A similar disaster is playing out in Mexico City: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/647180486/mexico-city-thirsty...

A similar disaster is playing out in Bangalore: https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/bengaluru-is-facing-a-te...

A similar disaster is playing out in Tehran: https://www.livescience.com/64235-tehran-is-sinking.html

And the "water tanker mafia" in Karachi:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/10/6455253...

Which inspired a VR game I made.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/510930/Thirst_VR/

Have you read this? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23209924-the-water-knife

No but that looks awesome. The VR game is based on a screenplay I wrote that is Blade Runner meets China Town. Water Knife looks like something I'd like. Adding to vacation reads list! Thanks!

It is a good book. Here's a copy/paste from the wikipedia article about the author's previous book, also set in a dystopian post-environmental-disaster environment.

The work won the 2010 Nebula Award[3], the Campbell Memorial Award[4], and the 2010 Hugo Award (tied with The City & the City by China Miéville for the Hugo Award), both for best novel.[5] This book also won the 2010 Compton Crook Award and the 2010 Locus Award for best first novel.

Paolo Bacigalupi is a good writer with a creative take on world building. Both The Windup Girl and The Water Knife (on topic for this thread) are good reads. His short stories collected in Pump Six and Other Stories are worth digging into as well if you like his novels. He goes into the potential effects of widespread gene modification and excessive patent protection of crops as well.

Really cool!

And Bangkok: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/216240...

There's a good deal of sinking happening in California as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/18/californ...

Not causing sinking, but if we drain this, agriculture in the US will be severely impacted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

"

Since the 1940s, pumping from the Ogallala has drawn the aquifer down more than 300 feet (90 m) in some areas. Producers have taken steps to reduce their reliance on irrigated water. Streamlined operations allow them to produce significantly greater yield using roughly the same amount of water needed four decades ago. Still, losses to the aquifer between 2001 and 2011 equated to a third of its cumulative depletion during the entire 20th century. The Ogallala is recharged primarily by rainwater, but only about one inch of precipitation actually reaches the aquifer annually. Rainfall in most of the Texas High Plains is minimal, evaporation is high, and infiltration rates are slow.[24] "

Subsidence is a widespread problem in the US:

Subsidence is a global problem and, in the United States, more than 17,000 square miles in 45 States, an area roughly the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined, have been directly affected by subsidence.

https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/subsidence.html

I can't readily find anything stating outright that there is subsidence associated with the Ogallala Aquifer, but my recollection is I have seen such in the past.

From the listed article, a 9% draw down since extraction started in 1950. I consider this a concern and actions should be taken. But it seems like there is plenty of time to take action, and there will be lots of continuing warning signs such as wells that need deepening. I'm for taking action, but I think global warming is a larger problem. Oh hey, global warming will probably exacerbate the Ogallal situation!

Also, in evil mind frame here, if USA loses out on cheap food, perhaps it will deal a blow to the obesity epidemic.

Currently in the US, 8% of grown corn is the stuff we eat, and 11% is devoted to sugar production (and some other stuff) - with Ethanol production and livestock feed accounting for 60% of the total usage[1]. If there were droughts we'd probably see Ethanol become price inefficient first, then livestock, and it's that 11% of corn that gets transformed into sweeteners that is really driving obesity in the modern world.

The other issue that seems to be related to obesity is the weird chemicals we're imbibing - both knowingly through food consumption[2] and unknowingly by their entrance into the food chain[3]. The USA really needs to get it's act together about finding out wtf is poisoning all of the people there and fix that. I'd love it if they could get their stuff together about fighting obesity - there is something fundamentally wrong with the western diet that is more prevalent in cheap foods and making some greedy people a quick buck while setting society up for a really heavy cost in the near future. A recent decrease in activity certainly contributes, but it's more than just a lack of exercise.

[1] Corn usage... leaning on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...

[2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325034.php

[3] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mzve/human-wast...

I'm not sure that cheap food, by itself, causes obesity. I suspect that it's more like flavor-enhanced food, and food that has calories but little other nutrition, cause obesity.

> “Decades of living dangerously in terms of water resource management, urban planning, waste and wastewater management, is taking its toll on the megacity. This is made possible by poor city planning, environmental and conservation policies, enforcement and practices.”

What are the chances that Indonesia’s incompetence won’t be incompetent at managing the environmental impact of their next capital city?

I recently had the chance to visit Jakarta after over 10 years away, and they're finally starting to get some things right. The recent emphasis on public transport is particularly promising: the first MRT (subway) line finally opened this year, there's a lot more on the way, they've beefed up the commuter railways, Jakarta airport T3 is head and shoulders above the old ones, etc. Some bloggage on the topic:

https://driftingclouds.net/2019/03/28/jakarta-by-rail-mrt-op...

https://driftingclouds.net/2019/04/01/jakarta-by-rail-airpor...

Much of the credit goes to recently re-elected president Jokowi, who's the least incompetent leader Indonesia has had in a while (possibly ever/since independence?) and who's also the prime mover behind the new capital idea. That said, I'm not entirely sold on the idea myself, the track record of other SE Asian countries trying this -- Putrajaya in Malaysia and particularly Pyongyang-in-the-tropics aka Naypyidaw in Myanmar -- are not encouraging.

http://www.thebohemianblog.com/2017/07/naypyidaw-myanmar-gho...

Yeah, and Putrajaya barely qualifies as moving the capital, given it's still part of KL's metropolitan area.

Forward thinking isn't in high regard in Indonesian culture.

Zero, but things will eventually adjust out of necessity.

I don’t have any links, but a large area around Johannesburg, South Africa was dewatered as a result of diamond mining.

I'm pretty sure that would be gold mining.