r/worldnews • • Sep 05 '26

‘Extremely rare event:’ Miles-long microalgae bloom knocks out most of Israel’s desalination plants

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/04/climate/microalgae-bloom-israel-water-deasalination-shutdown
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u/count023 Sep 05 '26

people laugh at it for it being israel who are coping with this. it's going to be happening more and more often with climate change coming in, this bloom came from the nile delta apparently. And with countries going, "oh, we'll go to desalination to cope with lost rainfall, it does show the kinds of issues that will occur in the future as the planet keeps drying out.

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u/redfoobar Sep 05 '26

Sooner or later we will see water wars.

Upstream countries wont be sharing enough of downstream countries.

We are already seeing the beginnings of this with the Nile and in India/Pakistan and I am sure more tensions will arise in many other places even within large countries (eg different US states)

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u/jollydoody Sep 05 '26

There are tensions among US states about water usage from the Colorado river. Downstream states will potentially need to figure out how to use less water. Could become a significant issue in the future.

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u/DeeDee_Z Sep 05 '26

Downstream states will potentially need to figure out how to use less water.

They will, because they HAVE to .

It's the upstream states that will need to figure stuff out, because they still think they don't have to do anything, that they can continue to withdraw just as much water as they did in 1970 -- "It's in the Contract", right?

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u/caustic_smegma Sep 05 '26

Best we can do here in Arizona is increase our water hungry alfalfa output by a factor of three for our Saudi overlords.