Before we finish Monday's parade of environmental horrors, let's not forget to point out that, without water, we are all just tiny heaps of chemicals on the sidewalk. (Star Trek, of course, got there first on this one.) You would think that we would be particularly careful about that, given the obvious effectiveness of the Great Chinese Climate Hoax. However, as we all are in many things these days, you would be wrong.

We're squandering water the way we squander everything else, helping the Chinese hoaxsters every step of the way. For example, The Texas Observer, working with Quartz, is in the middle of a fine, nine-part series about the water crisis along the United States's border with Mexico, a crisis that has been exacerbated by even the theoretical construction of the president*'s stupid wall. This first pops up in Part Two:

Over the years, border walls and fences have exacerbated flooding in both the US and Mexico. Environmental advocates and local activists in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas now fear their communities will also face increased risk of flooding as a result of new segments of border wall planned for the region. In March, Congress allocated $1.6 billion for border enforcement, including $641 million for border-wall construction in the Valley. Of the 33 miles of fencing and walls planned, the agency expects to build 25 miles of what are called levee walls—12-foot high concrete wall with 18-foot bollards on top—in Hidalgo County, as well as 8 miles of bollard walls in adjacent Starr County. “The Rio Grande Valley isn’t really a valley, it’s a delta,” says Melinda Melo, an organizer for the No Border Wall Coalition. “There are flooding risks here in the same sort of way as in Nogales.”

Then, in Part Three, we discover that the president*'s stupid wall also is a massive threat to several endangered species.

But the combination of habitat loss and disruptive border-security infrastructure is making an already fragile situation prone to an ecological breakdown. This is perhaps most keenly felt by two large cat species: the ocelot and the Gulf Coast jaguarundi. For the Texas populations of both cats to survive, they need to be able to cross back and forth across the river. But the Trump administration’s plans for a border wall could make that increasingly difficult. Squeezed by fences and rapid urbanization, these animals face a perilous future.

But it's the threat to the Rio Grande watershed that is the real crisis. And if you believe, as I do, that the next series of regional conflicts will be over water, this is one that we can't really ignore.

John Moore Getty Images

But we're not ignoring it. Thanks to the president* and his stupid wall, a once-effective cooperative relationship between the United States and Mexico is, well, drying up. Once, the two countries worked together so well that, as the Observer reports, water ministers from the U.S. and Mexico went to the Middle East to help Israel, Palestine, and Jordan sort out the water issues that were part of the general conflict in that region.

Not any more. Not with so much winning going on.

It can also take just hours to undo. On May 11, Ed Drusina heard through an IBWC lawyer that the Trump administration was asking him to step down. He had to vacate his position the same day. Sally Spener, a longtime IBWC employee and the current foreign affairs officer for the US side, called it a “normal presidential transition.” But other IBWC commissioners have stayed on despite changes in administration; the position is technical and not high profile, so it doesn’t typically get reshuffled like other presidential appointees.

It took Drusina by surprise. He’d been helming discussions between Mexico and Texas about adopting a new model for Rio Grande flows, so that both sides would be using the same scientific data to gauge how much water Mexico would be able to deliver to the US, and when. The departure was badly timed—the two sides were finally nearing an agreement. The Trump administration has yet to appoint a permanent US commissioner to replace Drusina, leaving a vacuum in a delicate situation, just as the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost tip of Texas which lies along the northern bank of the Rio Grande, plunges into another drought.

As things get worse along the border, let's check in with how our old friend, the Ogalalla Aquifer, is doing these days. This is the massive underground body of water—more than is currently in Lake Huron—that has sustained American agriculture for as long as there has been American agriculture. In times of drought, farmers living on top of the aquifer draw more and more from it in order to irrigate their crops. And we are approaching a point at which they will be drawing more from the aquifer than it can replace, and without the Ogalalla Aquifer, everything from Iowa to Utah is the Gobi Desert, a permanent Dust Bowl.

MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

From a study of the state of the aquifer, via Alternet:

In my view, Plains farmers cannot afford to continue pushing land and water resources beyond their limits – especially in light of climate change’s cumulative impact on the Central Plains. For example, a recent study posits that as droughts bake the land, lack of moisture in the soil actually spikes temperatures. And as the air heats up, it further desiccates the soil. This vicious cycle will accelerate the rate of depletion. And once the Ogallala is emptied, it could take 6,000 years to recharge naturally. In the words of Brent Rogers, a director of Kansas Groundwater Management District 4, there are “too many straws in too small of a cup.” Some far-sighted farmers are responding to these interlocking challenges. Even as they pursue efficiencies in irrigation, many are shifting from water-intense crops like cotton to wheat. Still others, notably in west Texas, are converting back to non-irrigated dryland agriculture – a recognition of the stark limitations of irrigation dependency. Farmers who are depleting other aquifers in Latin America, eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia could face similar choices.

Of all the aspects of the Great Chinese Climate Hoax, this is the most baffling to me. I can understand the lunatic addiction to fossil fuels because somebody somewhere is making a lot of money off of them, and because those industries have done a splendid job of convincing Americans that burning fossil fuels in their homes and cars is an unalienable right. But, really, we all can agree on the necessity of having enough water, right? Right?

Hello? Is this thing on?

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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