A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

Summary

Summary of "A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent" – The Daily by The New York Times

Episode Title: A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent
Release Date: May 6, 2025
Host: Sabrina Tavernisi
Reporter: Alyssa Rubin
Duration: Approximately 28 minutes

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Introduction

In this episode of The Daily, host Sabrina Tavernisi engages with seasoned war correspondent Alyssa Rubin to explore the escalating water crisis in Iraq, a region historically known as the Fertile Crescent. Rubin delves into how extreme heat and diminishing water resources are transforming Iraq's landscape, exacerbating socio-political tensions, and threatening the livelihoods of its inhabitants.

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The Intensifying Climate Crisis in Iraq

Alyssa Rubin sets the scene by recounting her experiences driving through Baghdad amidst scorching temperatures expected to reach 121 degrees. She describes a landscape plagued by dead palm trees and numerous animal carcasses, painting an almost apocalyptic picture of the region's plight.

Alyssa Rubin [00:28]: "There was a feeling of something almost apocalyptic that was happening."

Sabrina Tavernisi introduces the central theme of the episode, highlighting Iraq's severe water crisis and its implications for both the country and the broader Middle East.

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From War to Environmental Struggle

Rubin provides a segue from her two decades of reporting on the Iraq war to her current focus on environmental issues. She observes that even as conflict wanes, Iraq faces new challenges that disrupt daily life.

Alyssa Rubin [03:27]: "It was actually about hotter temperatures and ultimately an increasing lack of water. It was making it impossible to have a kind of civilized, normal life."

She emphasizes that the Middle East is warming at nearly twice the global average rate, accelerating water evaporation and depletion of vital water sources like lakes and rivers.

Alyssa Rubin [04:36]: "The Middle East was going to be the big problem. And it has to do with the changing climate."

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The Decline of the Fertile Crescent

Rubin discusses the historical significance of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, and how it has been transformed by environmental degradation.

Alyssa Rubin [05:26]: "It was Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers... And it had changed profoundly."

To illustrate the human impact, Rubin introduces Hashem Kanani, a farmer from Diyala Province, once known as Iraq's "Fruit Basket." Kanani shares vivid memories of lush orchards and thriving livestock, now devastated by prolonged drought and extreme heat.

Hashem Kanani [06:43]: "We had about 1,500 cattle... we used buffaloes before you had buffaloes."

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The Collapse of Traditional Farming

Hashem Kanani narrates the gradual decline of his farming livelihood as water sources dried up and crops failed.

Hashem Kanani [08:11]: "The rains that usually arrived in the winter stopped coming or were very meager."

Rubin describes the dire state of the irrigation canals, now shallow and contaminated with sewage, rendering them unusable for both crops and livestock.

Alyssa Rubin [09:49]: "There's nothing but sewage water. He said, you can't feed it to animals, even. You can't water your crops with it."

The stark reality forces Kanani’s family to sell their cattle, reducing their herd from 1,500 to just three animals, signaling the near-end of their farming heritage.

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Migration and the Erosion of Communities

As dwindling water resources make rural life unsustainable, residents like Kanani face the heart-wrenching decision to leave their ancestral homes. Rubin observes villages disassembling their own houses, a testament to the desperation and loss experienced by these communities.

Alyssa Rubin [12:06]: "They disassemble their house. So you come to villages which look as if they had been bombed."

Rubin visits a nearly abandoned village, once home to 5,000 people, now reduced to a mere 80 residents as sand encroaches relentlessly.

Alyssa Rubin [13:29]: "The village was literally disappearing from the map."

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The Grim Reality of Urban Migration

Contrary to expectations, Rubin finds that displaced individuals often migrate to the outskirts of major cities like Baghdad and Basra, settling in informal, makeshift communities. These areas lack basic infrastructure, are plagued by sewage issues, and offer limited economic opportunities, further entrenching poverty and instability.

Alyssa Rubin [16:01]: "The streets are not paved, the houses are makeshift... There is a very strong smell of sewage."

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Escalating Tensions and Violence Over Water

Water scarcity intensifies existing regional tensions, leading to conflicts over resource allocation. Upstream villages manipulate water flow, depriving downstream communities and inciting hostility.

