A World Without Water

Thanks to Maureen over at Green Sand for bringing to our attention this interview of Dr. Peter Gleick (founder and president of the Pacific Institute and author of the recently released sixth volume of The World's Water) by Tara Lohan (senior editor at AlterNet and editor of "Water Consciousness: A Comprehensive, Solution-Focused Guide to America's Greatest Environmental Crisis."

snips:
in only twenty years our civilization may be facing "water bankruptcy"--shortfalls of fresh water so large and pervasive that global food production could crater, meaning that we'd lose the equivalent of the entire grain production of the US and India combined.

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We need to do two things, broadly. We need first to slow the rate of climate change. The second thing is that we need to start adapting to the climate changes we can't avoid. And the best way to say it is that we need to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable. We need to avoid the kinds of climate changes that will, in the long run, be catastrophic. And we need to start managing those climate changes that we know we aren't going to be able to avoid because of the gases in the atmosphere and the inability of policy-makers to deal with the problem.

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We can treat any quality water to potable standards. We have the technology. There is a psychological barrier and an education barrier and an expense barrier, but we are seeing it more and more. Another barrier is that we have one set of pipes that come into our homes. We don't need potable water for flushing our toilets, but often that is the only water we have. So part of the challenge is changing our infrastructure, so we can use different qualities of water for different purposes. That takes investment: money, time and education.

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It takes a lot of water to produce certain kinds of energy--oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear. Thermal plants, in general, all require a lot of water for cooling. And in the US probably the single largest use of water is for power plant cooling. Whereas, solar and wind and other energy systems require very little or no water. If energy is an issue and water is an issue, let's think about the two together.

But conversely, it also takes a huge amount of energy to collect and treat and move water. There is a big energy cost in our water systems, but it turns out that some of the cheapest remaining energy efficiency options for us are not saving energy per se, but are saving water. So, a simple example is front-loading washing machines, which save water, detergent and energy. And so, that is a no-brainer. We should be seeing more of these kinds of things implemented to save both.