The War Over Water: Coming Soon
Most people are aware that for generations, wars have been fought over oil. You may be surprised to hear that in a short matter of time, those wars will be fought over water. Humans have used a multitude of resources throughout history, but there’s one that’s clearly superior to all others: water. The average human can go no longer than 3–4 days without water. But drinking isn’t the only use we have for water. We use water to produce crops, bathe ourselves, clean appliances, cook food, and do almost everything else.
70% of Earth is made up of water, but most of that is saltwater, which isn’t suitable for human consumption. Only 3% of the water on earth is safe to consume, and 2% of that is frozen in ice caps and glaciers. This leaves only 1% of the water on earth fit for human consumption. According to an assessment by the UN, a full 2/3'rds of the world population will live in a water-scarce region by 2025, which would displace over 700 million people. By 2040, most of the world won’t have enough water to meet demand year-round. If that scares you, it should.
Climate change and growing water consumption are rapidly depleting this vital resource, leading to rising global tensions. In fact, you could claim the water wars have already begun. In early 2017, the city of Cape Town, South Africa became the first metropolitan area to begin a countdown to day 0: the day they would completely run out of water. This was a huge wake-up call for the people of Cape Town, and after strict governmental regulation and consumption changes by the town’s citizens, they were able to delay day 0 indefinitely.
Just like every crisis caused by capitalism, poor people will bear the majority of the suffering while the rich people who caused it will continue living their lives of luxury and face no consequences for their actions. Water scarcity will also exacerbate food insecurity since farmers won’t be able to irrigate their crops. Critical systems will begin to fail, and violence will be inevitable. This violence could be internal: people fighting each other for access to water, or external: people revolting against their government.
Just as the US-occupied countries like Iraq and Afghanistan for access to oil and opium, the US will soon begin occupying other developing countries to extract freshwater. How do I know this? We’ve seen the pattern before. When corporations realized they needed more oil to maintain their dominance, they lobbied politicians to go to war and occupy countries in the middle east. They also subsidized the media to support these wars, and the media began manufacturing consent for war by telling the American people it was being fought to protect our freedoms and spread democracy.
What’s Causing this Problem?
A big part of the problem is climate change. As the global average temperature rises, regional weather becomes erratic and unpredictable. The climate crisis has already begun. The US has seen severe droughts, wildfires, and winter storms in the past couple of years. As these trends continue, water reserves will dry up.
You might be asking, what can we do about this? Nothing. Sorry to crush your hopes, but scientists have been warning about climate change since the 1970s, and politicians like Al Gore were laughed at in the early 2000s for their statements on the climate crisis. Sorry Zoomers and Millenials, but the damage is already done. At the very least, Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers created a lot of value for corporate shareholders, who make up less than 0.1% of the population.
With that in mind, all hope isn’t completely lost. If humans in developed nations make minor sacrifices such as only eating beef once a month, we could minimize the damage, save hundreds of millions of lives, and make sure that we all have clean water in the future. Just kidding. After the covid-19 pandemic, I think we all know that there’s no way people in developed nations would make minor sacrifices to benefit the whole of humanity.
American individualism has plagued western society as a consequence of capitalism. Since our entire economic system forces people to compete against each other for wages to survive, people naturally act selfishly since the system rewards them for doing so, in contrast to leftist forms of government which value collective cooperation for the betterment of society. I could go deeper into this topic, but I don’t want this article to drag on.
What Can We Do?
As I addressed earlier in this article, we can minimize the forthcoming damage of the water drought significantly if we take the proper actions. But the majority of the responsibility doesn’t fall on us, no matter what capitalists tell you. Just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of carbon emissions. For years, people have organized and protested for the government to take action regarding climate change. However, no meaningful legislation has ever been passed.
Why? The overwhelming majority of politicians receive corporate donations, and they rely on these funds to win re-election. In order to continue receiving these funds, they must pass laws that benefit the wealthy and their donors. Democrats have been campaigning on meaningful climate action since 2008, but these promises are never followed through on. Democrats and Republicans are paid for by the same donors, the only difference is Republicans are honest about hating the working class.
People often make the mistake of thinking the government shapes our economic system, but they have the relationship backward. Our economic system shapes our government. The wealthy seek to maintain the status quo no matter what, but they’re greatly outnumbered by the working class. Our government, military, and police force were created to leverage the disparity between both classes. Therefore, it’s only natural that these institutions defend the ruling class and suppress the needs of the working class (i.e. action on climate change).
This is why electoralism will never work, leftist candidates can’t win in a system that’s designed to work against them. Any candidate who wanted to take significant action on climate change (i.e. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) were ruthlessly smeared by the media and out-fundraised by other candidates.
You might think I’m reaching when I make these claims. You don’t have to take my word for it, you can hear it from the CEO of Exxon himself, one of the world's largest corporations responsible for the climate crisis. So what can we do if electoralism is bound to fail? I want to clarify before going further that I’m not advocating for violence of any sort, but if you look throughout history no meaningful change has been achieved without radical revolution.
The American Revolution displayed to the world all humans have natural rights, and that Kings & Queens don’t have a divine right to rule. Another example is the American Civil War, which ended the practice of slavery worldwide. Both of these movements were radical, violent revolutions that forever changed our world for the better. If there was a way to enact significant change peacefully, no one would want to fight. But we knew that monarchs wouldn’t give up their positions voluntarily, and plantation owners wouldn’t give up their slaves without a fight. History and all logic show that meaningful change can’t be achieved without radical revolution.
You might be asking yourself, “what should I do next”? Educate yourself on the issues. I’ll be posting an essential reading list sometime in the future, so make sure to follow me so you don’t miss out on anything important. In the meantime, I encourage you to watch channels on youtube like Second Thought, The Marxist Project, and Hakim.
