A note here last month observed that day after day, the challenge of climate change compounds: that the problem gets bigger, while at the same time the remedial actions become more difficult. Specifically, as we work to reduce reliance on carbon-consequent fossil fuels for power generation, the production of nuclear power is hindered by rising temperatures and declining flows of essential cooling water in our rivers. For those who require a dramatic demonstration, the Romanian navy has obliged with a spectacular display of urgency: a “controlled explosion” to improve the flow of the record-low Danube River so that the country’s only still-working nuclear reactor can remain on line.

That previous sentence may overstate the success of that operation, since the Romanian defense minister did not claim that this is a long-term solution: rather, he said yesterday that “Any day past Wednesday or Thursday that the nuclear power plant functions is a gain,” while adding that the value of even one day of power output would be more than the cost of that demolition. To get past this Thursday will require a lot more work: “Romanian authorities also plan to sink several stone-filled barges to create an underwater barrier in the Bala branch while dredging the Old Danube channel and removing rock fragments released by the explosion to improve water flow,” according to one report this morning – but “it remains uncertain whether the measures will provide enough water to keep the plant’s second reactor operating.”

It’s difficult to grasp the idea that the Danube River might not be always a generous and reliable artery for Europe’s industry. The river is one of ten identified “Pan-European corridors”: it serves ten countries directly, with nineteen countries and 79 million people considered to be in its basin. It’s even embedded in global culture: Johann Strauss II wrote a waltz in 1866 entitled “By the Beautiful Blue Danube” – perhaps best known today as the spacecraft docking/landing sound track from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” One way or another, we all know this river, like we know the Mississippi or the Amazon or the Nile – to mention only the names that come most quickly to my mind, while people from other parts of the world would more likely think of others.

Regardless of where one lives, though, the overall role of rivers is massive. As tabulated by the World Wildlife Fund,

• 2 billion people rely directly on rivers for their drinking water;
• 500 million people live on deltas that can only be sustained by sediment from rivers;
• 25 per cent of the world’s food production depends on irrigation from rivers;
• At least 12 million tonnes of freshwater fish are caught each year, providing food and livelihoods for tens of millions of people.

The number of different systems, processes, industries, and nations involved in the question of “what about the rivers?” makes it far too big a subject for one week, but the key point that I really wanted to make this week is actually about time scale. Commonly, it’s considered to be a challenge to get people to care about climate change because the effects appear over years or even decades – while the costs and pains of doing anything about it are immediate. “I consider climate change the policy problem from hell because you almost couldn’t design a worse fit for our underlying psychology, or our institutions of decision-making,” said Anthony Leiserowitz (Yale Program on Climate Change Communication) in an interview in 2023.

But “climate change is not only a scientific abstraction or a political issue; it is a material phenomenon that is reshaping the environments in which people live,” observed a paper last year from a research team in Italy. The Romanian navy literally reshaped the environment with about 400 pounds of explosives.

If it takes a bomb going off to get people’s attention, and if altering the course of an iconic but now-dwindling river is what it takes to keep the lights on, that’s unfortunate – but if it makes the problem feel more real, then all we can do is share the news in a way that can help people believe they can do something about it.