It is a testament to the staggering, monolithic stupidity of the human race that we insist on building our most densely populated hives in places that actively want to kill us. A new analysis has dropped—likely onto a desk made of endangered mahogany—revealing that half of the world’s 100 largest cities are currently sitting in “high water stress” areas. Thirty-nine of them are in “extremely high water stress.” In layman’s terms, for those of you who still think water comes from a magical fairy in the wall, it means the demand is exceeding the supply. We are drinking the milkshake faster than the planet can refill the cup, and the straw is making that horrific slurping sound that signals the end of the party.

Naturally, the reaction to this news will be the same as it is for every existential threat facing our species: a collective shrug, followed by a performative tweet, followed by the purchase of a twelve-dollar bottle of artisanal spring water imported from a glacier that melted three weeks ago. The report specifically names Beijing, Delhi, Los Angeles, and Rio de Janeiro as some of the worst offenders. This is perfect. It is poetically just. These are not merely cities; they are monuments to mankind’s arrogance. Los Angeles, a sprawling concrete tumor in a desert, has spent a century stealing water from its neighbors so that aspiring actors can water lawns that have no business existing in that hemisphere. Delhi and Beijing are choking on their own industrial vomit while simultaneously draining their aquifers to manufacture plastic garbage that will eventually end up in the ocean, which, ironically, is the only water we’ll have left, and we can’t even drink it.

The report cites “poor management of water resources” and “climate breakdown” as the primary culprits. Let’s decode that, shall we? “Poor management” is the polite, diplomatic euphemism for the kleptocratic incompetence that defines modern governance. Whether it’s the bloated, red-tape-strangled bureaucracy of the statist Left or the deregulation-fetishizing, profit-worshipping greed of the corporatist Right, the result is identical: the tap runs dry. The Right views water not as a human right, but as a commodity to be privatized, bottled, and sold back to the dying at a premium. They’ll tell you the free market will solve the drought, presumably by incentivizing the clouds to rain via tax cuts. The Left, meanwhile, will hold a summit. They will fly to this summit on private jets, eat filet mignon, and draft a non-binding resolution declaring that water is “good” and dehydration is “bad,” before returning home to their gated communities where the sprinklers run on a timer regardless of the apocalypse outside.

And then there is the “climate breakdown” aspect. We are watching the ecosystem collapse in real-time, and the collective response is to argue about gas stoves. The sheer cognitive dissonance required to live in a city like Rio de Janeiro, where water is everywhere but often too toxic to touch, is staggering. We have engineered a world where the infrastructure of survival is crumbling under the weight of our own reproduction and consumption. We are paramecium with credit cards, consuming everything in the petri dish until the nutrient agar is gone, at which point we will turn on each other with a ferocity that will make the current political polarization look like a tea party.

This analysis highlights that withdrawals for “industry” are competing with withdrawals for “public water supply.” This is the crux of the joke. We are using the water we need to survive to manufacture the junk we don’t need, which in turn accelerates the climate change that destroys the water supply. It is a suicide pact signed in ink we can’t afford. The industries in these high-stress zones are churning out fast fashion, disposable electronics, and endless streams of data servers hosting videos of cats and conspiracy theories, all of which require massive amounts of water to produce and cool. We are literally trading our hydration for distraction. We are drying up the rivers to fuel the content mines.

Do not expect a solution. There is no political will to fix this because fixing it requires sacrifice, and the modern voter—left, right, or center—views inconvenience as oppression. The right-winger will scream tyranny if you tell him he can’t water his golf course in a drought; the liberal urbanite will nod solemnly about sustainability while taking a forty-five-minute shower to wash away the anxiety of their useless existence. We are not sleepwalking into a water crisis; we are sprinting into it, checking our stock portfolios on the way down. The aquifers are collapsing, the rivers are shrinking, and the cities are swelling. Nature is batting last, and unlike us, it doesn't need to drink.