Water
The resource the world built its assumptions on and is now losing the predictability of. It covers groundwater and the changing water cycle, the conflicts over shared rivers, what water costs and what it is priced at, desalination, farming, factories and data centers, contamination, floods, water law and markets, and six regions where the crisis has arrived. Brought to October: the Rhine at Kaub at a record low, the imposed cuts on the Colorado River, the Indus treaty held in abeyance, Thames Water's rescue fight, and the desalination plants struck in the Iran war. Where the field argues, over private ownership, the PFAS rollback, and water markets, each side makes its case before the evidence. Five worked examples, from the Colorado River's arithmetic to the Saudi alfalfa case.