Note: Those familiar with the Dune series will recognize the title and its implications immediately and can probably save themselves a read. Everyone else is going to have to slog through.
A core premise of the environmental movement is living within one's means. You simply cannot drink more water than than is locally available and water is not something that is easily used by one person, then another, in series. If the water runs out, those left out either have to leave in search of more, or perish.
(Hold, there's an upbeat paragraph coming up.)
Now, a valuable modifier to that rule is transportation and sharing of resources. Water is not especially easy to move from point A to point B (it doesn't compress, it's liquid and in the volumes required it's quite heavy). Setting up the infrastructure to transport it and store it, distribute it and keep the supply safe from tampering is a big Biden deal.
Now, let's pack these two together - You rarely here of a society gone extinct because, oops, a water main broke and it stayed broken. Why not? Because there is not one society on the planet, on any scale, that will survive more than a few days if its water distribution system collapses. Simpler smaller-scale societies can operate on a nearby pool or well (and do) but if the local supply dries up, they move on. They simply must.
More complex, larger-scale cultures need vastly more complex and secure distribution systems - the need for water is both much greater and more immediate. Also, the benchmark for what is/is not potable and industry-usable water is much higher. (There are a lot of things you simply cannot make with water chock full o debris, some of them things you feed your kids.)
For most forms of Earth life, in most environments, the local carrying capacity limit is water. This supply cannot be easily increased but it can be - through work and infrastructure. Variability in supply can be insured against with cisterns and storage tanks. Equity in usage can be (hopefully) assured with pricing, meters (electronic or simple chits), rationing and strong social mores (with possibly lethal criminal sanctions for trangressors).
Point being, all societies recognize intuitively that, to prosper, water is a resource that must be managed, and managed collectively. If there is any one resource that points out both the successes and breakdowns in regimes, it is management of water supply.
No society lets its water supply fall to pieces unless it loses control of those resources because to do so is to go extinct. And there is, for reasons far older than the human species itself, a never-ending contention for these resources.
Human societies have developed ways to get around short-sighted thinking - we called them customs, laws and community values. That these norms work is without question - we would not have a level of civilization more advanced that stone tool-using gatherer bands otherwise, if that lofty. Instead, there are complex societies in every ecology of the planet - specialization of labor, systems of recognizing and transferring value, recording transactions (and transgressions) and assigning rewards and sanctions for same (hopefully in a fair way) and of course registering marriages, births and deaths. And - let's not forget - collecting taxes (complex societies have that on down cold and always have).
This might seem Philistine achievements but they are the basis of every beautiful and noble (and ugly and ignoble) thing ever done by human hands in history. And they are the tools - the technology -by which not only are water resources leveraged to support societies but something a bit closer to home these days - debt.
Which brings us to the fun part of our story.
There is a (not quite finite) but definitely a hard limit to efforts to expand the water supply. While there are alternative ways to getting water that we don't use as often (desalination, use of brackish water to relieve pressure, deep artesian wells are quite popular too), they are all hard and require significant sacrifices from other economic sectors to keep going. In the case of desalination plants - societies that use them either absolutely must or have an inflow of resources (either foreign aid or through favorable balance of trade), or perhaps both.
Saudi Arabia is an often-vaunted example of the success of using global trade (for oil) to acquire the resources to turn a desert into a garden. (See? Global trade? It's full of win!) What this wonderful (and wonderfully expensive) magnification of the local fresh water supply has also done is support a sustained population explosion - to the point that not too long after recoverable oil fades as the mainstay of the Saudi economy, there will start to be problems keeping what could be 42 million people (in 2020) from water riots.
For you see, there is a way societies go into water debt and I mentioned it two paragraphs ago - deep groundwater drilling. In the short run it greatly magnifies the fresh water supply - perhaps 10-fold globally - which is a big reason why (for the time being) the planet has managed to support the immense post-Industrial Revolution increase in human population... and will continue to do so for a little while longer. How 'little' is little? There's a lot of focus on climate change as the driver of food prices and economic distress; it is of course important in terms of water economics (hotter temperatures, desertification, disruption of littoral and estuaries, disappearance of not just ponds but major bodies of water such as Lake Chad and the Aral Sea).
However, the limit that matters for human existence never mind economics is the water supply and we have been living leveraged, tapping into the future's water, the ground water, for decades now at a level that cannot be sustained.
The Great Plains are considered, rightly so, one of the breadbaskets of the planet. But what if the water went away? For much of the land just east of the Rockies, rainfall just.. .isn't.
Let me pick on an area I know pretty well - western Oklahoma, and it's not just this year - that's some seriously dry real estate!) It's good for pasturage and mesquite and that's about it.... until you sink a well, construct a few artificial reservoirs and give life to the semi-desert.
