Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
Have you heard of the concept of water scarcity? It's not just happening in Cape Town - it's happening in many parts of continental Africa, India, Iran, Pakistan, and other developing areas. There are many articles on the subject even just doing a quick Google search. This isn't an isolated crisis.
The growing world population will be putting incredible demands on the fresh water supply. Heck, 2.5 billion people on this planet live without adequate access to clean water. In addition to industry and agriculture both increasing their demands, humans are also destroying wetlands and ecosystems that support the cleansing and filtration of freshwater.
There are new technologies, yes, but consider why we haven't come up with a silver-bullet solution yet for urban consumption - desalinization plants are incredibly resource-intensive and cost prohibitive for many governments in their current forms. Everything else just isn't done on a massive scale, or is not economical to deploy to the masses (yet).
We can talk about the abundance of water all day. it's fresh, drinkable, usable water that is the issue that matters - just like oil that is extractable and usable. Apologies if that wasn't implicit in my comment.
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I am a water treatment engineer. I have also supported and have been to many lunches with water aid charities. I am well aware of the issues without google searching ad-supported alarmist websites. I maintain a strong disagreement with the comparison of water to oil. The two are just not comparable. "Water is the new oil" is one of those ignorant pop culture sayings that I hate.
You are correct that growing urban populations put huge strains on natural water reservoirs. As mentioned by others, the biggest problem is people's attitude and expectations. They will spend the money on stadiums, but not water infrastructure. People just expect water to be free and abundant to massive populations in small areas. Kind of like how they feel it's their god-given right to throw anything away and have the government take care of it. Big cities also need to reconsider the idea of one pipe in, one pipe out. There are different grades of water that are suitable for different uses.
We are not going to run out of water until about a billion years from now when the sun expands and boils off the oceans. Don't worry though, most plants and animals will have died off hundreds of millions of years before that when CO2 levels drop to about 50ppm.