Parched Future

September 19, 2019 7:28 AM

250 million people rely on the Nile for water that may not exist by 2080
posted by Etrigan (6 comments total)

170 million people.

Climate Migration is a mind boggling problem to solve.
posted by nikaspark at 8:35 AM on September 19, 2019

Same for the Colorado River
posted by fshgrl at 12:19 PM on September 19, 2019

I'm not sure climate migration is a problem to be solved as much as it is a situation that will have to be dealt with.
posted by hippybear at 6:45 PM on September 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

Look at the hissyfit the USA is throwing over the arrival of a few hundred thousand South American refugees – people who evidently integrate well into US society and upon whose labour the USA depends; whose arrival will not burden America's ability to feed, clothe, or house its present population in the least.

Now imagine a hundred times that number desperately trying to find a place for their children before they die of heatstroke or dehydration, and not just at the borders of the USA but at the borders of countries losing the ability to look after their present population. Those countries are going to use barbed wire and watchtowers with machine guns to protect what they have, and wealthier second-line countries will absolutely be supporting their actions. I don't think there's any historical parallel to the inevitable enormity of this.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:38 PM on September 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

And yet people will go on, business as usual, let's grab that cheap flight, dig more coal, the store's a mile away of course I'm driving, let's have a/nother kid, I deserve this new gadget even though my old one works fine, and so on. If you are not actively curtailing your first world carbon-producing activities, you are part of the problem.
posted by Thella at 12:52 AM on September 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm reading Doris Lessing's 1990s novel Mara and Dann at the moment, which is, as you'd expect from the genius pen of Lessing, a brutally honest imagining of a future world mired in a worsening drought (the reason for the drought in the novel is a new Ice Age, though that isn't massively relevant) and it really does fill my day with dread as I read each page.
posted by Myeral at 3:20 AM on September 20, 2019 [1 favorite]