Mort Rosenblum: Will we leave any water for our grandchildren?

ARLES, France — Among old Roman aqueducts and terraced fields in Provence, projects in the works to confront the vanishing water supply in America's Southwest seem like Band-Aid fixes. Why not just FedEx loose ice chunks from Antarctica?

That is no temporary problem, and it is worsening fast. At the rate we are going, the kids bouncing around this Thanksgiving weekend will need full-body coverings like Dune stillsuits to recycle the moisture left in increasingly hot air.

I've been obsessed with water since covering African droughts in the 1980s. As crops withered, families ate seed reserves. If no rains came the next season, they trekked toward greener pastures or died trying.

Today, arid zones expand while low-lying islands and coastlines flood. Climate refugees besiege borders in Europe and the United States. Neither walls nor coastal patrols will be able to stop a rising human tide.

Relentless dry spells are old as antiquity, and sensible people took what precautions they could. Multistory dwellings in pre-Columbian Arizona were finally abandoned after decades of drought in the late 1200s.

In southern France, the Romans built catchments, tunnels and high-arched stone bridges, still intact after 2,000 years, to carry water across mountains by gravity alone. Over in Spain, Moors from North Africa did much the same seven centuries later.

Arizona requires developers to prove new housing projects can provide water for 100 years. Then what? The Active Management Areas program is one among many shortsighted policies that local and foreign entrepreneurs find ways to circumvent.

A crusty Israeli hydrologist once explained it to me simply. When you need more water, you can either make more or steal it from your neighbors. As climate collapse surpasses tipping points, there is another. Use less — and use it wisely.

Various stopgaps in play come down to a simple basic question: If fresh generations manage to cool down the planet enough to breathe the air, are we willing to leave them without water?

Desalination can power homes and small industries, but it impacts heavily on marine life and arable land. Construction, pipelines and power supply cost billions. That still leaves the big users: agriculture and new high-tech plants in dry rural areas.

The Colorado River was already oversubscribed in 1922 when seven sparsely populated states divvied up a projected annual acre-foot flow of 16.4 million. That was later recalculated to 13.2 million. A century later, that diminishes at an incalculable rate.

Groundwater reserves, many too deep to recharge, are only guesswork. Volumes can be estimated, but not how much is too contaminated to use. Reservoirs and uncovered canals dwindle fast in the summer sun. Once flowing rivers have dried to sand.

Heedless state regulators allowed Middle Eastern and Asia operators to buy up land for the water beneath it. Almarai, a Saudi company, has grown alfalfa for years in La Paz County to feed dairy cattle after the kingdom squandered its own groundwater.

Now, a copper rush spurred on by the Trump administration is turning Arizona's most bounteous blessing into a curse. The state produces 70% of American copper, much of it places of rare natural splendor that belong to those future generations.

Of course, we need more copper and other metals to power a wired world. But how much? From where? And by what method?

The standard objection — "not in my backyard" — is a complex issue. Earth is a closed ecosystem, and everyone shares the same backyard. Other countries want the income and employment. Mining companies prefer Arizona.

For one, Hudbay Minerals in Canada eyes the sophisticated infrastructure, token taxes and lax regulations. An advertising charm offensive touts it as a local player that is making Arizona great. But its profits are banked in Toronto.

When mines play out and operators move on, open pits left behind draw permanent seepage that evaporates in sun, while draining scarce wetlands as subsurface streams change course. Damage is permanent to recreational land worth far more left unspoiled.

Reliable figures are hard to pin down but one study estimates that if the Anglo-Australian Resolution Mine near Superior hurdles legal obstacles from Indigenous tribes, it could use 250 billion gallons of water over its lifetime, not counting damage to aquifers.

Wherever metals are mined, we need to look at companies like Managem in Morocco. Its fast-expanding Tizert mine uses electric-powered heavy equipment, wi-fi networks for peak efficiency, and its wastewater is piped to Agadir for urban use.

Mines, of course, are only part of it.

A 1960 ad campaign proclaimed, "Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona." Lots of people did and came with them. Most adapted to the desert. Sun porches caught natural breezes. Adobe walls cooled homes in summer and warmed them in winter.

Riverbeds ran high in the monsoon, and thick stands of cottonwoods thrived. With citrus groves and leafy open spaces, swamp coolers were enough. Growth was inevitable and essential. But too many newcomers brought along their old ways of life.

Today, an infernal cycle is getting beyond control. The hotter it gets, the more people turn up the air conditioning, dig pools, water lush gardens and hang out on outdoor terraces sprayed with mist. It all adds up.

Electronic tools and toys, constantly upgraded with stuff few people use, spike the demand for yet more copper. And now, we talk about spending billions on temporary fixes and tradeoffs that only push the eventual showdown with nature down the road.

We need to look backward at ancient lessons gone unlearned. Two millennia ago, Romans tamed erratic rainfall for vineyards, orchards and waves of grain, with enough left over for lavish bathhouses and gardens.

Today, with a whole lot more people and a lot fewer freshwater resources, it is time to think about what we will leave for those kids romping around on Thanksgiving weekend.