Tag Archives: water shortages

2014: The Last Good Year

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For what we are about to lose, Dear Lord, we thank You. (Photo by Terren in Virginia/Flickr)

For what we are about to lose, Dear Lord, we thank You. (Photo by Terren in Virginia/Flickr)

Thanksgiving is coming, and Christmas and Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and New Year’s, and we should make the best of them. These are the good old days, and we should celebrate them well, because we are probably not going to see their like again. Gas is cheaper than it was, and we should go to see the relatives this year, because next year will be different. Food is a little more expensive than it was, yet we should eat hearty nevertheless, because next year will be different. We still have plenty of water (if we don’t live in California, or Brazil, or North Africa, or any of a multitude of other places being seared by implacable drought) but, because of changing climate and advancing pollution, next year could be different. The lights are still on, but the aging grid is creaking and groaning with the effort of meeting our burgeoning demand, and next year could well be different. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. Continue reading →

Renowned Scientist Says Global Collapse “Likely”

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(graph by net_efekt/flickr)

(graph by net_efekt/flickr)

According to a paper appearing in the March Proceedings of the Royal Society, “Now, for the first time, a global collapse [of civilization] appears likely.” The paper makes, in a scholarly, peer-reviewed manner, many of the same points about the existential threats that I made in my book Brace for Impact:Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age. According to Paul R. Ehrlich’s paper, titled “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?” the threats include  toxic pollution, land degradation, scarcity of water and oil, plagues, resource wars (perhaps nuclear), over-consumption, overpopulation and the overarching threat multiplier, climate change.

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Water Scarcer, Tensions Higher in the Heartland

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As more and more of the breadbasket looks like this, tensions are rising and lawsuits are flying. (Photo by Terry Shuck/Flikr)

As more and more of the breadbasket looks like this, tensions are rising and lawsuits are flying. (Photo by Terry Shuck/Flikr)

According to government assessments released in the past week, both near- and long-term prospects are worsening for the drought-stricken Plains and Southwest states. As hope for relief fades, tensions are rising among towns, farms and states that are acting out the Tragedy of the Commons: as their water supply shrinks, they go after their neighbor’s.

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1,000 Risk Experts say: Brace for Impact

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Superstorms, such as this 2012 typhoon photographed from the International Space Station, are according to risk analysts the new normal.

Superstorms, such as this 2012 typhoon photographed from the International Space Station, are according to risk analysts the new normal.

More than 1,000 experts on risk, consulted by the World Economic Forum for an upcoming annual meeting, agree that a perfect storm of rising risk, primarily driven by global climate change, and declining economic resilience pose mortal threats to governments, businesses and society in the near future. Continue reading →

Running Out of Water and Time

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Drought-stricken corn under a hot and rainless Iowa sky last week. Two more studies say, things are going to get worse. (Photo by USDA)

The train is coming at 80 miles per hour. Children are playing on the railroad tracks, oblivious. The train is closer now. The children are not aware of it. You can hear the train, people are yelling at you that it is coming, and you, my friend, stand there near the children, not moving, thinking of other things. Thus climate change bears down on us, thus peak oil comes closer at 80 miles per hour, and thus does our water run out. Two shouted warnings about water just this week. Continue reading →

A Town in Texas: This is How it Ends

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Once a thriving recreational lake and source of water for the town of Robert Lee, Texas, the E.V. Spence Reservoir is now a brackish puddle.

They are starting to think seriously about abandoning the west Texas town of Robert Lee because it is about to run out of water. Too strong? Okay, to be exact, some of Robert Lee’s 1,049 people have moved away, and more are thinking about leaving before the water runs out. Will that create a trend that gives us our first American town to be abandoned because of climate change? (I’m still betting on Las Vegas as the first city.) Will America’s first recognized climate refugees be Rick Perry’s Texans? We’ll report. You decide.

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Water Scientists say Brace for Impact

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A cow’s carcass in Northern Kenya, photographed last week, testifies to the reality of what happens when the water runs out. And it is running out. (Photo courtesy CIAT The International Center for Tropical Agriculture/Flickr)

The burgeoning world population, already grown far beyond the numbers the planet can sustain, is increasing its consumption of water twice as fast as it is growing, according to the World Resources Institute. In a world already profoundly short of clean water, where the number of people is ratcheting upward past seven billion, in which global climate change is spreading drought across vast areas, this means, in the words of a WRI expert, that “we have a significant challenge on our hands.” To translate from the scientese: her hair’s on fire and she’s screaming “Brace for Impact!”

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Saudis Try Drinking Oil, Burning Water, Eating Money

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An oil-and-water cocktail is hard to burn and nasty to drink, but the Saudis, running out of both, are drinking hard and burning bright. (Photo by Yortw/Flickr)

While the industrialized world approaches the brink of peak oil — the point at which supply can no longer, ever, meet demand — the supplier of much of that oil, Saudi Arabia, is teetering on the brink of peak water. With increasing desperation, the kingdom is juggling the rising, competing demands for its limited water supplies, and trying to repeal the iron laws of supply and demand.

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A New Tragedy of the Commons: Water Banks

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The tragedy of the commons is that herdsmen will overgraze a common pasture unless constrained. The same, it seems, applies to water. (Photo by Srinivasa Krishna/Flickr)

If you liked what investment bankers and hedge-fund managers did to our economy in recent years, you’re going to love what water banks are doing to our ecosystem. The same, time-tested methods are in play: unleash unrestrained greed on a commodity that everyone needs in order to make obscene profits from it while destroying it. This new chapter in the Tragedy of the Commons sounds perfectly reasonable, with respectable water banks working to smooth out the vagaries of nature. But let’s try calling it by its proper name: hoarding. Continue reading →

How the World Ends: Not a Bang, a Brown Lawn

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Lake Ray Hubbard, a reservoir of drinking water for the city of Dallas, Texas. Anybody worried yet? (Photo by Terry Shuck/Flickr)

According to last Sunday’s Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram, “Lee Weaver knew he was facing a serious problem when he watched his lawn sprinkler dwindle to a meager squirt at his home south of Fort Worth.” This tells us pretty much all we need to know about Mr. Weaver, who in the midst of one of the worst droughts in the history of Texas was watering his lawn. It tells us a lot about journalism, too, when writers about this frightening, life-threatening and prophetic event think the best way to grab our attention in graf #3 is to highlight the agony of the brown lawn. And that says an awful lot about us.

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