The future of America (and, indeed, the world) will be characterized by widespread and increasingly violent skirmishes for control of the last sources of precious, precious water. Currently, we're in phase one: the legal battles.

The state of Florida has sued the state of Georgia, in the U.S. Supreme Court, because Florida says that Georgia is using more than its fair share of water from the Chattahoochee River, which flows south into Apalachicola Bay. Georgia counters: nuh uh.

Alabama, which also uses that water, may be suing one state or another at some point in the future, too.

You may read each state's statements here in the Wall Street Journal if you like. They may be summed up as: "I want my water" (FL); "I want my water" (GA); "I want my water" (AL). None of it really matters. Even if there is not enough water to go around, everyone still wants all the water they've always had. (Try telling a wealthy suburbanite outside of Atlanta that they must let their lawn shrivel up and die. Try!) We humans have "poisoned the well," so to speak. The well is The Earth, and the poison is the environmental destruction that we have wrought, and we all shall suffer and suffer for generation after generation. The havoc is only beginning. After this relatively polite legal phase will come the violent phase of the water wars, which pit all against all in search of a single drought of life-sustaining liquid to parch our omnipresent thirst. There will be no winners. There will only be those who survive one day more, to face thirst and war again tomorrow.

Still all things being equal I'd rather have Georgia lose. Go Gators.

[Photo: AP]