In 2050 I’ll be 67 years old, retired, living on a farm somewhere in rural Jordan and spending most of my days shaking my fists at the clouds as they pass by. In the late evening I’ll sit on the front porch in a rocking chair sipping lemonade and polishing my rifle. So as you can see my original plans to retire somewhere on Mars have been replaced and I’ll tell you why.
Because of Global Warming the summers will be much hotter and the winters a lot colder.
I’ll be living on a farm because in 2050 there will be 10.2 million people living in Jordan and I’m guessing at least half will be in Amman (which is currently 2.3 million to Jordan’s 5.7 million).
Keep in mind these are Jordanian citizens and this is based on the current birth rate compared to the expected changes in the birth rate as well as the economic devolopment in the country. So you’ll still have more Egyptian workers and Gulf tourists.
So if you think the traffic jam in Amman was bad last summer then you ain’t seen nutin yet.
The birth rate suprisingly is going down. This is due to health services encouraging family planning which should and probably will play a larger role in the next few years. Not to mention that more women are putting off marriage for education. The biggest category being 15 to 19 year old women. According to the Jordan Times:
According to the latest available data, women in this category give birth to 26 out of 1,000 live births, down from 30 to 50 in 1997.
But all this aside for a moment, yes it’s important but not as important as water, which is something we will have a lot less of by 2050.
I wonder if it will get to a point where the government will allow one shower per week per family member. Or the closing down of car washes. Or arressting people (especially egyptian workers) who are so careless and wasteful with water that washing their car or sweeping the front yard means creating an artificial river of water in the street. (By the way I think they should start arressting people for that now as it is, but thats just me)
Will they shut down Amman Waves and that other water park they’re building at the dead sea? Heck isn’t the dead sea supposed to be dry by like 100 years? (By the way I think they should close these places down)
More hotels, more pools, more homes, more people, more wells, more cars, more traffic congestion, more heat, more thirst, more tourists, more just about everything…except water. And all the progress you could ever imagine, every economic reform, every advancement in the business sector…none of this will matter if you don’t have water.
Which is why I suggest you all buy rifles because unless something is done now to meet population growth, by the time our generation retires the next generation will be jumping over our walls to get to our water. It’ll be a scene out of Dawn of the Dead, except American blue collar zombies looking for human blood are replaced by undead Jordanians looking for H2O. The next big conflict is not about land or oil, it’s going to be water, or lack thereof.
Not only Egyptian workers, Jordanians are truely careless when it comes to water consumption. Even though they are keen on whining when water runs in their pipes once or twice maximum in a week.
You’re right about the water conflict, some think the third World War will start because of water this time not oil.
But whether there will be water or not, I know I want to retire in a farm.
Excellent retirement plan Nas!
I guess we have something to worry about!
I`d like to say that I really enjoyed reading this post, you’ve got talent. awesome!
Riffle? I guess by 2050 there will be something more like a pen to shoot with:p
Water has always been a problem for Jordan, but the bigger probelm is knowing that and not doing anything for it.
IN winter, the streets are floaded with water not mentioning the accidents that occur or even the houses that are floaded. So instead of building all those new bridges in Amman they could do something for the infra structure, the way the streets are made. I mean seriously the money they spend in beautifying Amman they could use to build concave streets so that the water flows to the rimms and then build manholes or “masaref”. That water can be purified and reused. Imagine how much water we would have then, if we save the water of each winter?
I’ll leave u with the numbers!
Promises, I think concave streets might be very costy to Jordan.
The World Wide immoral solution to the problem would be privatization of water which means you get water only if you can afford it…!
Don’t forget Israel’s major role in the ME water crisis. The have taken all Palestinian water resources along with Syria’s Golan heights which is the key headwater to Jordan River.
SC, I was waiting for someone to blame Israel. This time, it’s SO true. Haev you seen the Jordan River trickle lately? And people think it is green there because God has blessed them. But since we can’t control them, let’s take responsibility for Jordanian water waste.
My hippy/socialist dad was saying the next war would be over water back in the 60s (yup, now you can all call me Xaalto kinzi). He made us brush teeth without leaving the tap running, take two minute showers, only flush the obvious stuff and wouldn’t plant grass in the garden. I’m thankful now.
One huge source of water waste you all don’t see is that every diplomatic residence in the city has an RO water filtration system that wastes 3 cubic meters of water a week. I’m trying to get some Embassies to do something about it.
privatization of water would be a disaster. We would end up with Air pollution due to the lack of showering:p
Not to mention the crisis that occured years ago, when Ammans water turned all green and full of algea. Tunred out ;as most of you should already know; that in the Jordanian-Israeli water agreement, it wasnt mentioned what kind of water was addressed. So jordan ended up with greann-sandish water, not mentioning its smell…
I dont know what this has to do with the issue, but felt like mentioning it 😀
Some projections from here (click)
* The Annual Renewable fresh water Available Per Person ranked by 1990 Availability in Cubic Metres
Country 1955 1990 2025
Kuwait 147 23 9
Qatar 808 75 57
Bahrain 1,427 117 68
Saudi Arabia 1,266 306 113
UAE 6,196 308 176
Jordan 906 327 121
Yemen 1,098 445 152
Israel 1,229 461 264
Tunisia 1,127 540 324
Algeria 1,770 689 332
Libya 4,105 1,017 359
Morocco 2,763 1,117 590
Egypt 2,561 1,123 630
Oman 4,240 1,266 410
Lebanon 3,088 1,818 1,113
Iran 6,203 2,203 816
Syria 6,500 2,087 732
Turkey 8,509 3,626 2,186
Iraq 18,441 6,029 2,356
Sudan 11,899 4,792 1,993
* Figures of population growth in the Middle East leaves little room for optimism.
— nar
Yeah, seriously…people should stop having so much kids?!
I mean if u make JD150/month why would u have 8 kids? To increase poverty and start blaming the government?
Please,please no more kids!
Very well written! This summer while I was visiting in Amman I was appalled to see how much water hotels consume. Even when an entire neighborhood had no water that week, there were these huge water tankers that were filling up the hotel’s water supply, and of course all the pools, fountains, etc were completely functional. I understand the need for tourism money, but I couldn’t believe the surrounding neighborhood was still left without any clue as to when they would be getting water again!
Iâ??ll cover the back of the house if Iâ??m still alive in 2050, if not; surround the water tank with lasers like they do with famous paintings…lets at least make it a challenge
More info on this…the Disi underwater reserve that in 1993 we were told was being saved untouched for 50 years and would commence production of water in 2043…well it seems we started using it in the water crisis of 1996…
FAMILY ANICDOTE: Dad’s upstairs neighbors got pissed last week because he was using the excess building water, from the guard’s feeble attempt to wash the front stairs, to water the grape vines in the garden instead of letting the water go into the sewer…so true to his passive aggressive nature dad has decide that when the grapes are ripe for picking, he is going to send a bunch to each neighbor with a card that reads; ‘grown with your generous support and supply of run off water’
Nas, what next generation?…no water equals no life so if you want to live on that farm, you better pray that you can pull a Kafka and metamorphosis into a cockroach