We might have reached the highest price of wheat in history. A lot of historical things happening as of late.
In times of famine, prices have of course been higher. Just for fun, the rider of the black horse in the book of revelations prices a quart of wheat at one denarius (a typical days wage at the time). If you go by the 4.4g silver content of the coin, that comes out to $3.64 per quart or $135/bu.
I'm an omnivore, and use tofu for meals on occasion. On my trip to the Asian market yesterday (cheapest price around), tofu was 50% higher than what I paid last trip two or three months ago (was $1.39 for House Foods 10oz - a common brand around here, now $1.99). Nothing's safe.
This isn't desalinating specifically for irrigation, but it is a source of water for irrigation that wouldn't exist without desalination.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-study-water-des...
Israel is not self-sufficient though; they import 80% of the grain they consume.
Very trivial to extend the idea to routing water from any of the thousands of lakes in Canada.
Vegas had a plan to do just that (though from Reno). These ideas aren't pursued because water is not scarce enough for them to be economically justified yet. If the time comes, they will do it and likely cheaper than you think.
If renewables eventually take over, we can even repurpose the existing oil pipelines. Likely need to widen them, but much cheaper than land use/zoning legal battles.
There was a plan to pipe water to California from the Pacific north west, and the projected costs for that were insane.
By the time the high price of water justifies projects on this scale, there will be blood in the streets, not water in aqueducts.
Civilization adapts quickly once somebody pokes the bear.
Sure, in theory there's plenty of water on the globe, and it's just a matter of getting it to population centers. In theory all we have to do to avert global warming in the first place is reduce our CO2 emissions. In practice both of those goals are essentially impossible, because it's a coordination problem and coordination problems are significantly harder than technological and economic problems.
Sorry, doomsday abandonment scenario is a complete fantasy, void of any logic.
People talk about colonizing Mars, yet suggest we can't pump water from point A to B
How much is all that central valley land worth with ongoing saltwater intrusion?
Where will you get the gigawatts needed to run all the water pumps? New hydro dams?
You are throwing out a solution as if it's easy and feasible. It is certainly not easy, and feasibility , well... We shall see.
Settlement patterns grow up water availability. There's a reason India and eastern China are densely populated while the Sahara has virtually nobody. The U.S. Southwest (LA, Vegas, Phoenix, and smaller cities in SoCal/AZ/UT/NV/NM) urbanized when we developed the technology to dam & control the Colorado River.
In 100 years, it's likely they'll be thriving communities in the Sahara, Canadian Shield, Siberia, etc. to make up for the increasing inhabitability of Northern Europe, the U.S. South & Southwest, Indian subcontinent, Middle East, etc. But that's cold comfort for the people who already live in the affected regions, who will have to migrate, die, or spend most of their resources on water infrastructure.