Alyssa Rubin [18:38]: "When there's a lack of water... it's very easy to foment violence."

Economic desperation also makes young, unemployed men vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups, not necessarily out of ideological commitment but as a means of survival.

Alyssa Rubin [20:21]: "It's at least something people can bring home. And if you don't have other options, you're willing to consider that."

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International Dynamics and Limited Solutions

Rubin outlines Iraq's attempts to negotiate water access with upstream neighbors like Turkey and Iran, both grappling with their own water shortages and population growth. However, these diplomatic efforts yield minimal results, as both countries prioritize their national water needs.

Alyssa Rubin [21:56]: "Turkey will allow a small amount more water in for a short period, but it doesn't really resolve the problem."

Other potential solutions such as cloud seeding and desalination are largely inaccessible to Iraq due to high costs and geographical limitations.

Alyssa Rubin [23:42]: "Desalination plants are expensive, very expensive."

Moreover, Iraq's heavy reliance on outdated agricultural practices, where 75% of its water is used for farming through ancient irrigation methods, hampers conservation efforts.

Alyssa Rubin [23:16]: "Their irrigation techniques go back to Sumerian times."

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Broader Implications and a Warning for the Future

Rubin reflects on Iraq's situation as a precursor to global climate challenges. She warns that regions with unstable governments and limited resources are particularly vulnerable to environmental stresses, leading to increased poverty, conflict, and mass migrations.

Alyssa Rubin [24:58]: "This is happening in places all over the world... It was a window on my future, wherever I might be living."

She underscores the risk of a "less stable world" driven by climate-induced hardships and reduced international cooperation.

Alyssa Rubin [27:26]: "A less stable world and a more selfish world."

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a poignant exchange between Rubin and Kanani, encapsulating the despair yet resilience of those facing environmental collapse.

Hashem Kanani [28:00]: "No, I don't think so, but I think it couldn't get any worse than it already is."

Rubin leaves listeners with a somber reflection on the urgent need for global action to address climate change and prevent similar futures in vulnerable regions worldwide.

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Notable Quotes

• Alyssa Rubin [00:28]: "There was a feeling of something almost apocalyptic that was happening."
• Alyssa Rubin [03:27]: "It was actually about hotter temperatures and ultimately an increasing lack of water."
• Hashem Kanani [06:43]: "We had about 1,500 cattle... we used buffaloes before you had buffaloes."
• Alyssa Rubin [16:01]: "The streets are not paved, the houses are makeshift... There is a very strong smell of sewage."
• Alyssa Rubin [24:58]: "This is happening in places all over the world... It was a window on my future, wherever I might be living."
• Hashem Kanani [28:00]: "No, I don't think so, but I think it couldn't get any worse than it already is."

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Final Thoughts

"A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent" serves as a critical examination of how climate change can destabilize entire regions, disrupt traditional ways of life, and fuel conflicts over dwindling resources. Through Alyssa Rubin's compelling reportage, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the human cost of environmental degradation and the urgent need for sustainable solutions.

Transcript

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[Alyssa Rubin]

So it's Saturday in Baghdad and we're driving east and a little south. It's supposed to reach 121 degrees today. Tomorrow, really for most of the next week, when I was doing this reporting in Iraq, we would leave sometimes at 5am before first light in order just to be able to bear the heat. Everything is dusty and everyone's pretty tired of this level of heat. As you drove out of Baghdad, there seemed to be no respite to the brownness of it. We're driving by large stands of dead palm trees with no leaves left, just the trunks standing up. And along the road, usually you would see people herding sheep. You'd see quite a few animals. And what we began to see was carcasses of cows, bloated and covered with flies. And this wasn't just one or two cows. I started to try to count them, but I stopped counting because there were too many. There was a feeling of something almost apocalyptic that was happening.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

What did you think when you were looking at this, Alyssa?

