Month: February 2026

Data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, published last week in the journal Science Advances, reveals a sobering trend. Scientists investigated the impact of groundwater loss on global water availability. What they found is alarming: fresh water has been disappearing at an accelerating rate for years, and the drying of Earth is speeding up dramatically.

Nearly six billion people—three-quarters of humanity—live in the 101 countries identified in the study as facing a net decline in water supply. This portends enormous challenges for food production and increases the risk of conflict and political instability.

Their research confirms what we already see on the news daily: droughts and extreme precipitation are growing more intense. Although parts of the planet are becoming wetter, those areas are shrinking, while dry zones are expanding. The study—which excludes the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland—concludes that “Earth is suffering a pandemic of continental drying in lower latitudes.”

As the climate warms and vast swaths of land dry rapidly, humanity’s supply of fresh water is under serious threat. In the far northern Arctic regions, the loss stems from melting glaciers and drying subarctic lakes. But in southern, more densely populated regions, the primary cause is the overextraction of groundwater from aquifers, faster than nature can replenish them. Unregulated pumping by farmers, cities, and corporations accounts for a staggering 68% of total freshwater loss in areas without glaciers.

Seventy percent of the world’s fresh water is used for agriculture. As droughts intensify, more of that water comes from underground reserves. Yet only a small portion of it seeps back into aquifers. Most of the water runs off into rivers and streams, eventually reaching the oceans, where it becomes undrinkable salt water. That water can only be recovered through industrial desalination or if it returns as rainfall. But due to climate change, many of these same drying regions are receiving less and less rain.

Across the globe, regions are already suffering severe water scarcity, with devastating consequences for communities, ecosystems, and economies. In India, particularly in states like Maharashtra and Rajasthan, extracting groundwater for agriculture has caused wells to run dry, forcing entire villages to rely on water tankers. In the Middle East, countries like Jordan and Yemen face chronic shortages, with per capita water availability far below the threshold for scarcity.

California’s Central Valley, one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, has seen groundwater levels plunge due to prolonged drought and excessive pumping. Sub-Saharan Africa faces a growing crisis as erratic rainfall and high temperatures reduce the reliability of both surface and underground water sources, fueling migration and conflict. In parts of Chile and Peru, copper mining and industrial agriculture have drained aquifers, leaving Indigenous communities without reliable access to clean water. These hotspots are not isolated—they are early warnings of a global crisis that is fast becoming unmanageable.

Wake up, America. Enough with the silence. Enough with pretending that climate change isn’t affecting our daily lives. Water loss is already a major driver of poverty, displacement, and desperation. As we’ve seen in Gaza and elsewhere, water scarcity has even become a weapon of war.

If you’re not inclined to read scientific papers, read The Water Factor instead. It’s a novel with twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat, while also opening your eyes to the global water crisis.

                                                        Water Depletion Worldwide

Resources:

 Buechner, (Lack of Safe Water Far Deadlier than Violence. UNICEF report. Retrieved from https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/unicef-report-lack-safe-water-far-deadlier-violence?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=5&gad_campaignid=22789033677&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhsCaiNvsjgMVrSGtBh0uwjevEAAYASAAEgLEY_D_BwE

Website US News. (2023) Countries with the Worst Drinking Water. UNICEF report. Retrieved from: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/countries-with-the-worst-water-supply

Website,2025.They Drying Planet. ProPublica. Retrieved from PLANET

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 According to the UN, water is at the center of the climate crisis. THE WATER FACTOR, A RIGHTFULLY MINE NOVEL, is your chance to peer into the near future to a time of water scarcity controls by corporate criminals.  The story is a gripping tale of water scarcity and corporate wrongdoing. The Water Factor is a Firebird International Award winner for best dystopian novel and a Literary Titan recipient for best thriller.  It is available in ebook, paperback, and audio formats. It can be purchased on AMAZON, Barnes and Noble, and as an audiobook on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Locally, it can be purchased at Annie Bloom’s Books and Powell’s Books.  

 

The Air Shouldn’t Require Purifiers

When people hear the phrase human rights, they often picture courtrooms, war zones, and political speeches. But human rights aren’t abstract. They’re practical, personal, and of everyday concern. Britannica defines human rights as rights that belong to an individual simply by virtue of being human. The United Nations took it further in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing the “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace.

It’s a powerful statement. But here’s the question that haunts me: What happens when someone’s profit depends on your rights being violated? The answer lies in the details where the struggles of real-world human rights live. The first book in the Rightfully Mine series, The Water Factor, explores whether water, an essential of life, should be treated as a human right or as a commodity, bottled and traded on Wall Street.

In the newly released novel Antheia in the Thorns, the focus shifts to something we rarely think about until it’s taken from us–the air we breathe. In the novel, anthropologist-turned-housewife, Jennifer Russo, and an Antheia activist, Brian Adakai, fight a toxic threat most people have never heard of: Petroleum coke (petcoke)–a dirty byproduct of oil refining. Though rarely used in the U.S., petcoke often replaces coal in energy plants because it’s cheaper to produce and burns at a higher BTU. It’s also more polluting. Petcoke is shipped around the world, where it’s stored in dusty piles that affect air quality. U.S. refineries are the largest producers of petcoke, yet it is treated by Congress as someone else’s problem.

The damage doesn’t show up on corporate balance sheets. It shows up in smog and in people with asthma, allergies, chronic coughs, and in children who can’t run without wheezing or fall into ash piles to die while playing. It devastates communities that don’t have the political power to stop it. That is why petcoke isn’t just an environmental issue. It’s a human rights issue.

If the right to life means anything, shouldn’t it include the right to breathe air that won’t harm you? If freedom means anything, doesn’t it include freedom from pollution you never consented to? And if justice means anything, doesn’t it require environmental laws so corporations can’t hide behind loopholes and legal intimidation? Weakening the EPA and FDA is a travesty we shouldn’t allow.

In Antheia in the Thorns, Jennifer and Brian aren’t fighting a vague evil. They’re fighting against people with names. Oil entrepreneur Abdul Hammed Dillinger has built an empire on profit-first thinking. He has a legal shield in his attorneys, Amy Stuart and her lover, Jennifer’s husband, Jason Russo. They don’t need to win on truth. They only need to win by exhausting their opponents. To do so, they delay, threaten, and bury their opposition in paperwork. They manipulate the system until those fighting back are broke, discredited, or afraid.

This is how human rights are defeated in the modern world. It’s not always with violence, but more often with strategy. And that’s why I wrote this book. Because beneath the legal maneuvering and corporate shields is something more intimate: betrayal, grief, and the moment a woman realizes she has nothing more to lose. Jennifer isn’t a superhero. She’s a wife, a mother, a woman who trusted the wrong people. But when the air itself becomes dangerous, she discovers that courage isn’t about strength. It’s about the refusal to be silenced. “No! Our lungs are not negotiable.”

If you believe clean air shouldn’t require a purifier, if you’ve ever felt outmatched by systems designed to wear people down, if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to stand up when standing up costs everything, then this story is for you.

The ebook and paperback versions of Antheia in the Thorns are currently on Amazon at an introductory price. An audiobook will follow in a few months. If you decide to delve into the story, an honest review helps more than most people realize. It’s the most powerful way to help the truth reach new readers.

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Art can be purchased on my website and shipped free throughout the continental U.S. Contact me at marilynne@eichingerfineart.com with questions.