You often hear from farmers, environmental Jeremiahs, and amateur economists that the wars of the future will be fought over water. This is almost certainly balderdash. Turn the pages of history, and you will find confirmation that large-scale human conflicts usually begin in religion, ethnic unpleasantness, dynastic strife, or ideology. Rarely do they flare up over some specific strategic object or resource. (The most brutally contested part of the Middle East is, notoriously, just about the only part of that region that has no oil.)
People may occasionally kill each other over water, in the context of a military siege or a tribal dispute over an oasis. Peoples rarely do. After all, full-fledged civilizations don’t grow up in the first place where there is no drinking water or access to arable land.
Colby Cosh, “California’s water woes are man-made — and so is the solution”, Maclean’s, 2014-09-07.
February 8, 2016
QotD: In the future, wars will not be fought over water
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