[Alyssa Rubin]

I thought that this was what would happen at the end of the world.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is the Daily as the Middle east braces for another year of extreme heat, longtime war correspondent Alyssa Rubin goes to Iraq, one of the hottest places on Earth, and tells the story of a new source of conflict, water. Today, Iraq's water crisis and what it means for THE It's Tuesday, May 6th. Alyssa, you are a war reporter. You spent over two decades covering Iraq, starting with the U.S. invasion in 2003. You and I were there together. We reported on many crises in Iraq, the war over all of those years. I left and you stayed. And you've recently turned your attention to a different kind of crisis. Tell us about that reporting.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, as the wars wound down, there was something still deeply unsettling. And it wasn't just the aftermath of war. There were cities where people weren't leaving their homes during the day, villages that were half empty, or even villages where I saw people leaving animals abandoned by their owners and just left to die. And really overcrowded hospital emergency rooms in some Places. These are things I expect to see during a war. But this was about something else. It was actually about hotter temperatures and ultimately an increasing lack of water. It was making it impossible to have a kind of civilized, normal life. And yet it seemed like almost no one was talking about it.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So it became very clear to you that water should be your focus, that water was going to be the big problem going forward.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Yes.

[Hashem Kanani]

And that.

[Alyssa Rubin]

That across the Middle east was going to be the big problem. And it has to do with the changing CL we can see in the last couple of years. In 2023 and 2024, there were record temperatures around the world. But in the Middle east, it's getting hot faster, about almost twice as fast as other parts of the world.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Wow. Twice as fast.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Yes. And if you think about it for a moment, that means water's evaporating more quickly in any place, any lake, any river, any irrigation canal. And this is true in many places. But it was just so stark in the Middle East. And what really struck me is that this used to be a place called the Fertile Crescent.

[Alexa Weibel]

Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

It was Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, two of the rivers that many, many people have heard of from their history books, from reading the Bible, from reading all kinds of mythology. And it had changed profoundly. So I wanted to see what it would mean for the people who were living at the edge of these changes, where it was most severe, and what it meant for them and their families. But more than that, for the region as a whole, what does it mean when a country doesn't have enough water?

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So where did you go to answer that question?

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, along with my translator, Ahmed Saleh, I went to the edge of Diyala Province, which is known as the Fruit basket of Iraq, or it used to be Good morning. And that's where I met a man named Hashem Kanani and some members of his family. And they had farmed there for generations.

[Hashem Kanani]

It was beautiful. All the trees of apricot and figs. The grandparents, they used to sit here in the afternoon, seeing the kids playing, the woman going to the canal. The water was pure.

[Alyssa Rubin]

He painted this bucolic picture. They grew all kinds of fruit trees, then grew vegetables for his family.

[Hashem Kanani]

We had about 1,500 cattle, and they.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Grew the fodder for the cows and the sheep and the goats.

[Hashem Kanani]

We had buffaloes before you had buffaloes.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Because they need a lot of water, don't they?

[Charles Schwab]

Yes, correct.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And his family made a good living off farming. They were modest farmers, but Surrounded by other farmers.

[Hashem Kanani]

Yeah, we used to fish here. We used to fish here. We used not to go to the market at all.

[Alyssa Rubin]

The water from the Diyala river, which fed these irrigation canals that crisscrossed his land, that was a big part of his life.

[Hashem Kanani]

Before. We used to drink from the canal.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And all through his childhood, this had been a place of bounty, of plenty for him.

[Hashem Kanani]

The change in the temperature happened when the desertification has started.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And then he told me he started to notice a change about 15 years ago.

[Hashem Kanani]

The water has become less like the rain.

[Alyssa Rubin]

The rains that usually arrived in the winter stopped coming or were very meager.

[Hashem Kanani]

So the lands got damaged and the.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Droughts became more frequent, and they lasted longer and were more severe. And now it's gotten to the point where he still plants, but hardly anything grows.

[Hashem Kanani]

We plant corn. It died, like, a few days ago. Yeah. If we can walk through, you know, and see.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Okay. He showed me his corn. He wanted me to actually feel the kernels so that I would understand how much effect the years of drought and heat had had on his crops.

[Hashem Kanani]

This is totally dry now. Recently dried up. Yeah. Because of the lack of.

[Alyssa Rubin]

It was shriveled and withered.

[Hashem Kanani]

Okra. Yes, Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And the okra, which was another big crop of his, was shrunken, and the leaves were all brow.

[Hashem Kanani]

And even if the water touches the skin, it would affect the skin.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And the irrigation canal was now really. It was shallow and brown. It had a kind of a green algae lying on top of it.

