China's water crisis is three crises in one

Plus: Maybe women should quit housework [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a dry river bed of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [Climate-induced droughts]( can cause even more climate change. - [Women should quit housework]( next week. - [Deepfake photos and videos]( are almost too easy to make. - Give us [phone](! What’s left of the Yangtze. Photographer: STR/AFP/Getty Images Water, Water Nowhere Apocalypses are, by definition, bad. But in popular culture and imagination, they are usually at least understandable, if not manageable. With zombies and plagues, for instance, all you’ve got to do is avoid getting eaten/sick, and you can rebuild society, and you’ll have a much easier time making dinner reservations. The climate apocalypse kind of felt that way for a while. Sure, we would all get hotter and the seas would rise, but humanity would figure it out, like it always does. Just give everybody solar-powered air-conditioning and build big sea walls around all the cities. Simple! But the climate crisis is turning out to be way more complicated. The US is getting [once-every-thousand-year]( rainstorms weekly now, but the water is coming from places like the Rhine and the Yangtze, which are drier than they’ve been in centuries, revealing ancient statues, [dinosaur prints]( and that pair of sunglasses you dropped in 1998. Worse, the sudden absence of water will make it harder for China, the world’s biggest CO2 polluter, to de-carbonize. The [Yangtze is the fuel supply for thousands of hydroelectric stations](, including the world’s biggest, notes David Fickling. The severe drought has China turning to the dirtiest fuel, coal, for power generation, making future droughts even more likely. (Adding insult to injury, coal is expensive and [misallocated around the country](, David notes in the latest [Elements]( newsletter, which may yet be renamed Apocalypse Now.) In fact, vast swaths of Asia rely too much on hydro power generated by waters melting from the Himalayan mountains, David warns, and too little on wind and solar. They’ll need a better balance, especially if some of this water is never coming back. Women of the World Unite Fun facts about gender roles in America: - Women do, on average, 47 minutes more housework per day than their male partners. - Men have, on average, 40 minutes more leisure time per day than their female partners. Hmmm. Can you, through the magic of “math” and “human decency,” see what is wrong with this picture? If men spent just a little more time doing dishes and laundry than posting at r/ElonMusketeers or whatever, they could close that gap, writes Sarah Green Carmichael. This would not only make them better partners, but it would help [solve our society’s whole gender-pay problem](, Sarah notes. Because women who take on the burden of extra chores at home pass up opportunities to make more money at work. If men can’t be bothered to make this small sacrifice on their own, then Sarah proposes women can achieve parity by simply walking off the job. Quitting housework for the rest of the year on Aug. 29 should roughly cover the difference. Bonus Working Reading: Young people have [unrealistic expectations about finding meaning]( at work. — Allison Schrager You Won’t Believe Your Eyes The good news: With AI, any person can create a photorealistic image of almost anything they can imagine. The bad news: With AI, any person can create a photorealistic image of almost anything they can imagine. We’ve long known “deepfake” photos and videos were a looming problem, but it was always sort of easy to imagine they’d be limited to the Dark Web or Russian hackers. Instead, new tools are [putting this technology in the clammy hands]( of anybody with an internet connection, writes Parmy Olson. You want a photo of Donald Trump playing golf with Kim Jong Un? Parmy can whip a few of those right up for you: Illustration by Parmy Olson Illustration by Parmy Olson Will we use this power for good, or for evil? Hahaha. For evil, of course. As Parmy notes, in the good old days, we could never trust anything we read on the internet. Soon we will no longer be able to trust anything we see with our own eyes. Telltale Charts Whole world love iPhone! Shiny shiny. But old iPhone make us sad. Sad sad. But Apple this year am give us [new iPhone several days earlier]( than usual! This am good for global phone industry, say Tim Culpan. Also for whole world, which as mentioned before love iPhone. Happy happy! Trading down is [no longer the exclusive province of lower-income]( shoppers, writes Andrea Felsted. Big earners are making trips to Walmart these days too. Further Reading Europe shouldn’t ban Russian travelers. In fact, it [should encourage a brain drain](. — Bloomberg’s editorial board President Joe Biden’s student-loan relief plan [doesn’t do enough for older borrowers](. — Alexis Leondis Biden should [listen to GOP concerns]( about a new Iran nuclear deal. — Bobby Ghosh The [GOP keeps boosting crank candidates](, to its electoral peril. — Jonathan Bernstein Jay [Powell is actually beating inflation](, haters — Karl Smith [Don’t abandon value stocks]( now. — Aaron Brown ICYMI Millions of Americans are at [risk of electricity shut-offs](. The Ukraine war has [exposed Russia's military weakness](. [Watch a superyacht sink]( off the Italian coast. Kickers Janet Jackson song has a [tendency to crash hard drives](. Puppy eyes [manipulate human emotions](. Bird-watching [started off as bird-killing](. It took two photographers nine months to take [this spectacular photo of the moon](. Notes: Please send moon photos and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( | [Ad Choices]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022