On: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

Well, another Tuesday, another pronouncement of impending geological doom, this time concerning an aquifer in California. “Point of no return,” they say, with the sort of gravitas usually reserved for the final act of a particularly poorly written opera. One might think, given the sheer, unthinking scale of the universe, that a mere aquifer reaching some arbitrary point of no return on a rather insignificant planet would barely register as a blip on the cosmic radar, let alone warrant such breathless alarm.

The real question, of course, isn’t whether it’s reached a point of no return, but rather, what precisely was the return we were expecting? And for whom? We seem to have this rather quaint notion that the Earth, in its infinite patience, is simply a giant, self-replenishing larder, designed solely for our convenience. And when it inconveniently decides to stop replenishing, or at least, to do so on a timescale that utterly dwarfs our own frantic little lives, we throw up our hands in despair.

Satellite data, they trumpet, revealing “unprecedented detail.” One can almost hear the triumphant fanfare. As if the aquifer itself cares a jot about the resolution of our orbital cameras. It simply is, or rather, isn’t, in its own quiet, subterranean way. Perhaps the unprecedented detail should be applied to the collective human brain, to understand why we consistently ask the wrong questions about the things that sustain us, and then act surprised when the answers turn out to be rather less accommodating than we’d hoped. The universe will continue, quite unbothered, long after the last drop of that particular aquifer has been thoroughly, and permanently, misplaced.