[Hashem Kanani]

This is sewage water, so no way we can wash it.

[Alyssa Rubin]

There's nothing but sewage water. He said, you can't feed it to animals, even. You can't water your crops with it.

[Hashem Kanani]

Even the fish that was in it died.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And that meant they couldn't grow enough grain to feed the cows. Or the grass didn't really come up for the sheep because there just wasn't enough water.

[Hashem Kanani]

The animals, they cannot tolerate drinking from this water with sulfur.

[Alyssa Rubin]

He recalled watching as the buffalo began to scrape at the earth, trying to find more water.

[Hashem Kanani]

Because of the lack of water, we sold the buffaloes.

[Alyssa Rubin]

That's when his family started to sell off their cattle and their sheep. And by the time I was visiting him, their 1500 head of cattle was down to only 3. Hashem told me that he didn't know how to keep this farming life that he's had going and how to pass it down to his children. And yet it's part of who his family has been. It's part of who he is, and it's Part of what that whole area of Iraq was like until now. Do you think your children will want to stay on the farm?

[Hashem Kanani]

We will try in every way to make them stay here and get convinced of the atmosphere of the. Of the farm. So we would, do, you know, the best we can to keep them here.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

What has become of Hashim?

[Alyssa Rubin]

He's hanging on right now, but there are areas where it's just been too hard for a family for too many years, and that's when people begin to consider moving, and they take everything with them. So they take the bricks of their house, they take the window, because windows are valuable and bricks are valuable.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So they literally disassemble their houses.

[Alyssa Rubin]

They disassemble their house. So you come to villages which look as if they had been bombed. Sabrina.

[Hashem Kanani]

Wow.

[Alyssa Rubin]

People did this themselves. I saw loading up a pickup truck with basically everything they had. Everything will be gone. It's this sort of deconstruction of a life, of a way of life right in front of you.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

What's an example of a place emptying out like that, of people moving?

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, I went to a village that. Well, it had used to be a village that had been quite agricultural at one time, apparently, which was hard to believe, because what had happened there was that the desert had begun to encroach. And the way it works is that literally, sand begins to blow, and it begins to blow over the roads, and then gradually, it actually is like snow. It covers the buildings. And we drove sort of through this more and more sand, and there wasn't a big sandstorm that day. This was just happening anyway because there were no plants anymore because of the heat and the drought to hold the earth. And this was a little community that had had, at one time, 5,000 people, but there were only 80 people left.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So the village was literally disappearing from the map. In a way. The people were leaving it, and it was turning into dust.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Yes. And I wondered where. Where do people go and what is it like for them when they get to wherever they're going? Is it really any better, or are the problems just different? 1.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

We'll be right back.

[Alyssa Rubin]

This podcast is supported by Sierra.

[Alexa Weibel]

We've all been there. Your flight was canceled, and everyone is trying to rebook at the same time.

[Charles Schwab]

Please hold. Estimated wait time is 25 minutes.

[Alexa Weibel]

Sierra is different. We build AI agents that talk directly to your customers so you can say goodbye to hold times and chatbots. Always friendly, always helpful, always ready. Visit Sierra AI to learn more. That's Sierra AI.

[Alyssa Rubin]

I gave my brother a new York Times subscription.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

She sent me a year long subscription so I have access to all the games. We'll do wordle mini spelling bee.

[Alyssa Rubin]

It has given us a personal connection. We exchange articles and so having read the same article, we can discuss it. The coverage, the options, not news.

[Alexa Weibel]

Such a diversified disc.

[Unnamed New York Times Cooking Host]

I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription so that we could share recipes and we even just shared a recipe the other day.

[Alyssa Rubin]

The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. You have all of that information at your fingertips. It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons. It was such a cool and thoughtful gift. We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food, we're on the same page. Connect even more with someone you care about.

[Alexa Weibel]

Learn more about giving a New York.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Times subscription as a [e-mail] gift get.

