India is Staring at a Water Apocalypse (asiatimes.com) 344
A combination of climate change, bad policies and political apathy is steadily pushing India into a catastrophic water crisis that threatens stability in South Asia. From a report: Recent studies document that glaciers feeding the Indian subcontinent's rivers will recede rapidly, while rapid ground water depletion poses an existential challenge to agriculture. The southwest monsoons remain the biggest source of water in the subcontinent. The monsoons lead to a combination of water sources supporting human habitats that includes glaciers, surface irrigation and ground water. But redundancy and surplus have gone missing from this once abundant system. Taking their place are galloping shortages.
Even the best-case scenarios are "scary," water researcher Aditi Mukherjee told Asia Times. Mukherjee is one of the editors of a landmark study that was published earlier this year. It predicts a terrible loss of the glaciers that dot the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region. "The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment [PDF]" says that even if urgent global action on climate change is able to limit global warning to 1.5 degrees centigrade, it will still lead to a loss of a third of the glaciers in the region by the year 2100.
If the temperatures rise by 2.7 degrees centigrade, then half the glaciers will be gone. And if the current rate of global warming continues and temperatures rise by 6 degrees centigrade, then two-thirds of the glaciers will melt away. This has major implications for India, China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. While the nearly 250 million who live in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region will be most impacted from the outset, another 1.65 billion people who depend on the glacier-fed rivers are primarily at risk. "Even if we look at the best case scenario, which means limiting global warming by 1.5C, we are looking at a 36% loss of glaciers," said Mukherjee. Further reading: Nearly two dozen cities in India will be out of water by next year.
Even the best-case scenarios are "scary," water researcher Aditi Mukherjee told Asia Times. Mukherjee is one of the editors of a landmark study that was published earlier this year. It predicts a terrible loss of the glaciers that dot the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region. "The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment [PDF]" says that even if urgent global action on climate change is able to limit global warning to 1.5 degrees centigrade, it will still lead to a loss of a third of the glaciers in the region by the year 2100.
If the temperatures rise by 2.7 degrees centigrade, then half the glaciers will be gone. And if the current rate of global warming continues and temperatures rise by 6 degrees centigrade, then two-thirds of the glaciers will melt away. This has major implications for India, China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. While the nearly 250 million who live in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region will be most impacted from the outset, another 1.65 billion people who depend on the glacier-fed rivers are primarily at risk. "Even if we look at the best case scenario, which means limiting global warming by 1.5C, we are looking at a 36% loss of glaciers," said Mukherjee. Further reading: Nearly two dozen cities in India will be out of water by next year.
They have a very large military (Score:4, Interesting)
Now would be a very good time for large scale public works projects. The kind nobody likes to pay for because why should we have to pay for somebody else to have water?
Re: They have a very large military (Score:3)
But they do provide a distraction (Score:2)
Left alone this will sort itself out. We will kill enough humans through wars and starvation and thirst that we reach equilibrium. Just like animals do. It'd be awful nice if we could act like humans for a change though.
And know this: You will not be untouched. A few reading this might make it as war profiteers. Most will see a massive decline in their quality of life as money that could have gone to you goes to feed the war engine.
Or we could just break that cycle (Score:2, Insightful)
Playing you and me off each other while they laugh all the way to the bank is what the ruling class has done for millennia. It's time to stop it.
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Re:They have a very large military (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than engaging in engaging in large scale public works projects, wouldn't it be better to simply reduce the population to a level that the continent can sustain? It's cheaper, less destructive and a more viable solution in the long-term. Projects aimed at feeding and watering populations that are growing uncontrollably are only delaying the inevitable, and will only make the famine and drought far worse when it does finally come.
The only viable solution is population control. India needs a one child policy, as do many of other countries. It's either that or, as you say, they'll be culling the population in a war once resources become scarce.
Re: They have a very large military (Score:2)
Re:They have a very large military (Score:5, Insightful)
The most effective population control is making sure women have equal rights and an education. Fertility naturally decreases as woman get more autonomy, opportunity and education.
And raising the living standards of women is a lot easier, less expensive and civilized than culling a population.
