I worry that the gears of capitalism will refuse to stop turning even as we face significant mortality as a result of dehydration, because our biggest and most profitable industries rely on a mindboggling quantity of fresh water.
You can cover your ears and ignore physics all you want. If you take out more water from an ecosystem than what is coming in, eventually you run out.
That's fine, people will move elsewhere. Unless the water is literally disappearing from the planet.
People forced to migrate due to fresh water scarcity will migrate to where fresh water can be found, which is likely where other people already are, increasing pressure on the increasingly scarce water and other resources in that area, driving conflict, disease, famine, further migration into increasingly stressed areas and leading to social and ecological collapse across the board.
Access to reliable fresh water is foundational to stable society.
So no, water will not run out, it will simply cost more to use.
Every natural resource is under strain. Every animal and plant not serving as a revenue center for some rich prick is be pushed into extinction.
But for some reason we need to grow the idiot herd, because elon needs more...
Maybe if we didn't have 1 person with more wealth than 1/2 of the US population, we wouldn't have a problem paying for old people to age in relative comfort...
In a way, this is quintessential human behavior. Animals faced with shortages tend to die off until their population size matches the available resources. Humans have invented ways to postpone this fate, manipulating our environment in order to sustain a growing population.
So it’s not “just” infrastructure mismanagement. Unsustainable living is practically ingrained into human nature.
The challenge will be whether we can voluntarily reduce our population size or consumption to match the available resources, or whether we’ll have that reduction forced upon us.
Are you suggesting people are not entitled to live on land they own and should be forced to relocate? Since you've made their land worthless, how are they paying for this new place to live?
I heard a water district manager for a southwestern US city once say: "it's easier to move water than people." What if we adapted your statement for what the law actually allows?
> A whole lot of it is water being in stupid places feeling entitled to continue being in a place without the people nearby to drink it.
This implies we should move water to where people need it which is both legal and reflects reality even if it sounds very silly. Physics is even on our side here: water is deposited as snow on mountains where there are few people. It flows downward under the force of gravity to where people actually live. It's a pretty nice natural system to take advantage of!
The details here matter a lot: should we socialize the costs of moving water among people who do not directly need that water? Should people in Seattle pay for people in Yakima to get water? Irrigating dry unpopulated areas is a great way to produce food that is uneconomical to produce in or near cities!
Water management is a complex problem since it's needed for sustaining not just people, but the food people eat. There's no easy switch to flip here and just solve the thing.
Yes.
Or more specifically, owning a piece of land somewhere doesn't entitle you to water and resources from somewhere else. Particularly new development in underresourced areas shouldn't be permitted. But resources ought to be priced inaccessibly high for places where those resources don't exist and certain methods of delivering resources to those places should be prevented.
You want to live in the desert? Fine if you can figure it out. But you're not entitled to the rest of the world delivering food and water to you at unfairly low prices just because you want to live there.
and someone then said "future Wars will be fought for water"
Of course, most wars are highly irrational...
In the future we will do away with outdated concepts like reservoirs and water towers and simply use prompts to access all of our natural resources.
Simple concept does not mean simple execution, once you start regulating things it's easy to get it wrong, but the ideas are there and are not exactly novel.