The Long Emergency: The Second Necessity

The first necessity is of course oxygen. Without it you ' ll die in a couple of minutes. The second is water, without which you ' ll be lucky to last a week.If you enter " Global Water Crisis " into your favorite Internet search engine, you will get pages of documents with enough information to earn a Ph.D. I actually recommendthe Wikipedia article in this instance, which is very thorough and well presented. It ' s also very long so you might want to take a look at the more succinct entryat the World Resources Institute. That one is a couple of years old and things have already gotten worse.The fact is that over the past century, the percentage of humans who have access to adequate clean water and sanitation has increased. However, we have now bumped up against the limit, even as the supply is contracting in many places due to climate change. Hotter temperatures mean that whatever rain does fall evaporates faster, but precipitation is also decreasing in some places, particularly near the equator. Of course population growth creates more demand for water -- for drinking and household use, for agriculture, and for industrial use. Much of the demand has been met by withdrawing ground water, but that is a finite resource and its running out in many places.India is one of the hardest hit countries, and the city of Chennai has now completely run out of water. It ' s being trucked in. Several other cities in India are expected to run out of water next year, and cities in Africa are ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs