Photographer : Brian MacIntyre
Whether you’re sitting on The Hill, screaming in the stands, or watching at home with your talking Boonie doll, we all know this year’s Ashes is important. For the sake of our national dignity, we need to win back that little urn.
But after reading the United Nations’ doomsday prediction, I got to thinking that in twenty years The Ashes might be more important, for everybody.
The Ashes of 2025 and the Water Wars of 2025—it could be the same event.
I think it’s safe to say that Australians enjoy sport more than war—so let’s designate The Ashes as a chance to fight over water. Instead of a tiny jar of old ashes, the prize could be an iceberg. The winning country gets to melt it down and live off it until the next Ashes series. It’s a relatively peaceful and entertaining way to fight the ‘Water Wars’.
Drought-stricken farmers could be given box seats, and everyone could drink beer—nothing much would have to change… Except we’ll be living in an unbearably hot, dry and inhospitable world, where cricket will have to be played at night, in winter.
It was the English who sent a bunch of us out here in the first place, to the driest inhabited continent on earth. They’ll have to deal with the consequences. I’m afraid the English cricket team must bear the burden of their forefathers’ penal code.
With rose-coloured glasses on, maybe 2025 won’t be all that different from today. A 55-year-old Glenn McGrath might still be resisting retirement and seam bowling perfectly. And with any luck we’ll still have a Boxing Day test. But with harsh water restrictions the MCG will be a dust bowl.
It’s obvious that without enough water to go round, everything will have to change.
As the world’s supply of water is limited, it’s becoming a precious commodity all over the world—in the Middle East, many hostile nations share a pretty small patch of semi-arid land and desert. Populations are on the increase and water is running out… so perhaps it is only a matter of time until conflict breaks out.
In the future we’ll look back on past conflicts and wonder, ‘What on earth were we fighting about?’—oil…communism…even sacred land. When our very source of life is at stake, any other reason for war seems trivial.
Most of Australia has been in denial for a long time over our lack of water, and as a consequence we haven’t done much about it. It’s a bit like Shane Warne’s private life— an open secret, but we’d rather focus on his bowling averages.
Six years into a new millennium we find ourselves facing the real limitations of the world we live in. Our sunburnt country is becoming drier, faster than ever before.
Nearly half a century ago, US President John F. Kennedy said “Anyone who can solve the problems of water will be worthy of two Nobel Prizes —one for peace and one for science”. Now, it’s obvious that there is no one person who will be able to solve “the problems of water”. Instead, it has become the responsibility of everyone.
Saving water is something that every single person can do. Every small business, corporation, and country can improve water conservation and management. Not only can we do this—we have to.
It’s Time. It’s time to decide that our era of denial is over—we can’t ignore our environment anymore. Australia needs to tell our government that looking after the environment is the same thing as looking after people. It’s not just about rainforests in distant Brazil or platypus breeding in the Murray-Darling—this is about something bigger. It’s called the world.
How do I know this?
Darwish, A 1994 ‘The next major conflict in the Middle East: Water Wars’, Geneva Conference on Environment and Quality of Life, June,
http://www.mideastnews.com/WaterWars.htm
Trappleton 2006, Water Shortages, ActNow
http://www.actnow.com.au/Issues/Water_shortages.aspx
United Nations 2006, In Remarks at Launch of UN-MTV Partnership on world water crisis, Secretary-General Appeals to Youths to Care, Conserve, and Join Search for Solutions, 9 August,
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sgsm10590.doc.htm
