Blue Gold

Remember Chinatown? It was a Roman Polanski-directed gangsteresque portrayal of southern California in the 1940s starring Hollywood badass Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes, a private investigator who gets involved in some pretty dirty stuff. What the players in the story are playing for, however, isn’t guns or drugs or even really money per se. It’s water, or, more specifically, water rights.

That’s still a big deal in so-Cal; almost all of Los Angeles’ water comes from the Colorado River, and to this day it remains a source of great contention. It may just be peanuts, however, compared to the global conflicts to come in the world of “blue gold.” Pure, safe drinking water is not to be taken for granted in the 21st century, and indeed may prove to be far more precious than oil ever could be in not so long a time, in a galaxy not at all that far away. Within this century, many scientists, civil and military planners and financial speculators predict, water wars will be upon us.
Hartford Advocate