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Earth

A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises (nytimes.com) 271

Posted by msmash from the growing-challenge dept.
Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth's population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water. From a report: From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, meaning they are using almost all the water they have, according to new World Resources Institute data published Tuesday. Many are arid countries to begin with; some are squandering what water they have. Several are relying too heavily on groundwater, which instead they should be replenishing and saving for times of drought. In those countries are several big, thirsty cities that have faced acute shortages recently, including Sao Paulo, Brazil; Chennai, India; and Cape Town, which in 2018 narrowly beat what it called Day Zero -- the day when all its dams would be dry.

Climate change heightens the risk. As rainfall becomes more erratic, the water supply becomes less reliable. At the same time, as the days grow hotter, more water evaporates from reservoirs just as demand for water increases. Water-stressed places are sometimes cursed by two extremes. Sao Paulo was ravaged by floods a year after its taps nearly ran dry. Chennai suffered fatal floods four years ago, and now its reservoirs are almost empty
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A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises More

A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises

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  • Water Desalination!

    And we can bypass the EAP is some cases.

    • The trouble with desalinization is that if you're an investor there's much, much more money to be made selling a limited resource that people need to live than there is producing that limited resource.

      If we were talking twinkies we could count on market forces to drive down the value of the resource (I can live without twinkies). But we're talking water. People die very quickly without water. And food doesn't grow....

      This is also why Americans pay $300+ for a bottle of insulin that's $30 in Mexico a

      • and that investor trys to rip off an small town sheriff on some like water what will happen?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spun ( 1352 )

          Small town sheriff will pay the bill, or he'll be shit-canned because you don't fuck with money. Protecting private property of the rich is that small town sheriff's only real job, if he fails at that, why, he ain't sheriff no more. And likely, permanently fucked in life as an abject lesson in "Don't fuck with money."

          You are so precious, thinking small town sheriffs have power over the rich. You probably imagine that sheriff going all "Boyah, I'll learn you to steal awr water!" and whipping out his long gun

      • This is also why Americans pay $300+ for a bottle of insulin that's $30 in Mexico and Canada...
        And free in the rest of the world ... aka payed by the insurance with is funded by _all_ or by taxes.

    • How do you desalinate water e.g. in Switzerland? Or in Siberia? Or in Mongolia or in Central Africa?

  • Too many people! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Going_Digital ( 1485615 ) on Wednesday August 07, 2019 @12:32PM (#59057932)
    The problem is not, not enough houses, not enough jobs, not enough oil, etc, etc. The problem IS too many people, politicians need to wake up to the cause and make a concerted effort to slow population growth. And no not through draconian measures, but through education, tax incentives and free birth control for everybody.
    • " The problem IS too many people, politicians need to wake up to the cause and make a concerted effort to slow population growth."


      They already do that, and they call it "war"

      • They already do that, and they call it "war"

        They are us (everyone). I think we're doing a fantastic job of self-regulating the population. We regulate our population with:

        Religion
        Disease
        Drugs
        War

        If the government was in charge of population, we'd be taxed for it, and there'd be some major changes in the way we live. There'd be a baby tax, tax on all baby-related items, like diapers, car-seats, strollers, cribs, etc... We'd have to have a license to reproduce. There'd be laws established regarding health (things like tobacco and alcohol would be

    • Sadly it's more likely that population control will enact itself as war.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      The problem is not, not enough houses, not enough jobs, not enough oil, etc, etc. The problem IS too many people, politicians need to wake up to the cause and make a concerted effort to slow population growth. And no not through draconian measures, but through education, tax incentives and free birth control for everybody.

      China tried this, and it's coming back to bite them. Japan has unintentionally gone to negative growth, and India, with the cultural preference for boys, will be in the same boat as China without doing something. (According to an al-Jazeera report, in one Indian state over a 3 month period 132 of 500 villages had no female births. In those 132 villages 200 births were reported, with 947 total for the 500 villages. The total gender breakdown for those 500 villages was 479 female, 468 male.) When birth r

      • The claim that it came back to bite China doesn't stand up, if we look at the job market and resource usage there. The only problem was that 22 million men can't find wives. So, women get to be picky - a start at countering male privilege.

        China still has too many people for the long term.

        Same in the west where, as education rose, so did women's ability to not "need a man" to compete, to adopt children, or raise a family. It's not a coincidence that opponents of women marrying each other came from patri

      • China tried this, and it's coming back to bite them.

        Do you have a source for this? China's economy has boomed over the last 40-50 years. Their quality of life and GDP per capita has gone up pretty consistently since they introduced the one-child policy. [wikipedia.org]

        • Hae?

          What has the topic to do with economy?

          In the age range of 25 - 35 China has 2 times as many men as woman. How do you find one to marry? The solution is immigration of females from poor countries to China. Partly volunteering, partly kidnaped slaves.

          Do you have actually any clue what is going on in the world?

          This immigrations only shift the problem ... countries like Myanmar where "immigrating" women come from, start getting similar unbalances.