Re:They have a very large military (Score:5, Informative)
They already did. The fertility rate has been consistently falling for decades, and in rural areas it's well under the 2.2 sustaining level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The problem is that people are also living a lot longer and infant mortality rates are way down, so their population continues to grow for the time being.
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Rather than engaging in engaging in large scale public works projects, wouldn't it be better to simply reduce the population to a level that the continent can sustain? It's cheaper, less destructive and a more viable solution in the long-term. Projects aimed at feeding and watering populations that are growing uncontrollably are only delaying the inevitable, and will only make the famine and drought far worse when it does finally come.
The only viable solution is population control. India needs a one child policy, as do many of other countries. It's either that or, as you say, they'll be culling the population in a war once resources become scarce.
Because the one child policy worked out so well for China didn't it.
Lets ignore that it's impossible to enforce or that it requires fighting our evolutionary drive to produce children. China, with all it's might couldn't do either of those.
Do you even know why developing and undeveloped nations have more kids than western nations? Its because kids are the only form of support later in life when you're too old to do back breaking labour. In order to produce an environment where developing nations have
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That seems to be more a problem based on the culture rather than the one-child policy itself.
Re:They have a very large military (Score:5, Insightful)
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Look at the distribution. Look at the population density in Russia and Canada, for instance. Right now, the bulk of it may be frozen, but if climate change happens and the Arctic melts, then that would also make the bulk of those countries more habitable for vegetation. In which case, either more people can migrate there, if those countries allow, or they can export more food to the overpopulated countries, and the latter can figure out how to pay them.
Problem w/ the earth is not that it's overpopulate
Re:They have a very large military (Score:5, Insightful)
Their military would get its ass kicked by China, Pakistan is crazy enough to launch nukes, and the Indian military knows both of these. They aren't about to take on Bangladesh as it is even in worse shape than India. Their air force has no lift capacity and their navy is puny. They won't be on the move anywhere except in maneuvers.
Now would be a good time for large scale public works projects except the Indian government is drowning in inefficiency due to officious public servants at every level.
They cannot reduce their pop. because parents think of their children as their old age plan. As things get tighter, they'll simply create more with the idea being they'll need more in old age to support them.
In short, India is screwed.
India's birth rate is dropping just fine (Score:3, Interesting)
They're gradually getting the corruption under control too, but that's going to take help from the West. That means you need to go to the polls and vote for anti-corruption politicians in your own country. The kind of politicians who will stop interfering in other countries just to get cheap labor and goods. Short term you're going to pay a little more for things like Bananas and t-shirts. A very little more (labor isn't as much of the cost of goods as you think). Long term (10 years or so) you
Global Warming is the solution (Score:2)
All models show that a warmer earth will mean more rains and a stronger monsoon. India will be even more water surplus than it is now. Who cares if the Glaciers are melted to 30%. To maintain perennial water flow all you need is 10% of what the Himalayas have now. The rest just looks pretty without being usefull.
Time to burn more coal.
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The data says you are wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
India's fertility rate has been falling consistently for decades and is well under 2.0 in urban areas. Even rural areas are only at 2.3.
People aren't as dumb as you think they are, not least because there have been massive education campaigns and efforts to empower women to control their own fertility in India.
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They have a very large military .... Now would be a very good time for large scale public works projects. The kind nobody likes to pay for because why should we have to pay for somebody else to have water?
With a large military, you should be able to deploy them to those public works projects [indiatimes.com] under martial law, before you actually have to start killing people. Seems like they'd be executing against the actual meaning of "national security" to make sure people have water.
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and it will be on the move very soon if the rest of the world doesn't do something. When humans get too overcrowded we go to war to cull the herd.
Forced depopulation is a dead end. The problem isn't evil brown people or evil religion, feel free to swap brown or religion for your special brand of hate, the problem is human nature. As humans barely above the level of chimps, we wear more clothes than them, can say a few more words but we've still got millions of years of evolutionary responses hardwired into us. This evolutionary drive prompts us to have more offspring when resources are abundant. Lets say you manage to wipe our 3 our of every 7 humans
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So you want Indians to manufacture water?
Re:They have a very large military (Score:4, Funny)
A simple solution is of course to combine free enterprise with meaningful and thoughtful regulation.
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They are a threat to no one but Pakistan and Bangladesh, two other shithole countries that no one cares about. China will prevent them from getting too frisky should they decide to venture out of their hole.