[Alexa Weibel]

A special rate if you act before May 12th.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So the land is drying up. Farming is becoming untenable as a way of life, and people are fleeing their villages. You set out to see where they were going. Tell me about that.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, my expectation had been that people might go far away. But in fact, what I found is that first people's instinct is to stay close to home. They move a few miles to a place where they think there might be either more water and they could do a little farming if they're farmers, or where they think they'll be able to get jobs. But where they tend to end up is on the periphery of, in Iraq's case, its largest two cities, Baghdad and Basra. And around the periphery of those cities, what's developed are very quite large, sprawling informal settlements that are not officially part of the city. So they're kind of the worst of both worlds. The streets are not paved, the houses are makeshift, sometimes patched together. They're made of mud and concrete and whatever people have been able to put together. And there is a very strong smell of sewage because in fact, ironically, people were looking for water. But if anything, there's less water, because in poorer countries you might find pipes and some kind of sewage system. But in these informal settlements, there's not even that. The chance of education is less, probably less than if they'd stayed in their village. And many people have trouble finding work. They end up in manual jobs like construction, where you're paid a small amount and a day rate and it may not last. Or there are brick factories which are horrible because they're so hot.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So the upshot here for people who move like this is pretty grim. I mean, essentially, they're impoverishing themselves by moving.

[Alyssa Rubin]

They're impoverishing themselves, and they are severed from a landscape they knew and often community networks that at least supplied a sense of solace and familiarity in the new place. It will work differently. And urban areas are not kind. They're difficult places to know how to maneuver. So people in rural areas, in the countryside, they are aware that life on the edges of big cities will be difficult. So what you get is people were actually taking up arms in some of these stressed villages and fighting to make sure they don't have to move and even killing each other.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Like war over water.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Right. When there's a lack of water in general, what it does is create an awful lot of tension, an awful lot of antagonism and hatred, and the kind of environment in which it's very easy to foment violence. And I couldn't even believe it until I went and talked to some of the people in those villages and understood how it worked. And it's pretty straightforward. Upstream villages, in places that are water stressed will build, like a little dam or put in a gate that stops the water from flowing downstream. And then they take the water until they've taken as much as they need, and then there's not so much to go to the next downstream village and even less for the village after that. And after this happens several times over, people get angry, and they're willing to attack people in the neighboring village who are doing that. Another piece that feeds into conflict is that because people are poor and it's hard to find jobs, and especially young people, they're at the beginning of their lives, but they don't have much to hope for. It's very fertile ground for recruitment by different kinds of armed groups and extremists. These are groups that are, you know, they will pay to have you work as a soldier, essentially. And that's at least something people can bring home. And if you don't have other options, you're willing to consider that.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

It's not necessarily because they've become believers in it.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So in other words, a lot more young people, particularly young men, unattached and kind of unmoored, who, because of this water problem, are potentially fertile ground for recruitment.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Yes, that's right.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So, Alyssa, what can Iraq do? It seems pretty stuck.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, what they have been trying to do for years is to get their upstream neighbors to allow more water into Iraq through the rivers. And both of those very large rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, begin in Turkey. But the Tigris is also fed substantially by Iran. And both Iran and Turkey, both of them are part of this same water stressed region of the Middle East.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And both are like Iraq, countries with growing population and like Iraq have large farming sectors and need the water themselves in a time of climate stress and faster rising temperatures. Those are all true of those two countries as well. So you have, in a sense, too much demand on those two rivers now from the region as a whole.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

I would imagine that that adds up to some reasonable amount of conflict as well. Right. That these countries are kind of at odds over the sharing of the water more and more.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And a couple of years ago, Iraq threatened to take, I think, Iran to the World Court. They never did. They have threatened and tried to negotiate in varying amounts with Turkey, mostly trying to negotiate. And sometimes Turkey will allow a small amount more water in for a short period, but it doesn't really resolve the problem.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Okay, so that's an international avenue. It's trying. What else is Iraq doing here? What other options does it have on its plate?

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, one thing they could do is conserve more water, especially in their farming methods. Right now, about 75% of Iraq's water is used for farming. And the reason for that enormous amount is that their irrigation techniques go back to Sumerian times. Wow. When it was the Fertile Crescent. So they still flood their fields. And it's hotter now. More water evaporates, water runs off. But getting people to change how they farm, how they've done something for generations, is really difficult. So Iraq's been trying, but it's probably going to take at least a generation.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

And there are other options in the region that are not so available for a variety of reasons. One of those is what smaller countries like the Gulf countries are able to do, like cloud seeding. They have a lot of money. They put chemicals into the clouds and that helps sometimes briefly produce more rain. That's something Iraq hasn't been able to do.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

And why can Iraq not do it?