          • Citation on that 2:1 ratio? I thought the differential was more like a few percent above natural. Bad enough that thereâ(TM)s a female shortage but not 2:1, which would probably mean a societal collapse. I looked up a few internet spots and the info I saw supported this. Maybe there are a few localities where itâ(TM)s 2:1. Probably the rural area where most of the women of reproductive ditched the blue-collar local men and relocated to the city...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by skullandbones99 ( 3478115 )

      Birth rate is not the problem as many countries have too low a birth rate to sustain a static population. In other words, the birth rate is below about 2.1 children per woman which is needed to keep the population static eg. replenishment rate. The world birth rate per woman has been declining over the past few decades.

      The problem is that the death rate rapidly decreased when the birth rate exceeded the replenishment rate. Currently, the world death rate is half that of the world birth rate. Which means the

    • well, a simple google search would show you that India (at least) has already tried everything you just said.

      REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Of course there are water shortages: there would be a shortage of every resource, if prices did not reflect how scarce each resource is.

      The solution couldn't be simpler: jack up the price until water consumption drops to a sustainable level.

      This is not necessarily a killer to the populace's overall standard of living. All that revenue generated from delivering water can go toward lowering or eliminating sales taxes, income taxes, VATs, etc.

      But if it causes some people to pack up and move to an area where

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Or worse do what China did? :P

    • Why are you against black people?
      Before any trigger happy mod shows, inform yourself and write 100 times "overpopulation is not a problem" and "Africa has the right to develop itself just like everyone else did"

      Hint: 1114 will become 1145 and then we are the population plateau.
      See that 1 that becomes 4? That's black people.

      If you encounter progressive that talks about population control, hit him. He is a racist.

  • Dirt = our water filter. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Wednesday August 07, 2019 @12:49PM (#59058038)

    For human history, and well before humans, we adapted to subsisting on water tha (though packed with bacteria and such) was relatively free of mineral poisons by being filtered by the earth taking in rain, and flowing into various waterways.

    That still works perfectly fine - except for the 'tragedy of the commons.'

    Which isn't even remotely close to the first time - polluting upstream from a place has been a classic cause of disruption of community resources.

    But the balance of power has usually been with community agreements and governments in the past.

    Now, however, we've put together very business-friendly courts, and have large industry farming conglomerates that decide to use overwhelming amounts of fresh water for increases in crop yield in impoverished areas... and there's no place in that decision making for the community interests.

    It's not like we don't have far more than enough fresh water production over time - but like with starvation, it's a matter of civil access to those resources that will kill large amounts of people.

    As civilizations, we're kind of falling asleep, dreaming stock market dreams as the infrastructure falls apart, and the base of the resources that make that market mean anything degrades.

    Ryan Fenton

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      it's a matter of civil access to those resources

      Depends on what you mean by 'civil access'. Public access to community reservoirs, rivers and lakes? Fine. But 'civil access' is increasingly interpreted to be a pipeline from a built and maintained for profit water supply system. Forget the artifice of public water utilities. The big money is in the firms that they will have to hire to build the dams, pumping stations and distribution pipelines needed to spin the revenue meters at each consumers house.

      Sadly, there is no alternative for city dwellers. You

  • Alternatively stated, countries whose (water) resources may be restricted are retaining or acquiring population numbers that are unsustainable. Malthus?

  • Yes, we're lucky to not have to face the issues looming in the Asian subcontinent (glaciers melting away), but we have our own water issues.

    Fracking threatens underground water supplies. Fracking "cocktails" with secret compounds used by oil companies threaten our aquifers. And here in the desert southwest of the US, that underground water is critical.

    Regardless of political party, we HAVE to remember to keep corporations in check when it comes to the environment. When we don't, you get Superfund sites [nih.gov]. Tha

    • Uh, no, we don't have plenty.

      For example, the aquifer [wikipedia.org] that provides the water for a ton of Midwestern farms is rapidly draining. And that's true of a whole lot of aquifers that we currently rely on for water.

      We're in just as much trouble, it's just our trouble is a bit further in the future.

  • An atmospheric water generator (AWG) is a device that extracts water from humid ambient air. Water vapor in the air can be extracted by condensation - cooling the air below its dew point, exposing the air to desiccants, or pressurizing the air. Unlike a dehumidifier, an AWG is designed to render the water potable. AWGs are useful where pure drinking water is difficult or impossible to obtain, because there is almost always a small amount of water in the air that can be extracted. The two primary techniques
  • Now that we have antibiotics, vaccines, and other medical advancements it's time to STOP PUMPING OUT BABIES

    • It is more effective to kill off the older generations of the population than to restrict the birth rate because you will hit a demographic inversion where there are more old people than children.

      Demographic inversion has already occurred in Japan.

      The disadvantage of birth control below the replenishment rate of about 2.1 children per woman is that the median age of the population increases. This means the available work force starts to reduce over time as more people retire versus people starting work.

      Mass

  • Water is about the most plentiful thing on earth. It literally falls from the sky. Nobody is running out of water. What they are running out of are resources to treat and transport water. If you canâ(TM)t recognize the real problem you can never fix it. It has nothing to do with water and everything to do with money.

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