The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, is now an environmental and ecological disaster of monumental proportions. In the 1960s, the rivers that formed its primary source were cavalierly damned and redirected in the interest of developing agricultural land for the growing of commercial crops, notably cotton. The Sea has largely vanished, and a vibrant fishing industry and the towns that depended upon it as a way of life are lost.
I have used periodic tilings of the plane to emphasize the concept of "surface": the thin and fragile surface upon which we live. We continue to abuse it at our peril.