The short story that we read, The Tamarisk Hunter, gave the possibility of the future with global warming effects. It describes a land controlled by the government, where water is the scarce liquid gold that everyone needed to survive. In the story, Lolo, the main character, is making a living, in some respects, by saving the water.
The water is fought over and through that, two economic classes are formed in California: those with a surplus of water and those who have to work very hard to get water to live. The ones with the water control everything. The author, Paolo Bacigalupi, writes, “The problem was that 4.4 million acre-feet of water was supposed to go down the river to California. There was water; they just couldn’t touch it,” (Bacigalupi 174). The people who own the water are the upper class of people and that left everyone else to toil in the heat. It seemed as though this theme felt like one from 1984 by George Orwell. It agrees with the idea in that book that a large part of the population has an idea that they are being mistreated, but they have no true idea how badly they have it. In both stories, the lower class has no way of moving up to the higher class either. It gives a sense of jealousy, as well as a need to understand more. Lolo is unable to figure out how to get more water without stealing and he thought it would be his end.