Leaving Las Vegas
The southwestern states are set to crash. Soon.
Like most, I have been gripped by the criminal war our criminal president with characteristic stupidity started with Iran. The repercussions will be far, wide and lasting. The impact on energy flow and supply chains is immediate, and the oil and LNG infrastructure being damaged by missile strikes will take years to rebuild. The ease with which Iranian drones and missiles have destroyed and caused US military bases to be abandoned, and allowed punitive strikes on oil infrastructure has been a lesson in the limits of imposing will through military power (again). Anyone remember Vietnam? This war marks a new chapter in geopolitics, the reality of shrinking fossil fuels and additional struggle for the average person from across sector inflation which will result. For Americans this means additional economic hardship and increased homelessness. For the poorest increased starvation will be a result.
This week I return to my original mandate as a writer, climate change, specifically the impending collapse of US western states from heat and drought, a crisis long seen coming. With California being the fifth-biggest economy in the world and essential agricultural powerhouse, compounded by nitrogen fertilizer loss from the war, food on our tables is increasingly at risk. Bellwether changes are at hand. It’s a new world.
No doubt most of you know since 2000 the Colorado River has been under a crushing siege, an intensifying 1200-year mega-drought. A February 2022 UCLA led study disturbingly found from 2000 to 2022 the US southwest mega-drought was the region’s driest in at least 1,200 years. The study was then published in the peer reviewed journal Nature Climate Change in February 2022. That article is irritatingly paywalled after the abstract as if you and I don’t need to know. Nice. The droll headline reads. “Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021.” Another study from AGU of the University of Arizona in their Geophysical Research Letters written with equal levity was titled, “Tree Rings Reveal Unmatched 2nd Century Drought in the Colorado River Basin.”
Oh, the wacky world of science writing. That may be the last humor in this article. We’ll see.
I was thinking happy thoughts — you know about the economic fallout of a $2 billion a day war ordered up by a demented “reality” TV show character, a former Fox News moron promoted to Secretary of War, (it’s called not defense anymore, folks), and a twirpy expressionless white nationalist Nazi, named Steven Miller, possibly the real president. The kind of kid who pulled wings off flies and the kind of people that order missile strikes on a girls school.
I was also thinking about agricultural failure, not just from the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz which includes critical fertilizer (a third-grader could have predicted this), but about that well-known western drought in upper and lower basin states. Already they have experienced a heatwave, weeks ahead of our lost normal that has resulted in hundreds of unwelcome records. With predictions of a “super” El Niño this summer, this year looks to be one of the hottest ever again rivaling 2023-2024.
This heatwave has featured temperatures dozens of degrees above average, ominous signs for intensified drought and perilous southwest fire conditions. Fires are already sweeping Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska weeks ahead of season, consuming more than one million acres.
These records are bad enough, but there is more to talk about. Sorry.
Not good, El Niño is on the way
2023 was the warmest year on records going back to 1850 with El Niño developing in the spring which warms the Pacific. 2024 was hotter still, as noted by both NOAA and Copernicus. 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024, but still near 2023 levels. The past three years were the hottest ever recorded on the planet and the past 11 the warmest recorded, once again, since 1850.
Currently, we are in La Niña conditions, the cooler of the trade wind cycles, but that is set to flip back to El Niño this summer. 2026 will once again be one of the hottest on record as GHG emissions continue to climb unabated. This imperils every person on Earth, but today I am focusing on the American southwest. Hence, the cheeky title of this article Leaving Las Vegas (apologies to Sheryl Crow), perhaps the poster child for human hubris and collapse, being built in the desert for no other reason than gambling, spectacle and decadent entertainment.
The dam nation of the basin states
The upper basin states consist of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The lower basin states are Nevada, Arizona and California. The 1922 Colorado River Compact also provided water rights to a portion of Mexico. This agreement was arrived upon at a time of unusual wetness for the region, over promising the resource before the signatories’ ink even dried. Inclusion of Mexico recognizes water is life and that the workings of the planet see no man made boundaries. We’ll see how that goes as the Colorado River dries up.
