The Water Crisis Looms Large Over Our Planet

[RestoreGore]

edited for spelling.
crossposted from: http://www.water-is-life.blogspot.com

It is a tragic scenario we see playing out on our only home. With new predictions from scientists that Arctic glaciers may be gone within 23 years and glaciers around the world melting three times faster than worse case scenarios, what are we going to do to preserve the dwindling fresh water resources we are certain to see strained in the next fifteen to twenty years even more than they are now?

One-third of the world’s population is now in need of potable water which was a scenario not predicted to happen until around 2025 and which is now predicted to get worse unless things change drastically. We are nearly twenty years ahead of predictions on this and yet we are woefully unprepared for the consequences. There is no other way to state this: unless we work to solve this global water crisis now, many of the poor and malnourished in our world where this crisis is most dire will die.

A report by the International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka, put out last year painted a bleak picture of global access to fresh water and warned us that this Earth cannot continue by doing business as usual. The time for doing business as usual is over. However, are we listening?

We are reaching the breaking point in many areas of our world due to waste, pollution, mismanagement, lack of water infrastructure, inadequate water infrastructure, and privitization. However, the most damning reason for this is our own lack of will and a basic misunderstanding by people (especially in America) that water is an infinite resource that we can continue to use without any concern for tomorrow. It isn't. And we can't.

Therefore, areas where the poor are looking for a way to not only lift themselves out of poverty but also have a chance at survival must be shown ways to conserve water such as rain catchement, rain agriculture, and effective conservation. This also then ties into people in these areas having information about the climate crisis and its effects and how they can best deal with those effects. The Yellow River basin in China which feeds literally millions of people is just one example of resources exhausted to the point where they can no longer sustain life. Where would those millions of people go?

Just what are we doing?

Is it really that hard to bring better agricultural techniques to farmers in these countries? Is it really that hard to teach them how to deal with the affects of climate change? Is it really that hard to actually do as we say must be done?

* rain water agriculture- cheap, efficient, and saves water.

* rain water catchment (off houses and roads)- cheap, efficient, and saves water. And of course, the health and safety of those using it must also be taken into consideration.

* less water intensive crops that yield more to give farmers more for their planting.

* pressure bought to bear on governments to shore up water infrastructure and work to eliminate corruption and mismanagement.

* planting trees in the most deforested areas to bring water to the source and provide sustinence.

* also providing information and services for women and men in third world countries regarding birth control and health.

These are just some ways to begin which are all possible, but like with anything else those involved in it must also feel hope for the future.

As to how that should happen, we need a "Marshall Plan" (reference to the Honorable Al Gore's term from his book Earth In The Balance) to modernize Africa and look at the priorities of those who live there and in other areas of our world where the climate/water crisis will change their relationship to the planet instead of just throwing money at it (but it cannot be disputed that money is also important, though not the only factor.) But action must begin now or the need for water globally will far exceed capacity to provide it. However, by doing the moral thing we could actually decrease global demand by half. I think the choice is clear, and it is a choice we all have to make.


Water is life

[Deep13]

1. That "one third" includes the entire continent of Australia,...

..the U.S. Southwest and a bunch of other places that would occur to people as being arid.

[RestoreGore]

5. Yes, so that 1/3 is more than likely a conservative estimate

[Whisp]

2. Blue Covenant by Maude Barlow

http://www.mcclelland.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780771010729

i've been planning on picking this one up.

About this Book
------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Inconvenient Truth of water.
“Imagine a world in twenty years, in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic wastewater service in the Third World, or to force industry and industrial agriculture production to stop polluting water systems, or to curb the mass movement of water by pipeline, tanker and other diversion, which will have created huge new swaths of desert."
“Desalination plants will ring the world’s oceans, many of them run by nuclear power; corporate nanotechnology will clean up sewage water and sell it to private utilities who will sell it back to us at a huge profit; the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remote parts of the world left or sucked from the clouds by machines, while the poor die in increasing numbers. This is not science fiction. This is where the world is headed unless we change course.”
— Maude Barlow
Dubbed “Canada’s best-known voice of dissent” by the CBC, Maude Barlow has proven herself again and again to be on the leading edge of issues Canadians care deeply about. In Blue Covenant, Barlow lays out the actions that we as global citizens must take to secure a water-just world — a “blue covenant” for all.

[RestoreGore]

4. I respect Maude Barlow immensely

She knows what she is talking about. Thanks for the link.

[Hydra]

3. We need to deal with it

and we need to kill the corp. vampires that are capitalizing on the problem.

-more efficient desalination

-no more mega-agriculture(especially using petroleum based fertilizers)

-shutting up the churches that tell their followers that birth control is ungodly

[yella_dawg]

6. One sick and twisted point.

Sea level rise, and temp rise, will generate more water vapor in the air. On average, rainfall totals should go up worldwide. How that will work out as a tendency to limit drought is hard to judge.

[Deep13]

7. An even sicker response:

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas.

