Shortages of fresh water can create difficult decisions, and lead to conflict.
Industrial farming creating wealth for owners and investors may leave local poor communities without access to any clean water for personal use. This is illustrated by the South African wine crop being given priority over the needs of 9 million who have to go without access to water. See:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000145405.page=519
9,500 years ago, what is now known as the Atacama Desert in Chile, was a fertile area which attracted humans and wildlife. Droughts began to occur, until the whole area became the now famous desert.
Many parts of the world are seeing droughts occurring which seem to be lasting too long to have hope of recovery even if rainfall does occur.
Mike Rivington, a senior scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, said: “The scale of heatwaves and droughts we’re currently experiencing has been projected by climate research for many years now. What we are seeing is a clear signal of what the future is going to be like.”
In Texas, 2022 saw droughts which resulted in cattle farmers having to sell off their prize herds rather than watch them die like those seen as carcasses across drought ridden areas of Africa.
Lakes and aquifers are being drained wherever water shortages occur. Countries are seeing their crops die and food security is a major issue globally. And yet industrial farming methods continue to increase with megadroughts guaranteed. Regional GDP, says the World Bank, can only decline. People will fight over water, as the Sumerian legend describes occurring 3000 BC.
Modern warfare utilises attacks on water infrastructure. In Yemen, such attacks led to cholera outbreaks causing 4 percent of its citizens to contract the disease between 2015 at the start of the war, and 2017 after such attacks had occurred.
Why destroy existing water supplies to cause such suffering when we should be innovating to preserve what little freshwater there is left for humankind?
Armies can be used to build infrastructure and rescue people from climate change disasters. They can be used for the good of all, rather than to the Endgame of this beautiful Earth.
Small but significant farming techniques are being used where governments support these for the sake of their populations. One example is drip irrigation techniques:
https://www.gardenguides.com/86671-grow-tomatoes-drip-irrigation.html
Experiments with Deficit Irrigation where the farmer knows his crops are the type which can cope most of the year without irritatigation, but at certain times in the growth stage, if there is no rainfall, irrigation is necessary. This saves water until absolutely necessary.
https://www.fao.org/3/Y3655E/y3655e03.htm
Humans will try to stay as long as they can when extreme weather begins to tell them where they live is becoming uninhabitable. Then humans will do what they always have done, get on the move to some place where water and food are available.
If we don’t cut emissions now, there will be nowhere our future generations can find to relocate.
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