In total, the Colorado River basin provides irreplaceable water and power to 40 million people including twenty-nine Native American tribes. It’s essential in irrigating nearly 5.5 million acres of agricultural land, including California whose economy as mentioned is the fifth-largest in the world. Cities such as Los Angeles and Denver are in immediate danger too, as the Colorado River is reduced to a trickle, now barely reaching the ocean.
Less than half the normal amount of water flowed into Lake Powell in 2025 from the upper basin states last summer forcing farmers and ranchers to cut back on water use, fallow fields and eliminate jobs.
Power generation from the Colorado River
Although the Hoover Dam at Lake Mead is far more famous, power generation or the lack thereof starts at the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. The Glen Canyon Dam features eight power turbines that stop functioning at 3490 feet of water level. Under current conditions that level is expected to fall to 3497 feet by end of this summer.
Lake Powell water level, March 26, 2026
Lake Mead was 1064 feet above sea level March 21, down 10 feet compared to 2024 and 3 feet compared to 2025. If the surface of Lake Mead drops below 1,035 feet, only five of the seventeen Hoover Dam turbines can operate without damage called cavitation — explosive vapor bubbles which ruin turbine blades.
Currently, the lake is projected to drop to 1032 feet by November 2027.
Lake Mead water level, March 26, 2026
The plight of the Colorado River Compact is a result of far too optimistic assessment in 1922, fossil fuel-driven climate change (lack of snowpack on the mountains) and greedy overuse from an illness called capitalism. Capitalism depends on undervaluing resources critical to our very existence and exploiting them for mindless profit. It’s a sick system that is now on the verge of collapse. In addition to collapse induced by the Iran War, collapse is poised to start in the southwest.
The last straw for Las Vegas
When water falls below 895 feet above sea level at the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead will become a dead pool. The lowest intake will no longer take water in cutting supplies and power to tens of millions including cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego Phoenix, and Tucson.
Las Vegas has implemented a plan known as the “Third Straw.” It’s a $1.4 billion project started in 2008 and uncapped in 2015. It consists of a pipe 20-feet wide, three miles long and three pumping stations that run under Lake Mead. At a depth of 860 feet, this is deep enough to extract water and avoid dead pool status at least for a bit longer.
Among other things, Las Vegas is famous for extravagant water use. To the city’s credit, it has made serious efforts to conserve water in the last two decades.
Conservation efforts have reduced per-capita water use from 314 gallons per day in 2002 to approximately 140 gallons in 2024.
Southern Nevada has reduced its per-capita water use by 58 percent between 2002 and 2025, even as the population increased by approximately 876,000 residents.
Las Vegas has replaced around 200 million square feet green lawn with desert landscaping, saving more than 10 percent of Nevada’s Colorado River allocation.
The city recycles treated wastewater back into Lake Mead to use again, returned by the Colorado River, flowing back into Lake Mead.
Unfortunately, these efforts are merely staving off the inevitable dictated by loss of snow pack on the Rocky Mountains, increased evaporation from atmospheric heat due to unabated GHG emissions and short-term human thinking. The overburdened Colorado River is fated to fail.
It’s time to flee the southwestern states. The impending crash is an easy measurable, with just a few feet at both Lake Powell and Lake Mead literally changing the world. Texas is much the same, but that’s a different story.
It’s time to leave Las Vegas.
I'm with you, Vegas was never my kind of place. Give me an Adirondack trail, please.
Blissfully unaware describes people everywhere. Most people don't understand how anything works and have a sketchy knowledge of science and history at best.
By the time I was eleven I was reading the newspaper. I remember watching Nixon resign on a B&W TV. My father had a wonderful library of books of important authors. I was lucky, but can't remember "blissfully unaware." Maybe when I was three?
The best time to leave LV was 10 years ago. The next best time is today.