[Whisp]

8. k&r

[lovuian]

9. Water Woes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TcDor0rk98

Get those desalination plants going people

[RestoreGore]

15. Don't you think desalination plants are just a bandaid?

And actually a reason for people to not consider conservation? From my research of them they also expend much in CO2 which only exacebates the problem, and the brine collected is put back into the ocean and in many instances is a threat to marine life. Don't get me wrong though, there are areas in the world such as the Middle East that need them, bowever, in areas here I believe they should only be considered as a last resort. But if you can persuade me otherwise, I'm all ears. ;-).

[lovuian]

16. People are going to be thirsty and need water now

Believe me Desalination is not cheap water and while they do it they will conserve because its going to be expensive

Hate to tell you this but we are in the Last resort mode now

Australia has started its production of Desalinaztion plants right now

It takes three years to build its not an easy process

California really needs them as well as Florida
Texas has one already Dow's plant

Up North is where its going to get interesting

[RestoreGore]

19. This is a very comprehensive report on desalination

http://www.pacinst.org/reports/desalination/desalination_report.pdf

For me I tend to see its use not as the answer, but only part of the solution. I could support smaller plants that follow stringent environmental guidelines regarding marine life where the water would be used for agricultural and other purposes in order to conserve the fresh water we have for human use.

[Gregorian]

10. It's a population crisis. We need to be accurate and honest.

All of the water that has ever been on earth is still here. There is another factor in the equation. And since one of them is constant, it is the other that is the problem. Population.

Of course now that we're all here, we have to deal with the "water issue". And oil. And all of the rest. All of which is a function of population.

Until we address the real cause of the problems we see, there is no real solution. Just patches.

Are we ever going to mention this unmentionable? I mean, we can't even talk about it in agreement on this forum, of all place. Only a few seem to see it. It's staring us in the face. It really is the elephant in the room.

I have a great uncle by the name of Harry Kuljian who wrote a book in which one of the chapters was dedicated to the great water problems of the future. This book was written around 1960. He saw this coming. There were no water problems yet. He saw this population explosion happening. We may not be multiplying at the rate that we were when Ehrlich wrote his book, but we're already in trouble with the population that caused the global warming. That was long before we hit six billion. Do people not see that we are only going deeper into the red as we get larger and create more carbon footprints?

[RestoreGore]

17. yes, it;s called connecting the dots

unfortuntately it seems many people have a problem connecting them. BTW, what was the name of the book your great uncle wrote? He sounds like a very prescient man.

[Gregorian]

23. I think it is---Man and the World of Science

Wow. After writing this, I did a google search for Harry Kuljian. I think this is the book-

http://www.amazon.com/Man-World-Science-Harry-Kuljian/dp/B000MPMCL8

Not only that, but I found my own reply to one of your posts on water, on DU, from 2006! Haha.

There's also a 1961 Time article on him. He's a lot like my dad. You might look at that article. There are good people in this world. And ones with money. He had big plans for a world where people all lived at a good standard.



I come from an extremely vigilant family. My dad's side. My mother's side is a bunch of Bush loving fundies. I don't know how she escaped their madness.

Harry Kuljian was the founder of the Kuljian Corporation. They built some of America's first nuclear power plants. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

Unfortunately everything I own is densely packed away in storage. It would be impossible to find that book.

I have been thinking about what is wrong with modern societies. At least ours. Almost everyone in this society wields more power than the greatest kings that lived before us. Hot water, lights, cars... People are using the fruits of modern technology without the slightest idea of what they're doing. I think many people actually do not know what happens when they flip a light on. I was raised by an engineer. We learned exactly what was going on. And we were taught to be frugal because of it. By an early age I was taught to turn lights out when not using them. I see the most flagrant behavior in this country. And it's not conscious. People expect this. I am so offended by most of the behavior in America. It's asinine. But people don't even realize what they're doing. People need to know the processes they are using. They need to know how the things work that they are controlling and using. Only then can they grasp the ramifications of their actions. Only then can they actually be responsible. We have a long long way to go before we even address global warming, let alone turn it around. I'm far from optimistic. And I believe that global warming will not turn around because of a conscious effort. It'll happen because people are human. And humans have an absolute reality. I'm not sure how to say it. But we are way out of line with nature. And like warming lobsters, people don't see it. We're WAY out of line. We could have lived this luxurious lifestyle had we not had the families of ten. Had we not grown greater than a billion people. We had hydroelectric. But now no matter what we do, we're in trouble. We cannot sustain both the population and the consumption. And I argue that we cannot sustain the population under any circumstances. That bottom line reality is obvious to people, whether they are aware of it or not. I am in my fifties, and almost everyone I've ever known does not have children. Our eyes told us that something was wrong. But we're going to all suffer. I have. Immensely. Try finding a place to live where there are not car noises. I've been on nearly a twenty year search. And now am without a home. Thus, the storage. Every place I've owned, except the 200 acre ranch that had intolerable hellish summers, had encroachment of housing, or idiots in their CARS.

