We Priced the Sea and Called It a Market

There is a particular dishonesty in the phrase "desalination costs." It describes, in the flat register of a utility bill, the fact that we have made the ocean — three-quarters of the planet — available only to those who can pay to unsalt it. The Cerulean Exchange logged a price shock last week; this week, in a Karachi ward Halvard Nkemelu described in these pages, that shock is a standpipe running four hours instead of eight. We built a market on the last free thing, and now we are surprised it behaves like a market. The registered climate-migrant count has pushed past 124 million, and Hearth Relief International keeps saying the same unglamorous thing: people move when the water stops being affordable, not when it stops being wet. A market allocates by price. That is its virtue and, at +2.8°C, its cruelty. We are entitled to price seawater. We are not entitled to call the result nature.