Following up on last week’s post, where I alienated all of our Southern Nevada readers by refusing to provide them with adequate water supplies, John Judis writes [$] in The New Republic today about a new study on the fate of the Colorado Basin.
There are two main reasons for the crisis: one, the massive influx of people to the American Southwest over the past few decades, and two, global warming, which is reducing snowpack and evaporating some of the water that remains. Judis concludes:
The report predictably recommends a “comprehensive, action-oriented study of Colorado River region urban water practices and changing patterns of demand.” That’s what one would expect from academics. But one cannot read the report without imagining a darker scenario–one in which desert cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, which were built largely for tourism and leisure, will eventually go the way of the gas-guzzling Concorde. They will be victims of capitalism’s unsuccessful attempt to subdue nature, while older cities like Cleveland–once termed “the mistake by the lake”–may have the last laugh.
The study is here.
Nah, they’ll figure out some way to screw Michigan and start siphoning off the Great Lakes to feed the desert. Will be a massive cluster f*** on the order of what the Russians did to the Caspian and Aral Seas, but what you gonna do?