Water is the wellspring of all life, but in diluvial proportions, it also becomes a specter of death. The mythos of the Abrahamic religions and many others describe a great flood, and it’s not hard to see why the shock of such a calamity might lead to fervor. Just observe the vast destruction wrought a few weeks ago in Kerr County, Texas, where the Guadalupe River surged 28 feet in 90 minutes, inundating Camp Mystic and ultimately leading to 135 deaths.
It’s not just Texas; New York, Illinois and North Carolina have all suffered serious floods recently. And on the other side of the world, China’s government is once again warning of the potential for mass casualties and damage in the north. In 2023, rising floods threatened Beijing, so authorities diverted the water to nearby cities, forcing a million people to evacuate and leading to a rare outburst of public anger.
Yet flooding is only one extreme on the water axis. China’s concerns for flooding in the north are coupled with equal concerns for severe drought in the country’s south, threatening both lives and crops. Drought, too, is rampant throughout the world. England is the driest in 132 years, Kabul is on the verge of running dry, South Korea’s shipbuilding hub of Ulsan is out of water, and Iranian authorities are facing a crisis in Tehran, where reservoirs are at their lowest in a century. Then there’s America, where serious drought persists throughout the Southwest affecting tens of millions...
