Global water bankruptcy
!! ?? !!
Spud’s actually found a real problem. Huzzah.
Of course Spud will never stumble over, let alone agree to, the known solution. Price water properly and farmers will stop using it to grow low value crops where the price is high. Reducing irrigation usage solves the entire problem.
But that would be neoliberal, using prices and markets to solve a problem, no?
Globe which is 71% covered in water about to run out of water, candidly
Plenty of water, Steve…..
Water that’s of the quality you want, when you want/need it…..not so much…
Then again…. That has been the state of Mother Nature since…. forever, really…
I live about a mile from one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world.
I’m still bombarded by propaganda about “saving water”. You’d think we lived in the Sahara from the attitude. Apparently if I save water, that water can be shipped to the poor Africans living in the Sahara who need it…
I’ve probably told you before but when I lived in NZ a Kiwi was discussing local water shortages. I suggested that all supplies be metered. He goggled at the very thought of it.
Even intelligent, well educated people can be taken aback if you suggest a market solution which they have never contemplated.
“You mean even houses?” “Why not? Our house at home has a meter.”
With some exceptions, all of NZ has perfectly adequate water supplies for domestic use though agricultural use for irrigation in drier areas can be an issue.Meters cost to install and to read, in areas with plentiful water why bother, just control wastage(a problem is some areas indeed) and control super high users like irrigation, and meters are a useless adjunct. I say this because I used to live in a area that introduced metering and separate charges, and costs went up even faster than before. A separate revenue stream created even more grifters tapping into it.
There’s loads of water, 97% of the fresh water on this planet is tied up at the poles. Now if only someone like Elon could figure out a way to get it ‘to market’…..
I watched a YouTube vid the other day about an American who shipped ice from the NE USA to Cuba. OK, he ended up bankrupt and spent time in a debtors prison but at least he tried….
I watched the same one. Did you get there via Thompson’s blog? The ice business was ruined by refrigeration. But he shipped ice from Boston to India and made a profit before that happened.
Yes, rk. I found Thompsonblog a couple of years ago via Small Dead Animals who do an ‘Oddments for the weekend’ post on Fridays. Always something interesting or to laugh at, but watching some of the trans shit on there is frightening…..
Our impending water crisis shows that we have to change the way we manage our lives, that we must learn to live with what we’ve got, and that we must recognise that there really is a limit to what we might have.
Translation. I have to be given complete control of all aspects of life globally and my economic reward needs to be commensurate with my unrivalled expertise.
Well, it falls from the sky round here. So we don’t really need a totally centrally-planned economy on this pretext.
So water on planet Earth is an infinitely renewable resource for the next two billion years or so, enjoy it while it lasts. There’s no possibility therefore of a global water crisis.
A 2026 UNU-INWEH report declares a state of “global water bankruptcy,” where humanity is living beyond its hydrological means. This crisis, far exceeding temporary shortages, involves irreversible depletion of water-related natural capital—wetlands, lakes, and aquifers—driven by excessive consumption and pollution, affecting billions through scarcity and conflict.
We’re not “living beyond our hydrological means”, there’s 1.4×10¹⁸ metric tonnes of water on Earth and it naturally recycles. Approx 200 million tonnes per person (granted most of it is briny water).
There are regional water shortages caused by cases like Iran. Population has exploded by x10 in a century and they’ve catastrophically mismanaged the aquifers because Allan wills it. Many such cases. Those are local issues, caused by local social, economic and political choices tho. In that part of the world, they’re blessed with many rivers and cheap solar power, it’s not beyond their means to keep the taps running. They just focused on the wrong things, such as trying to destroy Israel.
Just because something is infinitely renewable doesn;t mean we cannot run out of it. Dodos were infinitely renewable and we have run out of them.
Oh, FFS, Munchausen’s back
Don’t Forget COVID
Posted on March 14 2026
A week ago, I reportedthat I was feeling very fatigued and needed to take the weekend off.
A week on, I feel a bit better and now understand what I had last weekend. The fatigue, it turns out, was caused by Covid. It seems almost certain that I have now had my fourth out of this. I have not had a positive Covid test. This, however, is not unusual. Apparently, 38% of people with the latest variant never get a positive test, so its absence proves nothing.
From my perspective, the particularly worrying aspect of this variant, apart from the fatigue (which, as usual, was not fun), was that it affected some muscle control. Typing became hard for a few days, but more significantly, so did speaking.
Typing became hard for a few days, but more significantly, so did speaking.
A win, then.
Only temporary, sadly.
I’m beginning to understand that gain-of-function research.
Or it could be the early stages of some horrible, degenerating, life ending disease. Gods willing…
Very possible, thinking clearly but a break down in sending that to your tongue can be an early symptom of PD. Which is sad if turns out to be true. Oh dear, never mind.
Thing is, post-Covid syndrome is perfectly ordinary post-viral fatigue, absolutely ordinary, complete un-wierd. Lord Spud may well have had a short bout of flu, or rhinovirus, and he’s just had a bit of perfectly unextrordinary post-viral fatigue. He’s not an over-worked god, he’s just a very
naughtynormal human.Global water bankruptcy.
All water is LOCAL. Commie dick Murphy wants world government control of all water.
“Nice farm you have there. It would be a shame if you couldn’t get any water.”
In the USA, you do run into that anti-markets influence of preservation of the food producers.
We do anti-market stuff all the time – subsidies, production limits, etc. – and we also do things like maintain adequate water supplies to critical producers without hitting them with market prices during dry times.
We really don’t want the corn belt to go T’s-up during a dry spell when true water market prices might bring them to bankruptcy levels. Eating is . . . well . . . fun.
And production limits is the grand daddy of it all. Wickard v Filburn (1942) was the US Enabling Act, Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich for short, It created the Fascist State of America.
It’s not water bankruptcy, it’s a liquidity crisis.
Bravo! I would have upticked but apparently I made the comment….
another uptick
Update for the Code Monkey – it’s a Chrome issue, if I switch to Opera I can uptick quite happily (I’m running a VPN on Opera). I s’pose it might also be cookie-related.
No, I get the problem using Firefox on Linux. All cookies deleted on exit.
nope. Happens to me on Safari and Firefox.