At the start of the water wars, we are. At stake, our own survival is.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
230 points (100.0% liked)
World News
50825 readers
1602 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
- Blogsites are treated in the same manner as social media sites. Medium, Blogger, Substack, etc. are not valid news links regardless of who is posting them. Yes, legitimate news sites use Blogging platforms, they also use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and we don't allow those links either.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Yeah at the same time data centers are being built all over and are wanting lots of water for cooling.
Wasting. They're depleting entire aquifers that took thousands of years to fill up. it's remarkable that they're allowed to do it. Hell the major cities in Texas are sinking because of it. But ho hum, whatever. We don't need conservation.
And they don't even need to waste it, there are plenty of ways to cool them that doesn't result in the water being used up.
Best one is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland, they have the cooling loop connected to the city central heating system, so not only is no water used, the excess heat is useful as well. And the datacenter is powered by solar, so it's renewable heat as well.
But it’s in Finland, Texas only needs the excess heat for 3-4 months per year, Arizona even less so.
Arizona has a lot more potential for solar though.
None of this excuses the wasting of water, closed loops and compressed coolants should be able to do it, but won’t be as cheap or energy efficient, so nobody will do it without regulations that force it. That’s what we really need. If we ever have a functioning government again.
They are doing it on purpose to try to take people out. Death by no water, no food, no medicine, no healthcare, no everything.
This is where community, getting things done, & building up personal hope are important things.
Read https://goodgoodgood.co/ articles about Hope. In the website press the 3 line thing on top right then press search and type "study hope" or "hope" read the recent one about the 14/15 year study. Also, the other one from June/July how hope is fundamental to life.
We all gotta keep moving to stop this shit
Can I just probe this: You believe that, for real, someone is sitting and actively planning to kill people by removing their water?
All good go for it.
There's better ways to do data centers than the ways they cool them that use up the most water, putting them in areas where it wastes even more water, and not paying for it by pushing the cost to the people
So you tell me what that looks like to you personally. It's not like the current administration, & big tech have been doing anything good lately
Personally it looks to me like a bunch of people don’t give a shit about others and conveniently push away uncomfortable discussions about the consequences of the decisions they take.
But that it still a far cry from Bond-villain “let’s kill them by taking their water”.
Makes sense. Can see it from your perspective as well. I guess I wouldn't say most are Bond-villains (Some though truly messed up people want that though)
Still a lot of them already know about the droughts and climate change yet still do it. So even though it isn't Bond-villain style can still see them not giving a shit basically translating to fuck it let them die without.
What do they do when the aquifers dry up?
Go to Mars!! 🥴
“I don’t call it a crisis anymore. This is a state of failure. That’s why for years I’ve referred to it as water bankruptcy,” said Kaveh Madani, the director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
“A crisis is a state that you can mitigate, you can go back to normal at some point if you put forces together. But the damages we are seeing to the ecosystem, to the nature and even to many parts of the economy and infrastructure are irreversible.”
The US Southwest and Southern CA will be at this point by 2027, according to projections based on current consumption levels. Lake Mead will be dry, and everyone who depends on it to live will be fucked. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06102025/colorado-river-water-supply-report/
I'm not even entertaining the idea that we'll take emergency action to avoid it. That seems too unrealistic that our governments would be that responsible.
So many wasteful usages of water: big tech data centers, golf courses, etc etc. It's so much bullshit that we can prevent if more people can get together and do to undo this shit
Nothing will be done until it affects the 0.01%.
Which means nothing will ever be done.
What if every datacenter in the southwest just suddenly.... Caught fire..? Oopsies. How quickly could they be rebuilt?
And go where? The whole plateau is just as arid.
This is just the start. A billion people on the Indian subcontinent are next. The tropics globally will desertify as the planet warms. Even the increase in migration from Central America to the U.S. is driven by extreme weather and lapses in agricultural productivity. A 2017 study by the World Food Program found that "no food" was the main reason people from Central America sought to emigrate to the U.S.
40% of the world's population - 3 billion people - live in the tropics. A single city is one thing. Where will 3 billion people go?
I’m glad someone else is on here talking honestly about climate change.
“no food” was the main reason people from Central America sought to emigrate to the U.S.
No food coupled with political instability and extremely violent criminal groups preventing ability to produce food. Above all, the unwanted US fruit company empires more than a century ago left a legacy of corruption and class conflict in that region.
Yes, and the two are interrelated. Scarcity breeds insecurity, insecurity breeds conflict, and conflict destroys physical and societal infrastructure of production that leads to further scarcity. It becomes a vicious cycle. And indeed I believe you are entirely correct that a long legacy of U.S. neocolonial interventionism has contributed to the instability.
They can just invade another city.
They ~~can~~ will just invade another city.
Our climate crisis is definitely going to cause world war 3