Chatter: Water, Security, and Conflict with Peter Gleick
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2023
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Water, essential to the emergence and endurance of life on Earth, has both spurred technological advances and driven many types of conflict. For the first time in humanity's long history with water, we are starting to suffer the consequences of widespread unsustainable water use, and we soon will face a crucial collective choice about what future generations' interactions with water will look like.
Hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick has studied the issues at the intersection of water, climate change, security, and conflict for decades; he recently wrote The Three Ages of Water to bring together much of his life's work on how water has shaped the course of human history and why acting now is so vital for fostering a sustainable hydrologic future. David Priess hosted him for a conversation covering his early interest in hydrology, the importance of interdisciplinary studies for water issues, early civilizations' relationship with water, ancient epic flood stories, early legal codes' attention to water conflict, the scientific revolution's water impacts, water poverty, the difference between so-called water wars and conflicts involving water, Hollywood's portrayals of water conflicts, NASA's GRACE satellites, the peak water debate, the path to a more sustainable future, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Three Ages of Water by Peter Gleick
The article "Water and Conflict: Fresh Water Resources and International Security," International Security (1993) by Peter Gleick
The article "Environment and Security: The Clear Connections," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2015) by Peter Gleick
The book Bottled and Sold by Peter Gleick
The Water Conflict Chronology project at the Pacific Institute
The Water at the Movies compilation by Peter Gleick
The movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The movie Mad Max: Fury Road
The movie Waterworld
The movie Quantum of Solace
The movie V is for Vendetta
The movie Dune (1984)
The book Dune by Frank Herbert
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.4 | Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair no bull, |
| 0:27.3 | and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.1 | Welcome to chatter. I'm David Priest. This week, scientist and author Peter Glick on Water Security. |
| 0:41.5 | There was a lot of pushback from the traditional security communities and now I think it's just |
| 0:48.0 | incredibly obvious but resources and environmental issues play a role in politics and security. |
| 0:54.1 | As populations have grown, as scarcity for water has increased, water has become more of a factor |
| 1:04.8 | in the violent events that we're seeing. I think it's a real trend in recent years. |
| 1:09.6 | One of the pieces of good news is people really care about water resources. They want safe and |
| 1:16.9 | clean and affordable water. They want healthy ecosystems. So there are plenty of things that |
| 1:21.3 | individuals can and are doing to raise awareness not just about the problems but in my mind about |
| 1:27.3 | the solutions. Peter, thank you for joining us on chatter today. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. |
| 1:38.7 | I have been following your work for some time as just someone who's curious about a range of issues |
| 1:44.6 | on climate change writ large but obviously the interaction with hydrology. You're at the center |
| 1:52.8 | of that and you've been at the center of that for quite some time. Let's go back a few years. |
| 1:58.2 | How did you first become interested in hydrology and specifically hydroclimatology back before it |
| 2:07.3 | was cool? What turned you on to the subject when you were getting started? Oh, so it's cool now. That's great. |
| 2:14.6 | I think so. I think we can make that claim. Good. Well, so I've always been interested in water |
| 2:21.7 | issues and environmental issues. I really came out of this basically from the environmental sciences. |
| 2:27.8 | I grew up in the 60s and the 70s. I went to college in the 70s. At a time when energy was a big deal, |
... |
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