You know India and Pakistan are nuclear armed nations?
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FYI the Muslim fanatics in Bangladesh and Pakistan are quite nervy about the Hindu fanatics in India
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Also, invading Pakistan for their water doesn't sound like a good plan.
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Also, invading Pakistan for their water doesn't sound like a good plan.
Better to invade Bangladesh then. In a few decades, half the country will be under water.
Re:2/3rds of the water and population on earth (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the EU's responsibility to counterbalance the third world's wanton disregard for pollution, resource usage and enforcement of regulations.
It's not the Western Civilisation responsibility to counterbalance the third world's wanton disregard for pollution, resource usage and enforcement of regulations
Meeting our demands for cheap labor (Score:3)
The recent (as of 7/4)
Re: 2/3rds of the water and population on earth (Score:2)
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Unluckily we all share the same planet.
Regardless, it's not the responsibility of Western countries to provide those who mismanage their resources a backup for their poor decisions. If Indians run out of water and don't know how to keep their rivers clean or harness ocean water, that's on them.
Or they can work on a water management and distribution network that channels waters from heavy rains and keeps everything flowing
Water Wars Have Been Predicted For Decades (Score:5, Interesting)
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After a few millions years all predictions eventually come true. They just happen to be lies or ignorance when they are created.
If we all had a dime for every doomsday prediction that lands we would all be Fat Kings dressed in the finest linens.
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Ah yes, the old tree argument:
Homeowner: How do you like my tree?
Farmer: Errrmm...a bit close to house, innit?
H: So?
F: Well, if it falls, then there goes your house.
H: Hah, that tree's been there 100 years, ain't fallen yet.
F: Goodbye now, Einstein, be good!
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If that is what you got outta that then you need help.
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I used to work for a tree service, and I would never trust a farmer to know anything about how close to a house a tree should be.
A farmer might know how to trim a fruit tree to increase yield or make it easier to pick, but they sure as fuck don't have any training in other tree-related concerns.
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We live in a world where materialism and (over)consumption trumps everything else.
In Soviet Russia, Trump overconsumes everything else.
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Of course the problem with Malthus' predictions is that they're based on what was to him an observation so self-evident it wasn't worth questioning: that poor people who obtain resources will immediately spend it on having more babies.
In fact that assumption is empirically wrong. The reproductive behavior of the poor is more complex than "let's have as many babies as resources will allow." In agricultural societies lower infant mortality results in smaller family sizes; extra children are a kind of insur
Global Warming Is The Solution (Score:3)
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Salt water.
Re:Global Warming Is The Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
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Have we hit "peak hysteria" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what happens if India runs out of water? They build a bigass desalinization plant. (Nuclear, if need be.)
That's it. End of story.
No one is going to go to have major wars over water like that (note to would-be clever ACs wielding historical anecdotes: nobody cares and I'm pretty sure it's not relevant/comparable and also what are you even doing with your life that you spend so much time crapposting irrelevancies without even bothering to make an account?)
War is not cost effective. Ya, desalinization plants are expensive. Sure. Major wars are much more expensive. I think they do know how to do basic arithmetic in India. Maybe worse case the demagogues over there try to use it as a pretext for agitating against Pakistan or something but that's not fundamentally an issue with global warming. (If the really dangerous demagogues do come into power there are going to be better pretexts available to them, I fear.)
No one is convinced by this shit. Best case, you're preaching to the choir, but climate change deniers eat up articles like this. They remember every dumbassed scaremongering pop sci article that's been published re:global warming since the 1970s. Every stupid thing they see said on the topic further reinforces their mistaken beliefs that it's all nonsense, that it's a politicized religion, etc. Fundamentally and theoretically speaking, this points to an interesting problem with the human species in the modern world--the truth-detecting heuristics a lot of people are running on their wetware are obviously quite flawed. In the long term, we need to figure out how to encourage more nuance and critical thinking. In the short term, maybe we stop fanning the flames? Maybe in the meantime we stop and realize that every dumb or exaggerated thing said about global warming (...or Trump, for that matter) actually makes matters worse?
Re:Have we hit "peak hysteria" yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
A high cost of food has instigated wars on many occasions. Usually civil wars, but not always. By some arguments, World War 2 was about food.
