Rich societies with willing neighbors, such as in Southern California, can construct canals, pipelines, and pumps to import water. Rich societies with vast oil reserves, like Saudi Arabia, can use fossil energy to desalinate sea water. Rich societies with neither, like Israel, can come up with ingenious technologies to use every drop of water with maximum efficiency and can shift their economies toward the least water intensive activities. Societies with none of those options must develop severe ationing and regulation schemes ... [such] ... poor societies experience famine and/or conflict over water. (Meadows et al., 1992: 56)