My fingers won't type any more. And you probably have heard enough. I'm thoroughly disgusted. I just wish more people would wake up. One more thing- there will be government intervention at some point, if we have a "good" government. But that is only going to demonize. And it won't be fair. I mean, if we calculated the amount of energy people had used in their lifetimes, we could see just who was the bigger user. And we would allow people who didn't use as much more energy than others. But how fair is that? And that would curb people like Al Gore from running all over the globe talking about using energy. It's a mess.

[RestoreGore]

25. Thank you for your wonderful response

I'll be looking that article up. And in response to your other comments, I try everyday regardless of what I read or see to have hope. However, I admit there is a dwindling of it of late as I see people still not even trying to understand the consequences of their actions. I was taught from a young child to understand what happens as a result of my actions and the repercussions good or bad fo them. I was taught to be inquisitive and not just accept what is told to me, and to NEVER EVER blindly trust government regardless of party, because that is not what Democracy is all about.

Therfore, living in this world today where it seems so many do none of those things is very frustrating because the results of it are being seen now. Will that moral ephiphany suddenly strike us as a global community to turn this around? I used to think it would happen on its own, but now I am beginning to believe there will have to be a catastrophic environmental event that triggers it, and then depending on the event it will be too late to do anything about it.

Some people I have talked to still do not believe that part of the Greenland ice shelf can fall into the ocean and raise sea level enough to cover the Florida coast. They think the world is too huge for them to have any effect on it. I sometimes do not know if that is just ignorance, or willful denial to get out of responsibility for doing anything to try to mitigate it. However, there are as you stated good people here as well who are doing all they can to help turn this around, or at least prolong the worst effects. So while I may have lost some hope, I do believe we have to do all we can now to try to turn at least the most catastrophic effects of climate change around to the point that our chilsren and theirs will have a shot at it, even if we are demonized for it.

[Gregorian]

28. That also is a hopeful post.

Thanks. I cannot put into words what just went through my mind as I read your post. Obviously, knowing that I'm not alone. But also that our state of mind is the foundation of our lives and of our perception.

It has been an interesting morning. I have been tuning into a London based radio station. Resonancefm. Today there was a show on bicycling. But more along the lines of the social and cultural side of it. To ride a bike is to see firsthand the power that people control and use and abuse. I may have already mentioned this. But I think it is an extremely important observation. The show this morning was discussing what it's like to ride among the cars. And also how there was the connotation that biking and communism were somehow connected. And how it was even demonized, because of the apparent dangers that existed when bikes got onto the roads with cars. People dressed up in black clothing and had races. But more than that, there is the freedom of movement with a bike. The lack of much need for other people to be involved in supplying "stuff". Like gas and oil and parts and even roads.

Anyways, I'm off to go ride. It's absolutely gorgeous. There's a redwood forest waiting for me. People have no idea what they're missing. Sometimes I have to stop and laugh to myself as I fly through the woods, realizing that all over the planet there are people stressed out in their cars on asphalt roads. And I'm all alone with the trees.

Here's where I'll be in an hour-

By the way, right where my bike is I found a large arrowhead. That means this trail was used by American natives. It gives this trail a significant meaning to me.

[RestoreGore]

29. I wish I could be there in an hour

But I have to get on those asphalt roads and sit in that annoying traffic for a couple of hours to get anywhere near a place as beautiful as that. Thanks for the picture. It was my moment of zen for today.;-) You are very lucky. Enjoy your biking freedom.

[WinkyDink]

11. Seems to me an awful lot of people with offspring simply don't care enough about their futures.

By that I refer to any Republicans.

[RestoreGore]

13. You got that right

Living for the moment is all they know.

[L. Coyote]

12. What ONe Child Per Woman mean

at 25 years per generation

2015 = 7 billion people

2040 = 3.5 billion

2065 = 1.75 billion

2090 = 0.9 billion

[RestoreGore]

14. Blue Gold: An Interview With Maude Barlow

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/01/maude_barlow.html

A must read.

[Iris]

18. and some people still don't get it: "Just try to stop me, liberal rascals!"

"Just try to stop me, liberal rascals

I water, using my sprinkler system that I paid $6,300 to have installed, with fresh water from the municipal water source. I have it set to water every day at 11:30 a.m. I have six zones that water the grass, the shrubs, the roses and the azaleas. I don't buy into this "conservation" nonsense. It's a bunch of political theater drummed up by the liberal Michael Moore-worshiping Democrats."


http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/10/04/fromtheblogcl1004.html

[RestoreGore]

20. Yes, they make it political to excuse their selfishness n/t

[Iris]

24. That's a good way to look at it.

Not far from here (Atlanta) - Athens, GA is considering water rationing! But I guess that, too, is just an evil plot by the government.

[RestoreGore]

26. Nah, it's God's will

:crazy:

[kurth]

21. Have fewer people

[Kermitt Gribble]

22. Don't worry.....

didn't a Bush family acquaintence and the Bushes just buy a massive chunk of land in Paraguay that just happens to sit on top of one of the largest aquifers in the world? I'm sure they'll supply water to everyone in need.

[RestoreGore]

27. Yes, the Guarini Acquifer...

Oh yes, and I'm sure they will let you have a jug... if you can get past the guards at the military base. What criminals they are.

[RestoreGore]

30. Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1623487