Convenience Big Store: Water wars are on the way

31 July, 2021

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Here are a few more highlights from this week's issue of The Knowledge, which is now available on the website and the app. If you'd like to have full access and read all our stories, you just need to register here.

All good wishes,

Jon Connell

Editor-in-chief

Climate change

Parched earth in southern Iraq. Getty Images

Water wars are on the way

Climate change may be hastening "the first outright water war since the days of ancient Mesopotamia", says Roger Boyes in The Times. Ethiopia is planning to build a huge dam on the Nile to create the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa. But downstream of that, Egypt's exploding population depends on the river's water. Both nations have threatened to use military force to defend their share of this liquid gold.

Meanwhile, the southern marshes of Iraq are drying out, prompting a squabble with Iran and Turkey over dams. Iran has been declared "water bankrupt" and at least eight people have been killed in protests over shortages, says Bel Trew in The Independent. Lebanon's public water supply looks as if it will collapse in a few weeks, pushing prices to a "staggering" two and a half times monthly income. Unrest in these fragile states can only get worse as the climate crisis intensifies.

It's not just about scarcity, says Brahma Chellaney in The Japan Times. China is using its rivers as a geopolitical weapon. It has built 11 "mega-dams" on the Mekong River, an "arterial waterway" that flows down into southeast Asia. Countries such as Myanmar and Vietnam depend on the Mekong, and China could turn off the tap should any of them step out of line. Beijing is now planning to build a dam on the Brahmaputra River just before it flows into India – it would generate three times as much electricity as the world's largest hydroelectric power station, also built by the Chinese at the Three Gorges Dam. The scheme will pollute the river and cut off Bangladesh's main water source, setting a refugee crisis in motion. China's previous damming has also had domestic drawbacks, causing substantial ecological damage and putting hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens at risk from floods.

Thankfully, there are more harmonious examples around, says The Christian Science Monitor. Earlier this month Israel agreed to sell neighbouring Jordan 50 million cubic metres of fresh water, the largest such deal since their 1994 peace treaty. And Israel's recent peace accords with various Gulf states have led to co-operation on building desalination plants. These solar-powered beauties can produce a cubic metre of fresh water, enough for 3,000 small water bottles, for as little as 50 cents. Like climate change, water scarcity is a shared problem – "mutual interest" can make collaboration between thirsty nations more beneficial than conflict. Just as water puts out fires, "water diplomacy" can make international tensions fizzle out.

💦 🇺🇸 At least 96 workers died during the construction of the Hoover Dam in the early 1930s – the result of their efforts was Lake Mead, one of America's largest reservoirs, which provides water for 25 million people, including most of Las Vegas. But evaporation during recent droughts has left it with a "ghostly band of white rock" above the waterline, says Io Dodds in the Telegraph. Its surface has plunged 161ft below "full pool" level and the volume of water has shrunk to only 35% of capacity. If the drying out continues, water from Lake Mead will have to be rationed next year.

Zeitgeist

Imagine no Olympics

John Lennon's Imagine has made more appearances at the Olympics than most athletes, says Dorian Lynskey in UnHerd. It was played at the summer Games in 1996 and 2012, and at the Winter Olympics in 2006 and 2018. We heard it again in Tokyo this week. It's strange, because if we took the song's advice – "Imagine there's no countries" – it would "theoretically put paid to the whole event".

Imagine has always had its critics. Elton John joked about the line "imagine no possessions", sending a card to Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, at their extravagant home in Manhattan that read: "Imagine six apartments/It isn't hard to do/One is full of fur coats/Another's full of shoes." Pop writer Ray Connolly says one of Lennon's friends, who visited him in New York, sang "imagine no possessions" on seeing the refrigerated row of fur coats. "It was only a bloody song," replied Lennon huffily.

Indeed. "Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic'," Lennon's former bandmate Paul McCartney told Rolling Stone. "That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now let's write a swimming pool.'"

Life

Cole Bennetts/Getty Images

At 40, I'm ready for the simple life

Paris Hilton was the original influencer, says Martha Hayes in the Telegraph. In the Noughties the "It girl" was famous for being famous. When she wasn't filming reality TV show The Simple Life, she was clubbing and "carrying miniature dogs around in designer handbags". It's true, says Hilton: "I invented getting paid to party."

And professional partying was lucrative. Today Hilton is worth an estimated $300m, and that's before you count her family's hotel fortune. On the back of her fame, she set about creating a business empire – she travelled 250 days a year to DJ and has launched 45 branded stores, 19 product lines and 27 perfumes. Not bad for a supposed airhead who speaks in a baby voice. "I invented this whole new persona – a Barbie doll with a perfect life," she says. It came in handy. "When the media would talk negatively about me, I would just be, like, 'That's not even who I am.' I'm the smart one because I made up this character and I'm laughing all the way to the bank."

But Hilton is "so over" parties. Now 40, she lives in Beverly Hills with her (fourth) fiancé, tech entrepreneur Carter Milliken Reum, and their six dogs – Diamond Baby, Harajuku, Crypto, Ether, Slivington and Cutesie. In her spare time she hosts a cooking show on YouTube: a video of her making lasagne has been viewed 5.1 million times. It's nice to wind down, says Hilton. "I have lived 10 million lifetimes. I'm ready for the real simple life."

Property

THE COTTAGE Saltponds is a fisherman's cottage by the sea's edge in the Cornish village of Mousehole, with views of St Michael's Mount. It has a log-burner in the living room, a stone fireplace in the main bedroom, a bathroom with underfloor heating and a top-floor bedroom that could be used as a studio. The landscaped garden and terrace look out over the water. £685,000.

Long read shortened

Watch out for Cummings variants

In "one of the most extraordinary exchanges in recent political journalism", Dominic Cummings last week admitted to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that he considered getting rid of his boss, Boris Johnson, shortly after the 2019 general election. His brazen justification for what would have amounted to a coup d'état? "That's politics." Cummings referred to – but didn't name – a shadowy "few dozen" co-conspirators against the PM. Such cliques have long dominated the upper echelons of power: look at New Labour or David Cameron's "Notting Hill Tories". As the anthropologist Margaret Mead observed: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." So why worry, asks Matthew d'Ancona in Tortoise.

Because "one clever man in a hoodie" showed our political system has become "alarmingly immunocompromised". Cummings ran rings around the Electoral Commission after the Brexit referendum, ensured 21 Conservative MPs had the whip withdrawn and was happy for Cabinet ministers to mislead the Queen about the prorogation of parliament. And he got away with it all. Crucially, he understood that institutions are being supplanted by digital networks – look at his "astonishingly nimble", and dodgy, use of data in the 2016 Vote Leave campaign. Legislation in this area is woeful and the "digitally illiterate" rump of the political class aren't exactly leaping into action. After five years we have something approaching herd immunity to Dom himself. "What should be worrying us now is the variants to come."

Read the full article here.

Inside politics

There are two types of populist leader, says Janan Ganesh in the FT. One is authoritarian and flexes the muscles of the state: see Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Hungary's Viktor Orban. The other is "ruthless in the pursuit of power but lax to the point of dereliction in its exercise". Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is one example, and Donald Trump, who hardly did anything in government, "was more absentee landlord than Big Brother". Trump's Republican followers have been similarly chaotic in their approach to Covid. It shows how concerns about creeping fascism in the US are misguided. If American populism ever spiralled into a dystopia, it wouldn't be a "super state" but a failed one.