When the House Loses
" The Inevitable Collapse of America's Dumbest City " In Las Vegas, they are obsessed with Lake Mead. The bathtub ring! The exposed mobster corpses! The doom-scrolling boat ramps leading to nowhere! Some years ago, I was at a convention in Las Vegas, and we were offered the city manager’s tour of the underground. As we wandered through tunnels under the Strip, I asked whether he thought there might be a water problem someday. “Water always flows uphill to money,” he said. In 2022, Lake Mead reached historic lows. In April, 2026, the Colorado River is doing swimmingly as early snowmelt swells its banks. So no problem, right? Nope. Higher global temperatures mean more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow. Peak runoff shifts to earlier. By summer, less water reaches the river, as evapotranspiration takes its cut and the snow is long gone. Snowpack acts as natural storage—when it melts earlier, more water flows into reservoirs, which are fuller and rele...
