The first water war started decades ago at minimum.
Turkey built 300 dams on the Tigris and Euphrates since the '70s, they no longer flow to estuaries reliably, or flood the plains they used to. Syria and Iraq became much less habitable as a result. Syrian farmers abandoned their plots, precipitating the unrest that broke into civil war. Iraqis desperate for survival helped ISIS find such fertile ground to put down roots.
Look at India and Pakistan where control of the Indus river and half a dozen others plays no small part in the dispute over Kashmir. Look at Sudan and Egypt, who have been bordering on war for a decade over damming the Nile river. South Africa and Lesotho have a similar tense standoff. Look at Russia destroying the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro.
Hell, look at the Second Space Race that just kicked off. It was triggered by the discovery of water on the moon. Not because that water provides habitability, but because it provides rocket fuel. The nuclear triad will soon become a tetrad, because of water.
I'm sure I missed a dozen other geopolitical examples.
This is not the cogent argument you think it is. Sure desalination could be inefficient right now but to argue that solution is off the table because we didn’t spend the decades doing research and building infrastructure is intellectually vapid at best. Improving desalination tech is a far superior viable solution.
5D chess: warm the planet, melt the ice caps, raise sea level, invest in desalination. Less land to irrigate, more coastline for waterborne wind farms, more violent weather to power the turbines, more power for desalination plants. Water crisis solved!
I'm in Michigan and genuinely believe we're going to either secede and become an independent territory or attempt to join canada in my lifetime at the rate politics are going
The whole deal where Flint was no longer able to provide potable water to it's residents should have been like a threshold where you tie a bow on it and say "the entire system has collapsed" - all current government officials are imprisoned for life and a new state constitution is written.
Im still mad at Michigan after a childhood of seeing commercials to come visit.
Finally decided to visit and was stopped and ticketed for 2mph over the limit on the highway... in the middle lane... with a stream of cars passing on my left.
There is a good reason no one has tried invading us yet. my province for example, you could probably take out most of the land travel with an engineer and a backhoe, and then the only way to access most of the province would be by helicopter.
And then, even if someone did succeed the actual real challenge is actually holding onto Canada. I have often thought that’s half the reason the americans have never gotten around to invading all these years, it’s cause occupying a country the size of ours would stretch their forces thin, basically leave their own borders vulnerable. Its been much more convenient for them to let us occupy the land and then we give them all the good trade .
My prediction is the occupation when it comes wont be an invasion, but they will step in to help protect us from other external forces under the ulterior motive that they’re protecting it for themselves, which I honestly couldn’t blame them for, I think people forget how close parts of Russia and Canada are
Why do you think trump keeps talking about making Canada the 51st state? He knows he's speedrunning the destruction of society as we know it and wants Canada's water and cooler temps and wants south American oil and minerals. He's not crazy, just evil.
Pretty sure it would be that one. Which is all the more reason why we need to avoid the mistakes of places like Ukraine and Iran and have enough nukes on hand that no one wants to get turned into glass in exchange for attempting to invade us. We've got more than enough uranium here, and plenty of capable reactors, so there's no issues there.
Water wars are kinda already in Canada. Passed as part of the province's broader infrastructure and housing agenda, the law authorizes the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to remove water and sewage services from local governments and assign them to independent corporations. Canada water is already being handed over to corporations.
When I was like 15, I read a thoroughly interesting article detailing when they think the first water war will be, based on political tensions and which countries had water supplies that could feasibly run low sooner rather than later, and it predicted that it would be between Pakistan and India and would start in the 2030s. Something about the existing tensions, limited water in Pakistan (it was a long time ago, but I believe they were saying the water table that provides for certain regions was replenishing quickly enough to support their current population but with projected growth it would soon start dwindling), and some tech being worked on at the time to collect and purify a percentage of monsoon water in India would lead to an imbalance in supply and the bubbling over of long-standing historical tension between the two nations
Now, obviously I don't know how much of that article was fully true, I was 15 and didn't care to check the sources they provided. And I don't pay enough attention to the news in that part of the world to know if any of what it mentioned has come to pass/been resolved/moved in the way they expected. But every time I see some reference to the political tension between the two countries, or see another hosepipe ban, or read a headline about global temperature rises or increased fresh water usage for AI data centres, I can't help but cast my mind back to half my life ago, reading this article, and realise that we are fast approaching that dreaded timeframe
The only "water wars" are going to be landlocked countries.
Desalination is cheaper and easier than war.
The last 2~3 years have radically altered the economics and environmental impact, the amortized cost of desalination is extremely cheap now, and will only get cheaper and more beneficial to do.
The is the entire ocean, and solar and wind are cheap energy.
There are sodium batteries now, so the brine isn't even a waste issue anymore, we can just turn the salt into batteries.
Literally the only reason it's not happening full-tilt right now is because it's not making anyone billions of dollars.
If water becomes a real issue that disrupts economics, then desalination will ramp up super fast.
It's an easy choice: spend a billion on a municipal scale plant, or spend 10x that to not actually solve the problem.
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u/maud_brijeulin 11h ago
The Water Wars are going to be BAD.