The Problem Is We Need Fresh Water

Is there any hope of saving this planet of ours? Apparently the selfishness and greed by some is so powerful it has stopped us from solving our environmental problems. You would think that just looking at one’s children and grandchildren would want to make people make things better for their offspring, but somehow the greed has overtaken the need to protect our children and our planet. I am not talking about you and me but those people who have the power to change things. Just look at the mess we have made of this place. I am not talking about our country, but of the entire planet. We are destroying the environment by dumping chemicals into our drinking water and that problem is so bad there are places where water has to be brought in, because the wells and aquifers are so polluted their water cannot be drunk. It is happening everywhere. Where I live a plume of chemicals has expanded in the aquifer and is headed throughout it. If it isn’t stopped there goes the drinking water. When we talk about drinking water, in some parts of the world it has just disappeared. Global warming, which is still being denied by some, has caused the lakes and streams to evaporate. Lake Chad in central Africa is just about gone. Its main feeder river the River Chari was diverted for farming.

The environment is warming which causes water to disappear faster than ever and we have reached a point where a project which might have taken away some water for other uses eventually takes away all the water from an area. Owens Lake in the United States covered 108 square miles. It was located in California near Nevada. The lake is gone and the dust from the lake bed is costing billions for Los Angeles. The lake disappeared because of several reasons. One was it was drunk dry by Los Angeles residents, Β because of poor management. Here is the irony of it all, Los Angeles is flooding part of the valley where the lake was to keep the dust down so they are wasting even more water.

The Aral Sea was the fourth largest body of fresh water in the world. In the 1960s it began to shrink. Some of it had been diverted for farming. The water was being diverted from the rivers which feed the Sea and things became so bad the sea had shrunk into four small bodies of water by the mid-1980s. If we check the Aral Sea today we find a body of water which is only 10 percent of the size it was before. This sea has lost so much water it is estimated the amount is more than contained in Lake Erie. It is amazing to me how we continually allow the sea to shrink. There are new technologies being discovered which can take moisture even out of the desert air. Other technologies exist which can take fresh water from salt, but the problem there is we are also polluting our oceans and dead zones are expanding in them.

The Dead Sea has been experiencing tremendous shrinkage over recent years and has lost as much as 3 feet of water level in just a one year’s time. No body of water can sustain such a loss very long without drying up. The governments of Israel, Jordan and Palestine have agreed to pump 53 billion gallons of water a year into it from the Dead Sea. What kind of a solution is that? How long will it be before the Dead Sea is in trouble? It seems to me it is like that old saying, “taking from Peter to pay Paul.”

I for one am saddened by what I see. Fresh water is drying up all over the planet and it seems to me it is only a matter of time before countries go to war over water. Water is the most important resource on this planet. Without it we would be a barren wasteland without life and yet some of us just don’t care and feel as long as they make it through their lifetimes, they can let it be someone else’s problem. No country seems to be immune to the problem of disappearing or shrinking fresh water supplies, but some may be in better shape than others, depending on their size, population, mean temperature and other factors. The top ten countries in the world which have the largest fresh water supply are:
Brazil, Russia, Canada, USA, Indonesia, China, Colombia, Peru, India and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Brazil is particularly blessed with almost twice as much fresh water as Russia, the number two country. We have the Great Lakes, the largest single source of fresh water in the world. The problem for us is the fact the water level is decreasing for several reasons. One reason is while the lakes are protected, their sources are not and one large bottled water company is tapping the source for the lakes preventing one of the lakes from refilling to its potential. Another problem is the fact we have sold some of the water to China. We are in no condition to be selling fresh water from these lakes right now.

It could turn out that fresh water might become more valuable than any of the crops someday. If this happens, Brazil is going to be in a very good position. Russia has about 50% more fresh water than the United States with Canada being almost equal to us, but having a population equal to only about 10% of this country. Fresh water is measured in a lot of places by cubic kilometers. Brazil has 8233, Russia 4498, Canada 3300, the U.S. 3069, Indonesia 2838, China almost 2830, Colombia 2132, Peru 1913, India 1908 and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has 1283. As for the countries with the least amount of fresh water supplies here are statistics from 2010. Kuwait 0.020, St. Kitts and Nevis 0.024, Maldives 0.030, Antigua and Barbuda 0.052, Qatar 0.058, Malta 0.070, Barbados 0.080, Bahrain 0.100, United Arab Emirates 0.150 and Cape Verde 0.300.

Industry uses a lot of water and it is said to take 39,000 gallons of water on average to make a car. Our cotton clothes are responsible for water use and it takes 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton for a pair of jeans. You cotton t-shirt requires 400 gallons of water to create. Water use is hidden in everything. 1,500 gallons of water are required to create a barrel of beer. When one figures out the growing of the beans and the milk products it is estimated a latte consumes 53 gallons of water. If we want to make steel, one ton of steel requires 62,000 gallons of water to create, while a ton of cement requires 1,360 gallons.
Water is used for almost everything and if we stop using it society would come to an end even if we had enough to drink. Water wars have started in some places and if things continue the way they are, water could be the single most factor which decides our fate.