- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Mashhad, home to around 4 million people and Iran’s holiest city, relies on four dams for its water supply. Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached about “8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams”.
Authorities in Tehran warned over the weekend of possible rolling cuts to water supplies in the capital amid what officials call the worst drought in decades. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has cautioned that without rainfall before winter, even Tehran could face evacuation.
In the capital, five major dams supplying drinking water are at “critical” levels, with one empty and another at less than 8% of capacity, officials say.
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Its more than just Tehran, it’s a very great many places all at once, all over the world. It’s more than just politics or policy. It’s more than just climate. The fundamental problem is growth. We outgrew our resouces, groundwater as well as surface water. It is just one facet of what’s driven us over the edge. This is our Wile E Coyote moment.
We are many things, sustainable is not one of them.
The fact that natural, fundamental resources like food and water are also governed by profit motives does not help. It’s not fair to say that “we” as humanity are not sustainable - datacenters guzzling water during a climate emergency aren’t. Growing food only to be on display on a supermarket fridge and then thrown out isn’t. Government subsidies for burning wood for power aren’t.
8B+ humans are not sustainable. Yes, some very smart people have crunched the numbers and yes we can theoretically feed 10B, I get that. We can do better on all the points you bring and more!
Curious how old you are, because I’ve seen us go from 3.7B to 8.2B, and that scares the shit out of me. 74% of the animals have disappeared since 1970. I’ve watched, and am watching now, the countryside get converted into strip malls and housing.
We don’t just need food and water, we need housing and infrastructure. Guess what’s a major CO2 emitter? Concrete. 8% of total output.
Yes, but no. You can fiddle and fart around the edges and eliminate enormous waste and save untold lives as well as prevent despair and deprivation -FOR A TIME .
The root of our predicament is the sum total of our dipshittery. It is cumulative. Yes stopping AI guzzling water and energy we don’t have to spare would be great, but alone it is not enough.
To quote the immortal Depeche Mode:
- Everything counts in large amounts.
Yeah, of course. It’s not those things directly, it’s the “culture” that makes it something normal.
Too bad they need to buy rockets to defend themselves against Israel and the US and don’t have money because of sanctions put on them by said countries.
thirsty crops in the wrong places,
kagis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Iran
Wheat, rice, and barley are the country’s major crops.
Rice: Iran’s total rice production stands at 2.2 million tons per annum whereas annual consumption is about three million tons (2008)…Rice is mostly produced in northern Iran.
I can’t find a rice production map for Iran, but I’m assuming that that’s around Tehran, which is in northern Iran.
Yeah, rice paddies seem like a bad idea unless you’re a pretty wet place. That being said, we grow some in California, which is also pretty dry. But we also aren’t that short.
First Iran, soon the entire world
Too late. We have a major emergency in the American West that almost all of us are blithely unaware of. Mexico City may be the first major city to straight up run out of water. Kabul looks to be next.
And this isn’t all down to global warming. We’re draining monstrous aquifers that took thousands of years to fill.
Here in NW Florida people were commenting on how unusually rainy it was last spring. Yeah, that was normal 10-20 years ago, rain nearly every afternoon. Had a solid rain last week. Before that? Over a month dry.
Let’s close a couple of those “AI” factories and send them some of that “AI” water.
Water levels below 3% in dam reservoirs for Iran’s second city, say reports
Honestly, I think that if a reservoir is that low, I’d have started that before this point.
Should have focused on hydrology and sustainable practices instead of nuclear arms.