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And ignoring the international trade aspects here (presumably, some other third world country not in a water crisis should be able to grow enough food for India at a low enough price to be affordable.), there are a number of crops that can be grown with little water. There are even edible plants that can be irrigated with seawater [wikipedia.org], to say nothing o
Re:Have we hit "peak hysteria" yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
When over half your population is farmers as it is in India the affordability of importing food is the easy part of the no water problem. The hard part is figuring out what half a billion people are going to do to earn the money to buy the food
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Sure, many farmers may have to change crops, or change professions. If a drought causes things to hit a brick wall too fast for people to adapt, the government/UN/NGOs may need to step up with food subsidies for a few years, sure. I'm not saying it's a total non-issue. I'm saying it's not going to lead to motherfucking
Re:Have we hit "peak hysteria" yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
In late 2007 India stopped exporting non-basmati rice, not because they didn't have enough rice but because the cost of wheat had increased and their prime minister was operating on an "India first" platform. Globally, this caused the cost of rice to quadruple over a four month period. The Philipines was in a bad state, and there were food riots in Haiti which killed six people. It's not war, but it could have easily turned into that in other circumstances.
If you're really suggesting that India just start growing other crops instead, then there's no way they'd be able to feed themselves. The reason why we focus so heavily on rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes is because other crops don't produce the same kind of yields.
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The reason why we focus so heavily on rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes is because other crops don't produce the same kind of yields.
eeeeeehhhmmm... probably a partial truth at best. (I mean, IIRC, corn doesn't have a particularly good yield compared to the alternatives but cultural factors and subsidies keep it popular.) I'd have to do a lot of reading up but I'm confident there's a lot of momentum effects involved here. People (including farmers and also hungry poor people) tend to be a lot more adventurous when there is no other choice available.
And you're also still ignoring fishing and aquaculture.
We have higher crop yields since the green revolution of the 60s, but we also have a lot more people.
It's my understanding that both
Can you spend 10 minutes thinking up a solution? (Score:2)
Because I can think of 20 good reasons why this wouldn't be the case, easily. A few things I haven't yet mentioned:
* Farmers could grow less water-intensive luxury crops and then trade those to countries for cheape
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For example: we could get rid of livestock and all go vegan. That's all food problems solved, possibly on a perma
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Unfortunately, none of them are less radical than your "India should upend its entire millennia-old system of agriculture, customs, and cuisine." plan.
Oh come off it. India does not grow the same exact crops or eat the same exact dishes it did 1000 years ago.
However, all of that aside, your claim that my argument was, "Nope; it's gonna be war!" is just untrue. I never said that, or suggested that war was inevitable.
Well that was the context of the posts (mine) and TFA you were replying to.
And mandatory birth control regulation, worldwide, to the point where population growth is significantly negative..
Nonsense propaganda [slashdot.org] of the highly self-destructive damaging sort that I sought to highlight in my reply. It's dramatically easier to create clean water and food than it was 100 years ago. It's my understanding (could be wrong) that the amount of farmland and human labor required has actually shrunk even as absolute numbers ha
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I don't know where you've gotten this stuff from, it's all just kind of... odd. Yes, food and water are more plentiful than they used to be a hundred years ago. We also have five times as many people as we used to have a hundred years ago. Our abundance of food comes in large part from modern fa
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Actually, both the shortage of food and water are just symptoms. The real problem is overpopulation - too many people squabbling over too few resources.
Actually no, that's a total fabrication and inversion of the real truth. We had a much harder time supplying people with food and water when the population was a fraction of what it is now. The amount of land and labor needed to create food and clean water has fallen very, very dramatically over the last 100 years.
To the extent that India does have real problems from overcrowding, these are social and governmental/regulatory/corruption problems. I'm not saying it would be great if their population kept o
Less Glaciers does not mean less usable water (Score:2)
All models show that a warmer earth will be a wetter earth. The Sahara and the Thar will both go green. The glaciers only melt 10% each year to provide meltwater and gain that 10% back during monsoon so whether it goes from 100 to 90 and back to 100 or from 30 to 20 and back to 30 does not matter. In fact a warmer climate means more melting during summer and more addition to the glaciers during Monsoon so the rivers will actually get bigger.
