The stresses that are rearranging the world’s maps, uprooting populations, destroying nation-states and destabilizing the planet have less to do with extreme “-isms,” geopolitics, hegemony or nuclear armaments than they do with water. Overuse, misuse and pollution of water, combined with spreading drought, a consequence of climate change, are imposing on larger and larger regions of the world an inexorable sequence of deprivation leading to desperation, then disintegration. About halfway through the progression, as desperation begins to bring on disintegration, the violence begins, and from then on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride hard.

The increasing scarcity of water is the unacknowledged cause of the so-called Arab Spring collapses of the governments of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. It was the spark that lit the fuse of the rebellions in Syria (when protesters in Daraa protested corrupt allocations of scarce water) and Yemen (when citizens of Taiz, the thirstiest city in the country, erupted in 2011).

It is only when we recognize this causality (keeping in mind that high costs, and scarcity, of food are almost always a consequence of scarce water) that we can appreciate how much trouble we are in. What happened to these failed and failing states is under way in:

The list of countries approaching mortal crisis because of water scarcity goes on, and on. It has to include California, Arizona and Nevada, states whose mummification by dry desert air is proceeding apace.

In the shadow of this real and present danger to the world, politicians and talking heads continue to prattle about religion, ideology, ethnicity, world domination — indeed, any distraction imaginable — apparently to avoid having to confront reality. Despite their best efforts at obfuscation, however, it is clear that reality is about to confront us.