I grew up in a desert that had already been substantially remade by irrigation, though the process still created large changes when I was a boy. So "Chinatown", and Jim's photo above, rang bells with me. When I visited an Israeli kibbutz, the resident intellectual, a retired French professor of economics, told me that they were envious of the scale and speed with which the South Africans tamed that part of the desert. Of course, it was a matter of people -- it always is -- and it was fortunate that a critical number of Italian and German engineers who had been prisoners of war in South Africa elected to stay after the war; their most obvious legacy being the superb road network and an extremely professional army for decades rated the second best in the world, after the Israeli, by the CIA.
It's long been my belief that future wars will not be about territory or trade or raw materials, but about water. Agricultural economists have always been more influential in policy circles than most people realize, but I foresee a day when hydro-economists will be the most important of all. There's already a hint in the nicknames of the two current schools of economists, "saltwater" for the Keynesians, "freshwater" for the Friedmanites.
Water is an important matter for touring cyclists, who cannot carry more than a few days' supply with them, and are largely accustomed to water being free, and free available, in most places. In another generation, 30 years, that is most unlikely to be true, and in the interim there will be a painful transition. Already, in the present, we hear complaints from cyclists about water no longer being free.
