Global Warming Vignette

The drought had lasted for years, water was rationed and tanker trucks were set up at strategic locations where men and women queued in long lines holding containers whose capacity was regulated by the water authority. Armed men walked up and down the line checking the containers and the ID of their bearers. Cattle lay dead in the fields, or pirouetted wildly in their thirst-driven madness. Brush fires burst out spontaneously; entire hillsides were blackened and smoldering, and the air was acrid with smoke and ash that burned throats and reddened eyes. The people in lines looked like bandits, wearing dampened handkerchiefs and cloths over their mouths. Some collapsed and lay where they fell, like the cattle in the fields. The states bordering Texas had set up road blocks to prevent people abandoning the Lone Star state and potentially overwhelming the water and other resources of their states. Pitched battles broke out between unofficial militias and the national guards of several states. Thirty-six states had declared disasters. The United States was threatening war with Canada over its curtailing of Columbia River water.