Oil wars now, water wars later?

Absolutely. If we don’t seriously address these water issues then we’re all going to wind up reliving that great opening shot in 21 a Space Odyssey which shows 2 groups of ape-men fighting over who controls the local water hole.

The only difference between then and now will be the choice of weapons.’

Growing societies require a reliable source of clean water .If that source cannot be found then that society will inevitably fail . There will then be political pressure from the populace to find and secure reliable water sources by any means necessary.

Nobody has forgotten that one of the reasons that Ancient Rome became the greatest city on Earth was because the Romans built aqueducts which insured that the Romans always had a clean water supply.

To some degree there are substitutes for oil But there are no substitutes for water.

Btw you get a star for asking this Q

Predicting what the problems of tomorrow are going to be is always difficult, but water is a commodity that everyone needs, there is no substitute and growing population concentrations are making the available sources of water more problematic. From the Aral Sea, to the Danube, to the Colorado River, the Yellow River, the Amu Darya, the Tigris River, the Jordan, all of these rivers are running lower. But the main problem may actually be the drawdown of the aquifers, the underground pools of water that farmers are pumping up to irrigate their crops. Irrigated crops multiply the amount of food you can grow by a huge amount, and when these farmers empty the aquifers, their food production will plummet and food prices will skyrocket.

Sounds like a decent reason for a war.

BP is using such barrages ,or at least they were. I read a couple of weeks ago that they were sucking up nearly 1/3 of the spill. but that was when the thought the flow was slower so it is probably only 1/6. The Persian gulf oil was coming from surface spills so the oil was on top of the water. Since this spill is coming from a mile under water only a faction reaches the surface where it can be picked up by skimming.

It might be argued that there was a war for the free flow of oil but in reality, the war was fought to keep an unstable unfriendly, evil regime, Iraq led by Saddam, from getting his hands on much of the worlds oil supply. There will not be significant wars for water because the cost of the wars will be more than the cost for water. There can be skirmishes and arguments but in general the availability of water is governed by price.

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We are not at war over oil. We invaded Iraq in an attempt to have an ally in the Middle East and keep Iran in check. Except Bush and company thought the American people were stupid to know the truth so he made up this ridiculous “war on terror/combat the enemy blah blah blah” business.

But to answer your question, wherever there is a shortage of something there is the potential for war. I doubt we will experience a real water shortage in the US though.

Yes, that seems to be the case. There is currently a ‘conflict’ regarding one quarter of the worlds oil reserves – Arctic. As precipitation increases (and the need for water), along with diminishing supplies, there will be trouble.

Jmmince: When the glaciers melt in to the Oceans, the fresh water they contain is, of course, lost.

Through out human history (and pre-history too for that matter), there have been wars. Peace is an ideal that we hypothesize because there have been periods in history when some of us have not been at war. There is no reason to believe that things will change, so there will be war.

I believe that eventually there will be war for water, maybe not in my lifetime, but in my children’s future. Maybe then everyone would realise that we screwed up at our chance to conserve our resources.

Not later, part of the Israeli-Palestinian problem is about water. Palestinians live in the dry regions where they barely have access to water.

Yeah, humans will find any excuse to go to war.

When they run out of things to fight about, they’ll find something new.

Before you know it, there’ll be a vegan+vegetarian war against the meat eaters.