Drought, security, and water.
Matthew Power writes for Wired.com about Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers are Running Dry. How Three Regions Are Coping.
This seven-page article includes some impressive charts and maps. The three regions are the US Southwest (Phoenix, AZ region), London, UK, and southeastern Australia (the one ‘down under’, not the one with the European mountains. The European country is Austria, where actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to be president).
For instance, it takes, on average, 11 gallons of water to make a slice of bread, counting the farming of the ingredients, building and operating the roads, equipment, fuel, baking, packaging, etc. Make that 2866 gallons of water to make the average pair of jeans. About 20 gallons for a glass of beer (I guess that is 12 oz glass), 36 gallons for an egg, 634 gallons to make a hamburger, and 2113 gallons to make a leather shoe.
There is also a water-energy nexus. It takes lots of energy to make water available, and often takes lots and lots of energy to reduce wasting water. Only, it takes lots of water to make energy. The article cites Palo Verde nuclear power station in Arizona as consuming 20 billion gallons of water a year, much going up in water vapor to rain down elsewhere. Palo Verde, according to a tour I took some years ago, has contracted with Phoenix and local communities to purchase, and pipe to the plant, storm sewer and sewage treatment plant outflow. While this reduces the plant’s strain on water resources in the low desert, it depletes the ability of the selling communities to re-use that water or return it to the environment for themselves.
Globally reservoirs are coming up low - as in, 1/4th capacity, and Australia’s Murray Reservoir may run down to 1%, just the Murray River. It has been a couple of years now that much of the food growing capacity of Australia’s prolific farming region has been without irrigation water, and 25% of normal (but inadequate for crops) rainfall. And they look for the worst drought in 115 years of records to keep getting worse. Already the millions of tons of rice that should have been produced this year are causing hording and price increases globally, even affecting Ponca City here in North Central Oklahoma, USA.
Farming is a skilled occupation, often requiring a lifetime to learn to use the equipment, to get the best yields of various field, to use various crops for best return, to manage the quality of the soil for best long term use and immediate crop production. A farmer markets much of his produce, maintains his equipment, sends his kids to school. A drought can destroy a farm, the grain elevators that purchase, clean, and resell the produce, the merchants that sell equipment, sell clothes and food for the family, etc. It can take a lifetime, once the rains come back, to restore a region to productive use. Expect this kind of catastraphe across Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia, according to projections. Much of the damage is already in progress. Whether due to global warming or rain forest depletion, it won’t be stopped this year, or next. Food riots may continue to destablize governments - tantalizing the moneyed power brokers that see profit in war. Some countries may resort to war to obtain resources of oil and water to stay in power. Conflicts overseas may not remain local, and there may be local unrest here in the US, too.
The article mentions ‘Peak Water’ in the title. This is a reference to recent concerns about ‘Peak Oil’ - an anticipated crippling of civilization on the planet, as demand and consumption for oil surpasses and depletes the supply. Peak Oil is expected to drive the agriculture community back to near-subsistence living - small farms with little mechanical equipment or fuel consumption, and corresponding limitation to supplying local needs. And, yes, I believe that does kind of project massive starvation in cities, here and abroad. Run out of oil, and diesel generators, vehicle use in general, and many high energy users - such as water districts, large business building, etc., will be limited in the available energy. Until the military gets their tanks and planes and ships running on wood-fired steam, we will be choosing to fuel our military or risk being over-run by countries with less water - like countries in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia. And, yes, the projection, according to Mr. Power’s article maps, is indeed dire. The regions where catastrophic loss of water resources are expected become extremely widespread.
Local conservation is critical in the short term. But globally things come together, too. For instance, the Gulf Stream that powers warm water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. Okay, so it isn’t all that warm when it gets there, but it is warmer than when the stream stops. For the most part the Gulf Stream makes the weather milder in Europe, especially the British Isles. The warm rains, drizzles, and mild climates of Ireland and England are *supposed* to be due to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Only, it seems the stream stops. One theory is that increasing spring runoff from Finland and Norway have diluted the North Sea just a bit. But that interferes with what happens to the Gulf Stream when it arrives. Normally the warm waters are lower in salt than the waters of the North Sea. So the heavier, lower-salt waters sink, settle toward the bottom of the North Sea. And join a river flowing west across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, where they replace the now-warmed waters streaming toward Europe across the surface of the Atlantic - the Gulf Stream. This massive, slow motion pump is surprisingly delicate. Slight changes in salinity in the North Sea, perhaps due to melting ice in the Polar region, have dammed the start of this slow-moving river, that takes the chilled waters down the 100-year-long rush to Mexico.
How much of the world’s drought is due to burning fossil fuels? How much is due to burning the thousand square miles per year of Amazon rain forest that Brazil is so busily engaged in? Brazil, you might recall, has boasted converting almost exclusively to biofuels. Which, contrary to what tree huggers have been telling us, is wasteful of resources, energy, and only partially reduces carbon emissions. What Brazil has accomplished is to achieve military and economic security - freedom from manipulation by foreign oil suppliers. They retain the ability to go to war anywhere they wish. They can also defend themselves - something they may need as Argentina runs low on water. In the mean time, they continue to destroy the world’s environment along with their rain forest.
Rationing and regulating water is already increasing. Ask any builder that has to have a water-use certificate that water will be available for 100 years before building in Phoenix, AZ. New Mexico has long regulated how much water could be pumped from any given well in the state. As more scrutiny is paid to who uses water and for what purpose, perhaps our local communities should be replacing community swimming pools with youth rifle ranges and militia training centers. “An armed society is a polite society.”
And we should wait to replace jeans until they get a bit more wear on them.