Water wars

This week the Wall Street Journal had an article defending the idea that we will run out of resources. The authors argue that resource pessimists have always been wrong in the past, but that this time they are going to be right. The arguments they put forward are, however, the same as those in the past.

This passage caught my attention:

Competition for resources can get ugly. A record drought in the Southeast intensified a dispute between Alabama, Georgia and Florida over water from a federal reservoir outside Atlanta. A long-running fight over rights to the Cauvery River between the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu led to 25 deaths in 1991.

More here.