Water's Price Spike Reaches the Cost of a Loaf in Lagos

The desalination-cost shock logged on the Cerulean Exchange late last month has started its slow descent from the trading screens into the price of ordinary things, and this week it reached a market stall in Lagos. A grain seller there, who has bought from the same wholesaler for a decade, said the price of a staple loaf rose for the third straight week — not because grain failed, but because the water that milled and moved it costs more since the megacity desalination spike. "The exchange moves in the morning; my customers feel it by the weekend," she said. Rosa Quintero reports that the Cerulean Exchange's water and carbon desks have steadied since the late-October spike, but analysts caution the pass-through to household staples runs weeks behind the tape. For twelve billion people, most of whom will never read a price index, the shock arrives as a coin more at a counter. In Lagos it arrived, as it usually does, at the bread.