While India and Pakistan threaten to annihilate each other with nuclear bombs, both countries are rapidly losing a weather war caused by global warming. Sundeep Waslekar, director of the International Center for Peace Initiatives, says that even if the 2 countries make peace, it will only last a few years until water wars set off a full-scale conflict.
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Charles Seabrook writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Federal water experts have presented data suggesting that metro Atlanta is taking all the water that Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River can provide, decades before it was forecast to have reached that limit.
If the assessment is verified by data being collected and analyzed in coming weeks, it could halt new development in the region. Metropolitan Atlanta would have to stop growing, or enact tougher conservation measures, or find new sources of water.
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Julie Watson writes in AP Latin America that this year, in fields in the drought-stricken Mexican state of Chihuahua, Mexican farmers are threatening a bitter fight for Rio Grande water that could affect relations between the United States and Mexico.
U.S. officials say that under a 1944 treaty, Mexico owes Texas farmers 1.5 million acre-feet of water. Each acre-foot is enough to cover one acre of land with one foot of water, an amount equivalent to 326,000 gallons. The treaty gives Mexico a larger quantity of water, but via the Colorado River far to the west.
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Jerry Bowen and Jim Axelrod write in cbsnews.com that more than a third of America is now affected by months of drought and the worst is yet to come. While the government believes there will be improvement in the East and parts of the West by the end of July, conditions in the Southwest and High Plains are likely to remain as bad as any seen since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.
Bowen reports on the West, where drought conditions range from mild to extreme and cover a wide area. In the parts of the West where the drought is worst, so is the wildfire danger. Americans from Arizona north to Colorado have received a signal that the fire season’s come early.
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