. Golf Association Executive Director Mike Davis told the Washington Post. “It’s not going to be a question of cost. It’s a question of: Will you be able to get it?” In California, Romm reports, “prestigious golf courses have been shutting down in the face of the epic, warming-worsened drought.”