[Alyssa Rubin]

It's quite expensive to set that up. And it works a little bit if you can do it in a small area. Iraq's a big country, so that's not a particularly fruitful avenue for them. Another avenue is desalination. That's something a lot of countries in the Gulf do. Saudi Arabia does it. More and more countries in the Mediterranean are doing it now, too.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Israel does it. Yeah.

[Alyssa Rubin]

But Iraq, if you look at the map, remember Sabrina, it has a very, very small coastline.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Right. There's not much coast.

[Alyssa Rubin]

It's tiny. Where would it get that water. It's largely a landlocked country and desalination plants are expensive, very expensive.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

So that's not easy for them.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So, Alyssa, stepping back for a moment here and just looking at the big picture. Iraq is in many ways an extreme case when it comes to the effects of climate change. I mean, all of these things we've been talking about that could possibly happen in the future as the world heats up are actually happening now in Iraq. But given that the country is such an extreme case, what does it actually mean for the rest of us? Like, how should we understand it as an example?

[Alyssa Rubin]

Well, what I felt as I watched it was that it was a window on my future, wherever I might be living. Because this is happening in places all over the world. In smaller places, maybe it's the hottest areas of California or the wildfires that we just recently saw there or the increase in hurricanes in Florida.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Right.

[Alyssa Rubin]

There are many places now that are having periods that are very hot. And there are countries now which are almost completely without any fresh water resources at all. And that is true, really, almost across the Middle East. There are a few exceptions, but not many. This is like more than the canary in the coal mine. It's just a little ahead of where a whole raft of places in the world are going to be. And some places the United States might be, one of them will figure out ways to muddle through. They're organized. They have a government that more or less works. They have money and they're able to focus on making changes. Countries that are poor, countries that have weak government or very nearly failed states, or if you look at the Middle east, countries that keep having conflict, Syria, Lebanon, they can't do long term planning. It's just not part of what's possible when you have conflict. So they are going to become harder and harder and more and more awful to live in. And people will get poorer, the places become more unstable and that spills over into neighboring countries, into various kinds of climate migration, and leads to a rather not just a poorer future, but one with an awful lot of suffering. Living in heat with too little water is a recipe for instability, but also disease and a complete lack of hope for large areas.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Fundamentally, the common thread is a less stable world.

[Alyssa Rubin]

A less stable world and a more selfish world. Sabrina. That's the way I would think of it.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Alyssa, thank you.

[Alyssa Rubin]

Thank you, Sabrina. So do you think it will be better next year or do you think things are going to get better?

[Hashem Kanani]

No, I don't think so, but I think it couldn't get any worse than it already is.

[Alyssa Rubin]

We'll hope that's true. Thank you.

[Unnamed New York Times Cooking Host]

Hi, it's Alexa Weibel from New York Times Cooking. We've got tons of easy weeknight recipes, and today I'm making my vegetarian mushroom shawarmapitas. This recipe is just built for efficiency. You toss your mushrooms and red onion in your spices, throw them in the oven. By the time they're done, you've chopped your cabbage and you're ready to assemble. It feels crazy that this takes just 20 minutes of active time. It's just delicious. New York Times Cooking has you covered with easy dishes for busy weeknights. You can find [e-mail].

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Here'S what else you should know today. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel was preparing for a major new military operation in Gaza, and his cabinet approved a plan to mobilize tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers to seize and hold territory there. The threat comes after two months in which Israel has blockaded and bombarded Gaza and appeared to be its latest attempt to pressure Hamas into resuming the release of Israeli hostages. And the Trump administration said that it would begin offering a $1,000 cash stipend and a free flight to undocumented immigrants who willingly leave the United States, its latest attempt to encourage self deportations. It's unclear how enticing the compensation will be. The White House said that one migration from Honduras has already taken the government up on the offer and flown from Chicago back to his home country. Today's episode was produced by Rochelle Banja and Claire Tunischetter. It was edited by Liz O'Ballon with help from Paige Cowett, contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McConnell, Husker and Sophia Landman, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Runberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.