What of the Future? - Climate Change Impacts on Freshwater Ecosystems - page 292

deserted after early morning, coming alive again only in the evening. Electricity
was rationed, so air conditioning was too expensive to use. Desperation had
urged a conversion of every scrap of cultivable land to maize growing. Other
crops did less well in the dry summer heat and fertilizer was used abundantly so
that the downstream river and reservoirs were permanently green except
immediately after torrential storms when the flood had temporarily washed the
algae downstream and turned the water deep brown. The power stations
demanded as much fuel from crops as they could get, for natural gas and oil
supplies were now so low that they were reserved for public transport and
manufacturing. In upstream sections, aquatic plants and filamentous blanket
weed nearly blocked the flow as they grew on the accumulated banks of sediment,
and were it not for the storms washing them out from time to time, it seemed
that the rivers might become just a series of eutrophicated wetlands dominated
by a few genera like Typha , which were such avid competitors that they overcame
everything else. The fish fauna was almost entirely of carps and catfish, some of
them deliberately introduced, and in the hottest years, tropical floating species
like water cabbage and water hyacinth took hold in the downstream reaches and
the edges of the reservoirs. Those ponds that were left, especially those surrounded
by cropland, were festering masses of floating duckweed, foetid and near
anaerobic below the surfaces and harbouring only the animals previously
associated with gross organic pollution.
There had even been outbreaks of water-borne diseases not recorded in the area
for centuries or ever before. For one thing, new species of mosquito had arrived
and become infested with malaria from immigrants and travellers from Asia and
Africa. For another, new viruses had invaded or mutated in the warmer conditions.
And for a third, despite desperate attempts to maintain energy supplies through
solar panels, wind and biomass burning, there were frequent power cuts, when the
processes at the water purification works were interrupted. Cholera and typhoid
were still not common but a variety of gut bacteria made life even more difficult
for a population whose former culture had been deeply undermined. Life went on,
though the frequent interchange that had typified the street and café culture
previously had been replaced in summer by long withdrawn siestas in the heat of
the day that led to a more isolated society preoccupied with family affairs. There
was less interest in communality; the heat led to a sapping of energy and the
landscape was so intensively cultivated that much of its charm had been lost.
Summer walks through the fields and remaining woods were no longer so appealing
and the confidence that had formerly been placed in the central government's
ability to solve problems had been lost. It seemed there was a danger of lapse into
the near anarchy of former city states, each looking to its own affairs.
Peninsulas and islands
On the western fringes of Europe, the River Seventine was the main waterway of
the island of Hibscotia. The island had had a wet and windy climate for many
centuries with cool winters and slightly warmer summers. Sometimes the summer
temperatures reached 20 °C but typically they were around 15 °C and in winter