Global Warming or Climate Change is a problem for East Coast US (st
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I'm always glad to see the real experts here on Slashdot.
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War is not cost effective. Ya, desalinization plants are expensive. Sure. Major wars are much more expensive.
The difference is that nefarious people profit from wars. And nefarious people will do nefarious things.
Re:Have we hit "peak hysteria" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Drinking is not the biggest drain on water resources. Never has been. Agriculture and stuff might take a bigger hit.
Also, as with the hilariously misnomer/misconception "peak oil", this is probably not going to happen overnight. Yeah they'll need to do rationing and metered price increases, banning certain usages and stuff but it's not like hitting a brick wall where on Friday everything is hunky-dory and on Monday there's suddenly no water *at all* to be found.
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Food is stupid cheap. There's already a lot of UN/NGO money that goes into fighting these things. We're already spending billions propping up the assholes in power in Pakistan because we don't want eviler assholes to come into power and cause all sorts of unpleasantness and wars. Let's pretend that the Indian government decides to be totally cynical about it--do you think *we* wouldn't drop a few hundred million on food/water programs if it meant preventing India from going to
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What was I saying before about nuance and clear thinking? I forget.
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The USA didn't attempt to annihilate/annex an entire country. Saddam Hussein did. Nobody that I can recall claimed it would pay for itself. We didn't keep a cent of oil profits; oil is sold on the global market and the Iraqis keep the profits for themselves. (Yes, it's true that private American companies made plenty of money building/rebuilding the infrastructure, and sure those companies have too much sway in Washington, but that is not quite the s
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Again, we contribute to Pakistan's (for example's) stability far, far more than we decrease it. This is not a defense of every stupid thing we're doing or have done.
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This is not the same thing as saying that every global warming article is true. (I believe I just spoke at length about how this definitely isn't the case.) But of course AGW is true. We know exactly how the science of it works. At this stage in the game, the onus is on you to explain why greater greenhouse gas emission would NOT cause more
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Glad I'm pushing 50 ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, I'm glad I'm pushing 50 and don't expect to live into the worst of this shit.
We've pretty much fucked the planet, and I'm just as happy not to be around to see the result of all of it. The geopolitical shitstorm which will ensue is going to be scary.
I feel bad for anybody having kids now, but as someone who decided decades ago I have no interest in parenting ... bummer dudes.
Enjoy your planet folks, I won't have skin in the game long enough to keep caring about it.
I'm not going to start burning endangered trees for heat, but don't come to me about the plight of future generations.
At this point, I figure humanity is fucked on an epic scale, and some governments are still making sure corporations can do anything as long as they profit ... like the entire fucking bottled water industry which pays very little but pollutes a lot and sells us back our natural resources for millions of times what they pay us to harvest them.
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I'm not going to start burning endangered trees for heat, but don't come to me about the plight of future generations.
People that dont exist yet are most accurately described as imaginary people. Even the suggested plight that doesnt exist yet is an imaginary one.
Sustainable cold fusion is also imaginary. In fact, lots of things are always seemingly 20 years away. Its all imaginary.
We just dont know what the future will bring, and we wont know until the future intersects the present. The global famines we were so certain would happen, still hasn't. The water wars that have long been predicted, still hasnt happened (
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Sustainable cold fusion is also imaginary. In fact, lots of things are always seemingly 20 years away. Its all imaginary.
When you imagine that your preferred newsvertainment prognostications are actually science or engineering journals, all sorts of crazy shit seems 20 years away. But don't give yourself too much credit, that isn't your over-active imagination, that's just some pap that somebody in a cube at a network wrote up for you while they squeeze their knees together and wish it was break time, but no, that's 20 years away.
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Listen asshole, maybe you should re-read what I said, because you clearly didn't comprehend any of it.
I'm not blaming future generations, I'm saying I feel for them but I'm glad I won't be around for it, and that I will not be subjecting kids to it, because I'm not convinced it's going to work out well for anyone except the rich.
I recycle, I compost, I try not to buy shit with
desalination (Score:4, Funny)
desalination
simcity 2000 had that.
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Desalination...expensive, lots of energy required. Stop playing computer games, bad for you.
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costs less then war.