Long ago, near the town of Granite there was a dam constructed over the site of the former town of Lugert - Lake Altus. It was started in 1927 to provide city water for nearby (ok, not THAT nearby) Altus. Later, in 1938, the dam height was raised as part of (whoda thunk it) a New Deal program - (The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1938). Then World War II came along and delayed finishing the project but for the past going on sixty years the lake has provided irrigation water for a good 600-700 square mile area, good sunbathing and hiking (it's quite the tourist attraction) and catfish if you're into that sort of thing.
(As for why there is a former town of Lugert - tornado wiped the town out completely. There's nothing but sunken foundations now. nice pic here of what's left, you can see it when the water level is low.)
The presence of this artificial lake - or any lake - represents a kind of leverage too - after all, water held up in a given locale is water that is not passing through downstream. It's meant well - after all, there are places farther east in the Red River basin (say, parts of Louisiana) that get plenty of rain and won't necessarily mind the slowdown in transportation. However, there is plenty of dry terrain between western OK and eastern TX so even such an innocuous project as this has ecological consequences. However, the net benefit is such that few societies that can construct water works refrain from doing so - the mortgage, as it were, is paid for by creating an improvement in the watershed so long as it's not over-utilized.
And here we get to the notion of water debt. Water, like money, is capital. Perhaps the original capital. It's (ironically) not as liquid, the time scales to realize investments are sometimes measurable in multiple human lifetimes, project finance volatility is teh suck and annualized returns are beat.
Which is why these tend to be public works. If there was ever an aspect of "big gummint" that no one in the room questions, it is water management. I'll give you an especially poignant (and inglorious) example: the very first thing the American armed forces targeted after air defense and key command installations were the water and sewage treatment plants. The very first thing they rushed to get running again (after the invasion was concluded) were ... the water and sewage treatment plants.
This tactic did not get invented by the previous administration. Not even close. Long before, the U.S. Cavalry did something the Spanish (and later Mexican) armies had failed to do in four centuries -they defeated the Navajo by targeting their water supply. The prior European-derived powers had notions to move in and use the water supplies themselves.
So this is how the United States fights wars now - we go after infrastructure, then we rebuild it - if we see a percentage in it. As for who gave the U.S. this idea? It was the Mongols, the only people who successfully invaded and held another country in the news: Afghanistan. History is chock full of interesting anecdotes.
OK, by now you are thinking "Dammit, he's got some tie-in to the debt ceiling crisis. I just know it." Why, why yes I do. :)
So far we've tied water management to debt management in the following ways:
1. water is an essential resource - perhaps the original form of capital
2. it is a resource that sets hard limits on the scale and pace of growth
3. it can be managed successfully and societies of all kinds do so (else they die)
4. it is a testament to human community (not individualism) that solutions in even harsh climates are found and adhered to
5. no one questions an essential public role in water management
6. like capital, water is a resource than can be levered - up to a point
7. you can borrow water (from wetter locations, wetter seasons, from groundwater in a pinch) but like a loan you gotta have a sense of responsibility and pay it back in full over time else the whole ecosystem collapses
8. selfishness is full of fail with water - people get killing mad about it
9. and when the distribution system - especially norms of water use - break down, that's when societies fall to pieces
10. and it's not likely to be any different if the system of capital distribution (debt) falls to pieces, either
11. And ironically, capital is even more liquid than water to the point that this destruction can happen not in days but in minutes
So let's pivot this metaphor to the debt ceiling drama
1. The arbitrary debt ceiling limit is just that - arbitrary
2. This does not detract from the issue that there is only so much leverage our society can handle because the underlying economic growth just isn't there
3. And due to what is close to willful blindness in a financial fraud case, the true extent of the damage from 2008 remains unquantified.
4. Which makes everyone in the room where these debt discussions are taking place very nervous - and everyone outside the room as well
5. to work, like water, debt management solutions have to be equitable - not equal, but equitable - this goes to norms of fair play, right and wrong that, if violated, could spark a level of real domestic unrest across the board.
6. And that ultimately is the imperative: If we are in fact over-levered as a society in terms of debt usage some equitable solution must be placed.
What might not be transparent to many readers here is just how scared corporations are that they've yet to see the worst of the financial crisis. This damage could go on for decades; they have no way to gauge just how deep a hole they are in, collectively and they want that water supply - the Federal government - to be there to help them when they need it most.
Just as, understandably, the American people - the flesh and blood ones who actually vote - do so.
We simply must create resources to implement fair and equitable solutions - or at least set up the process of garnering those resources. As with water, you can't pump more from a dry well. It has to come from a place with water.
And the water in this discussion is money. Understandably those with it have a notion to keep it.
But if they are no longer playing by the larger societies' norms, that's going to be a fighting matter.
SO - to those negotiating how to save our collective bacon (starting with their own): Call it what it is: time for those who have leveraged the productivity of the American people - and the indulgence of its government - to repay THEIR water debt.
That means contributing - if they are asking people to go a bit thirsty that's one thing. If they are asking people to die so they can have their tax privileges, that's entirely unacceptable.
In point of fact, it's an outrage that is storm-the-Bastille-worthy.