The Post-COVID Middle East? Toast.The aftermath of COVID will present its own grievous set of problems, some of which we are already seeing in a newly declared U.S. economic recession, much like the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 was the prologue to the Great Depression, which in turn led to World War II. Once the wheels of history begin to turn they tend to feed off of each other.
The economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic will no doubt aggravate existing long-term trends and set the stage for instances of collapse. To appreciate this one need only study the Middle East and India, parts of which are becoming a literal tinder box.
India, for example, is home to well over a billion people. By 2027 it is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populated country. Yet at the same time government officials report that half of the country—about 600 million people—suffer from “high to extreme water stress.†Likewise during the next decade, the demand for water in India will grow to over twice the available supply. To make matters worse, by the end of the century temperatures in the region are expected to reach levels which are “intolerable to humans.†As in somewhere around 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dry, crispy. Toast.
At this point optimists usually broach the topic of quick fix solutions like solar powered air conditioners. What’s left unsaid is that most people in India still need to go outside to make a living. Over half of India’s population works in agriculture, and all those solar powered heat exchangers are only going to make toiling in the fields more unpleasant.
But heat and water scarcity aren’t the only existential threats. Indeed, there’s no guarantee that India will even survive long enough to witness Mother Nature’s blast furnace at the end of the century. That’s because India’s next door neighbor, Pakistan, also faces high levels of water stress. Pakistan gets much of its fresh water by means of the Indus System of rivers, which flows into the country from—you guessed it—India. Roughly 90 percent of Pakistan’s agricultural production depends upon Indus System waterways...............
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-post-covid-middle-east-toast/
