review from Scottish Review of Books, 16 November 2009
Peak Water: Civilisation and the World’s Water Crisis, by Alexander Bell, Luath Press, £16.99.
Leaving Las Vegas is an exhilarating experience. As the flashing lights fade and the gaudy boulevards give way to empty highways, the joy of escaping into the wild and mountainous reaches of the Mojave desert can be intoxicating.
There are many things that are disturbing about the city - its greed, its morality, its music - but there is one that rankles above all: its environmental absurdity. To sustain the metropolitan area’s population of approaching two million, water is brought 1,400 miles from the Rockies by the Colorado River via a vast artificial lake created by the Hoover dam.
It is, as Scottish journalist Alexander Bell emphatically points out in his book, a dangerous mirage. “This may be a sure case of ecocide,” he says. “Las Vegas can only die, and within our lifetimes, because the water supply is running out.”
He recounts how the compact agreed in 1922 to divide up the water between the seven states that border the river was fundamentally flawed, because it was based on an unusually wet period in history. As a result, the compact has been under increasing strain, and periodically the mighty Colorado fails to make it to the sea.
But for Bell, it is not Las Vegas that is the defining image of the world’s looming water crisis, it is Dubai. His book begins and ends with powerful pictures of the overheated, over-hyped city in the United Arab Emirates - “a metropolis that jags out of the desert like a shaft of stone”.
It too is doomed, he argues. “Dubai has the highest water consumption per capita in the world. It is situated in one of the driest parts of the world. You can see how this isn’t going to work.”
What makes ‘Peak Water’ interesting is the way it weaves such laconic personal predictions with a wealth of history, anecdote and analysis, all focussing on the vital role of water in the rise and fall of civilisations. Here, alongside Bell’s obvious delight in building sandcastles and digging moats at the seaside, are lucid accounts of the ancient cities of Mesopotamia and the Andes.
He provides numerous erudite examples to back up his contention that “civilisation begins in a ditch”. And his huge leaps through the millennia, touching water wherever he goes, are informative, easy to read and often entertaining.
What makes the book occasionally frustrating, however, is its lack of detailed supporting evidence. Sometimes this reader craved a little more empirical argument and a few more references, though this may be a minority viewpoint.
Bell would no doubt argue that his book is not a scientific treatise, and that pages of closely-typed footnotes might deter some readers. His aim is more to provoke thought, to stir discussion amongst lay observers - and in that he certainly succeeds.
He makes sure we all understand that the world is not short of water, it’s just in the wrong places. There’s plenty in northern climes like Scotland, but the problem is that huge parts of the populated world are in places where the demand for water is outstripping nature’s capacity to replenish it.
It is an environmental crisis inevitably bound up with the disruption that pollution is inflicting on the global climate, but also, Bell suggests, more immediate. His conclusions are about as stark as they can be. “Almost certainly it will mean the end of civilisation as we currently know it,” he prophesies.
The water wars he predicts, though, are more complex, and more destabilising than those usually imagined. As well as increasingly violent conflicts over access to water in the Middle East and Asia, Bell envisages a startling scenario across the Atlantic.
Water shortages in the US and water surpluses in Canada could drive the two allies of 200 years into war with each other, he suggests. It’s hard to believe that Toronto and Chicago could be devastated by such a battle, as he imagines, but it’s not impossible.
Bell believes that we already have our Third World War, and that it will be to this generation as the first and second world wars were to their generations. The fighting will not be simple or easy to map, and could include international wars, civil wars and class wars, he says.
Goodness knows whether he is right. But there is no doubt the issues he raises deserve serious attention.
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