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Re:desalination (Score:4, Insightful)
Water infrastructure is dominated by the fact that water flows downhill. Yes, water systems do have pumps, but they are expensive to install and operate.
Desalination is fine for people who live within 20 or 30 km of the coast, but it's not going to help Delhi, hundreds of kilometers from the ocean, or Hyderabad, a city of almost seven million people at 500m of elevation above sea level. This [wikipedia.org] might be helpful in giving some perspective.
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bullshit, just an engineering problem.
Desalination and pumping is perfect solar application, and India has a fuckton of sunlight.
they best get their lazy white paper asses on that problem now.
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If you have sufficient clean, cheap energy to desalinate sea water in the first place, then you have sufficient clean, cheap energy to pump it uphill.
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If it's economical to do that for freakin' process water for a mine, it's economical to do that for a city of millions of people at a substantially lower elevation.
The problem isn't drinking water, but irrigation water for the food crops.
Glaciers are not a source of water, but a storage (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Glaciers are not a source of water, but a stora (Score:4, Interesting)
So when glaciers recede of which you liked their water storing function, you may need to build other water storage as a replacement. It's not that this would be rocket science, humans have done such for thousands of years.
Bingo. The Hindu Kush-Himalaya region is just begging for water retention dams. It's absolutely jammed with deep narrow valleys. India could build a network of dams, each of them as big as the Hoover dam, by hand, they have so many people. Building conventionally with machines means they could out-build the shrinking of the glaciers, and get power generation to boot.
All of this ignores the fact that their current water problem this year is purely weather: the monsoon didn't push as far inland as it usually does, so a few regions have much less rainfall to work with than normal. It has happened before. It will happen again.
Perhaps they should start building those dams.
the real problem is corruption (Score:3, Interesting)
The people in charge of India care about the poor even less than the average slashdot reader. They're not going to do much if it's just the poor dying, which is the real issue. Funds for desalinization will get embezzled, contracts will be awarded to shell companies that don't exist, and the whole thing will just drag on. India is what happens when you don't have a separation of church and state and a rigid caste system to prevent upward mobility. You get an inbred ruling class so far removed from reality that you get... indian politics.
step zero should be rainwater collection on a massive scale. I don't recall it being a thing in the 80's and 90's when I visited. Still during the rainier parts of the year it's a good way to weaken the problem, it doesn't cost much to do. Problem is getting the average person to do it, who is not interested in literally anything other than themselves, their religion, and their family. This is the crux of the problem that will rear its ugly head at every step of the way.
step one should be a working national sewage system. Since there are religious issues (working with sewage automatically makes you an untouchable) I suggest hiring sanitation engineers from nearby countries.
Step two should be automatic jail sentence for anyone caught diverting or profiteering off water during shortages. 5-10 years hard labor should do the trick
At that point Step 3 can be a massive desalinization plant and maybe some kind of pipeline to move water inland. There is also a pretty functional heavy rail system that could work to distribute it.
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The 80s were when Indians were being literally lynched in New York by the Dotbusters. The US has changed a lot since the 80s and the rate of change is far higher in India than in the US where nowadays the society is changing into a mix of SJWs, rent seekers and NIMBYs leading to a High Speed Rail project taking 10 years when it should be done in 2 years. In the 20 years that California has been trying to build a HSR, Delhi has built a Metro larger than London and New York from scratch. And the trains are a
How to fix it (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure Thanos has a theory on how to fix the " unlimited population / finite resources " problem. :D
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Just wait and the problem will fix itself.
Not sure I'd worry about water... (Score:2)
I was under the impression that a 6 degree C average temperature rise would make large swathes of India (and much of South Asia) effectively uninhabitable irrespective of the amount of water available.
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China at least had their 'One Child' policy for 30 years to try and manage things, but India is out of control. The population in Bangalore has increased 8 fold in the last 45 years, from 1.5M to 12M. Unreal.
Re:Jolly Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is almost never a lack of water, it's a lack of POTABLE water.
Which proper sanitation and ideas such as hey "stop shitting in the river" or "stop shitting in the streets" allow municipal waste treatment to happen at scale.
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Well well, aren't you just a little green-card dispenser.
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Try not shitting for a few weeks, tell us how it goes. Because it still goes.