The Brahmaputra-Ganges river system is bursting. There was recently more of
Bangladesh under the water than above it, and things were little better upriver in
Nepal and Bihar. Hundreds are dead, millions displaced. Tis the monsson season, of
course, and the Gangatic plain expects a bit of flooding at this time of year, but
there's no Monsoon in China where the Yangtze river system is drowning even more

people, and more homes. This catastrophic water isn't just coming from the sky.

Life is nothing without water, and life in much of Asia revolves around a few mighty
river systems. The Yangtze-Kiang feeds about half of China and (before the Three
Gorges Dam) much of Indochina. "The story of the Ganges," said India's
first President, Jawaharlal Nehru "from her source to the sea, from old times to
new, is the story of India's civilization and culture"; his less secular-minded
compatriots go even further in worshipping her, though both the religion and the
secular republic are named for another river, the Indus, which now rules most of
Pakistan.

These three great rivers are sister-goddesses, that we can trace back to a common
starting point: Himalaya, the abode of snow. The world's youngest and tallest
mountain range, the story of the Himalayas is the story of Asia. Since they were
pushed up from the sea by the advancing Indian subcontinent ten million years ago,
they kept the hot, wet monsoon from going too far North and the cold, dry Siberian
winds from going too far South. The great Asian deserts are theirs, as are the great
Asian rivers for - as their Sanskrit name suggests - cold air and wet air meet up
there to make snow, snow which is compacted into great glaciers, glaciers which melt
to feed great rivers, rivers which flow to nourish great nations.

India and China are the world's most two populous nations, and both Pakistan and
Bangladesh make the top ten. In all, well over half of humanity lives on, and off,
the Himalayan river-systems; the home of snow is our home, and we should take any
threat to it very seriously indeed. But if creating this home involved one continent
crashing into another, trashing it has involved little more than excessive greenhouse
emissions continents away. The Himalayas are one of the most pristine, unpolluted
environments left on earth, but they're still getting hotter. The glaciers are
melting, and decades' worth of water is washing over the floodplains in a single
year.

The consequences of this are so much worse than mere floods. Need I spell it out?
The run-off will eventually run out. The glaciers could be gone as soon as 2035,
according to a recent U.N. report, and they will be missed. Our ecology and our
economy - both words, incidentally, which derive, like Himalaya, from home, in this
case the Greek oikos - are dependent on fresh water; it is our life, and we are
pissing it away. The specifics differ - glacial melt is a manifestation of climate
change, while water-mining is perhaps the best and most brutal example of the tragedy
of the commons - but it all adds up to a terrifying picture of thirsty decades to
come.

Learn more about this author, Dave On Fire.
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