Category Archives: Water

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A common misconception: the wars of the future will be fought, not with water, but over it. There will be a lot of them. Soon. (Photo by Radio Free Asia)

The stresses that are rearranging the world’s maps, uprooting populations, destroying nation-states and destabilizing the planet have less to do with extreme “-isms,” geopolitics, hegemony or nuclear armaments than they do with water. Overuse, misuse and pollution of water, combined with spreading drought, a consequence of climate change, are imposing on larger and larger regions of the world an inexorable sequence of deprivation leading to desperation, then disintegration. About halfway through the progression, as desperation begins to bring on disintegration, the violence begins, and from then on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride hard. Continue reading →

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The Lake formerly known as Laguna, now in the Great California Desert, where a new — and very short — era of lawn watering, car washing and almond growing has just begun. (Photo by docentjoyce/Flickr)

In the face of a drought whose implications have moved from awesome to cataclysmic, California Governor Jerry Brown has proclaimed a “new era” of water conservation in his afflicted state, an era in which, he said, ‘The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day, that’s going to be a thing of the past.” He proclaimed a Draconian cut of 25% (wait — a quarter? That’s all?) in the use of water for watering lawns and washing cars (wait — they’re still watering lawns and washing cars?). If all the myriad water boards and commissions ever figure out how to implement and enforce these limitations, and they work as intended, they will cut 25% of 20% of the state’s water usage. The 80% that agriculture uses was not included.

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When the last factory trawler such as this one returns empty from an empty sea, just go ahead and tun off the lights. (Photo by Dennis Jarvis/Flickr)

The headline in the Washington Post on June 3: “The End of Fish.” Not even the usual weasel question mark at the end to avoid the declarative statement. In mid-June the Global Ocean Commission stated its conclusion that the world’s oceans are on the brink of collapse, offering a Pollyanna-ish eight-point plan for their complete recovery (Step One: Every country in the United Nations agrees to stop plundering the oceans for profit and start working for their recovery. Just give us a call when you’ve done that, and we’ll move on to Step Two.)  In late June, Quartz detailed the $27 billion in subsidies from the world’s richest countries to the largest, nost destructive fleets of deep-ocean trawlers, without which they could not sail. The headline on the July 11 cover story in Newsweek: “The Disaster We’ve Wrought on the World’s Oceans May Be Irrevocable.” Continue reading →

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Lake Meade, water source for Las Vegas and Phoenix, shows its “bathtub ring” marking where its water used to be. It is less than half full and dropping fast. (Wikimedia photo)

The title of first American city to be abandoned for lack of water will be awarded in the next decade or so, and it’s hard to decide whether to bet on Las Vegas or Phoenix. It could be a tie. Those among us who still like our stories to end with a moral are rooting for Vegas, whose demise would round out a lovely wages-of-sin, Sodom-and-Gomorrah kind of fable. Phoenix seems less blameworthy, but only if you think what’s about to happen is retribution for sin. If you lean more toward the inevitable-consequences-of-stupidity theory, then there’s not much to differentiate between Dumb Phoenix and Dumber Las Vegas. Continue reading →

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Ocean acidification is taking a heavy toll on the world’s shellfish, especially in the Pacific Northwest.

Climate change is not the only threat posed by the exploitation and pollution of the natural world, it is not even necessarily the one that’s going to bring the industrial world down. Many afflictions are competing for that distinction, and one of them — ocean acidification — has a good shot. The waters of the Pacific Northwest off Washington State and the Canadian province of British Columbia have become so acidic that the once-thriving shellfish industry there is on life support. Since nothing whatsoever is being done about the root cause of the problem — emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels — it is not reasonable to expect a solution. Continue reading →

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Bridge Over Vanished Water: A dry riverbed in the Al-Ahwaz region of Iran, site of the country’s worst drinking water crisis, 90 per cent of Iran’s oil production, one third of the country’s water and the most polluted city on earth. (Ahwaz News Agency photo)

Iran, the country that American sparrow hawks have pencilled in for our next invasion and 20-year war, is beginning to die of thirst. Its government is often fighting pitched battles with citizens desperate for water, and is preparing water-rationing plans for its biggest cities including Tehran. Its new president, Hassan Rouhani, has identified water as a national security issue and has promised his people to bring it back. Nice trick if he can do it.

Major rivers in Iran (think the Colorado River in just a few more years) have gone completely dry, as have large lakes such as Hamoun, near Afghanistan, and Urmia, once one of the world’s largest salt lakes (think California’s Salton Sea). Wasteful irrigation (they simply spray water into the hot, dry air), a profusion of dams trying to keep up with demand for electricity, and a burgeoning population sinking wells everywhere for drinking water, have all contributed to a dramatic depletion of available surface water. Continue reading →

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With distressing and increasing frequency, the streets of Norfolk, VA resemble the canals of Venice. The water is rising all along the US East Coast. (Photo by telmnstr/Flickr)

The New York Times seems to be suffering from multiple personality disorder. Last year, the number of stories it published that mentioned climate change or global warming dropped 40 per cent from 2012, this in the year the the paper closed its environment desk (nothing to see here), shut down its Green blog (nothing left to say here), reassigned its top environment reporters (nothing to do here), and gave a disproportionate amount of ink to climate-change deniers. Yet it remains capable of publishing, as it did this week, a hair-raising summary of the dangers this country is ignoring as climate change bears down upon it. “The Flood Next Time,” by Justin Gillis, is a clarion call to panic for anyone living near the Atlantic Ocean on America’s East Coast. Continue reading →

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With thirsty oil rigs spearing the sky behind it, a water truck makes its run in Barnhart Texas,

Barnhart, Texas, a crossroads village 250 miles southwest of Dallas, is living the dream. It was barely hanging on to a sleepy, sunbaked existence when fracking came to the area two years ago. As drill rigs sprouted like Jack’s beanstalks in every direction and oilfield workers swarmed in RV suburbs, the town boomed, and some property owners in the area landed rich leases. “Boom Times for a Tiny Texas Town,” exulted the Wall Street Journal. Last month, the entire town ran out of water. Bust.

Barnhart, Texas, is now living the nightmare. Continue reading →

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After the well goes dry, there’s nothing much to do but talk about how much you miss the water…..(Photo by TREEAID/Flickr)

When the New York Times, the US Geological Survey and the United Nations declare a crisis in the same week — the same crisis — it just might be that we have a problem. The one that the newspaper, the agency and the international organization were all worried about last week: the world is running out of water. It’s a situation that resembles the impending shortages of oil — as the supplies dwindle, the pumps run faster. Continue reading →