You’ve most likely heard of peak oil, but have you heard of peak water? Certainly, impacts on water availability like climate change, deforestation, desertification, industrial demand, pollution (e.g., sewage and pharmaceutical wastes contaminating the environment and water supply), urbanization, and the “wanton wastefulness” of water are issues that will require appropriate policy judgment, serious leadership, and thoughtfulness to remedy. Our choices may seem small, but in the aggregate they can amount to huge problems. From guardian.co.uk, UK:
Unsurprisingly, one of the solutions advocated by this new report is a better use of the water we have. To that end, the authors have estimated the water footprint of everyday food and drink, which encouragingly shows that one litre of beer consumes less water (300 litres) than one litre of orange juice (850 litres). One kilogram of coffee is reportedly more thirsty (21,000 litres of water) than one kilogram of hamburger (16,000 litres). Take a look at our image gallery to see the hidden water cost of everything from your daily cuppa to a glass of wine.
According to the report, this is adding up to a global crisis. “We are facing a crisis of running out of sustainably managed water,” says Peter Gleick, the author of the sixth edition of the World Water report by California’s Pacific Institute. Despite human demand accounting for over 50% of the world’s accessible freshwater, the report warns that billions of people still lack access to basic water services. Developing countries, it notes, will suffer worst from peak water because of supply problems exacerbated by flooding, drought and water pollution. Developed countries won’t be entirely spared though, as Peter Preston discovered in Spain last year.
The World Water report continues by singling out China as a country in danger of water stress because of its inefficient water use and large projects such as the Three Gorges Dam scheme. “[Chinese] Rivers and lakes are dead and dying, groundwater aquifers are overpumped, uncounted species of aquatic life have been driven to extinction, and direct adverse impacts on both human and ecosystem health are widespread and growing,” warns Gleick.
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Peak water is a stupid moniker and you should be ashamed of yourself for adding to the problem.
There is no “peak” water.
Water doesn’t dissapear, ever.
When we drink water, most of it comes back out as urine and waste. 99.9% of the rest comes out as sweat. When we die, the remaining balance evaporates as well.
It doesn’t fly off the planet or dissapear.
We need to stop the fear tactics and start talking truth. For all your rage against consevative hypcrasy and fear mongering thew left sure does enough of it as well.
We need to recapture and recycle the water we use more efficiently and we need to develop better conversion technology (salt water) to increase supply to our increasing population.
OIL can have a “peak”, water cannot.
Get this through your heads…Water does NOT dissapear EVER.
FOCUS on the problem.
Also, the planet isn’t in danger of anything.. WE are.
It takes a unbelievably arrogant and ignorant ass to think otherwise.
Eric,
I don’t think peak water is being used in the same sense as peak oil, since oil is a nonrenewable resource, but the phrase peak water merely describes how a useable and seemingly renewable resource can be easily made into an unusable form or into scarcity. No one is arguing that water will “fly off the planet or disappear.” That’s ridiculous. Furthermore, I am not using fear tactics. This is reality! If you have done any traveling to areas of the world where natural resource scarcity is a real problem and a scary problem, then you can understand that our world isn’t so unlimited. Also, if we get to the point where we need to recapture or recycle water, then we haven’t done a very good job of managing our water resources.
The planet and people are both in trouble.
And don’t call names unless you can do it face to face.
Buck