s you know, there is a huge worldwide water crisis. My spiritual guru has been warning us about this for decades. He said the wars of tomorrow will be fought over water, not oil. The irony is that some parts of the world have too much water while others have almost none. The Middle East has almost no rainfall and the rivers there are drying up. American rivers are running dryer too, but we are not having a life or death crisis yet and probably won’t for another twenty years. Israel is smart and has desalinization planets. They create their own water and use it with very sophisticated irrigation systems. Israel has the most water efficient agriculture in the world. Meanwhile in India, parts of North India are very dry while in Kerela it rains eight months a year and rains hard. So, what should India do?
India and its wealth of water
India has tons of water. Unfortunately, India’s water is not where the agriculture is. Kerela gets more rainfall than any other part of India. But, they are stuck in the Southwest of India while the agriculture is inland, with much of it far up North. If India could figure out how to store all of the water that falls in Kerela, they could sell it to the Middle East or pipe it up to other parts of India for a fee. Creating a pipeline is expensive, and India would probably take decades to finish such a project. Neighboring China can put up a 50 story building in weeks. Perhaps India should hire China to teach them how to get things done quickly.
China and India — water wars
India has several rivers running near the Tibet border in Assam and Kashmir among other places. It is my hunch that one day India and China will go to war over these rivers. A war would be devastating to the world. I hope they find a better way to deal with their water shortages.
California
California gets more rainfall than Arizona, yet Arizona knows how to store its water in underground tanks. California has an aqueduct system spanning the entire state to get water from one part of the state to the other. But, the source of much of our water is the Colorado river which deposits water into Lake Meade which is low this year. Hmmm. If it rains in Colorado, the water comes to California farms. But, if it rains in California, the water just seeps into the earth and is lost. California needs to get rid of its lawns, and invest more in the type of irrigation technology that Israel has. That way we can grow the same plants using only 15% of the water (more or less.) Learning the ropes of desalinization would be another smart step so that California will be ready for the future. California’s population keeps growing fast as immigrants love California as their initial landing point and people from other states love to come here. But, how many people will continue to come if there is no water? We’ll have to find out. Perhaps only the rich will be able to live here one day and the others will flee to Texas where it rains constantly.
Egypt
Egypt has 82 million human souls, but only one source of water — The Nile. When the Nile dries up, or when the Sudanese hog it all to themselves, they will have a war. However, there will not be any water for the locals in the mean time. Many scientists feel that many rivers will completely dry up. So, how are 82 million of some of the world’s poorest folks supposed to survive under these conditions? Will they just die out? It will be very unpleasant to find out. My prediction is that Egypt will become a barren wasteland one day. Only the pyramids and a few of the mummies will survive.
The rest of the world?
The other countries will also have water issues. Water will be an issue of world concern and people will be fighting over it and killing over it. Countries might redefine their borders based on water rights rather than on linguistic or political reasons. Or, we might have a world government that governs how water is shared. It will be interesting to find out how our water catastrophe is worked out, but probably not pleasant!