We ’re in a Water Crisis. We Need to Act Like It

One of the greatest lessons of the pandemic is that we can meet the challenges of existential threats when we combine the collective power of our creativity, innovation and industry. As the climate crisis worsens, we need to address protecting and preserving water with the same urgency that we put into creating vaccines. We need to act like lives are hanging in the balance—because they are. Water is already shaping our politics, our economy and our national security too. Whether it’s floods or droughts, storms or wildfires—too much water, or too little—water shapes lives in the United States and around the world. We are currently seeing this play out in real time in the West, which in many ways is ground zero for climate change, as we see the intersection between mega-drought and fire season colliding with one another. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Back in 2012, the intelligence community prepared a report on global water security, forecasting that within a decade water shortages and floods in many countries would “risk instability and state failure, increase regional tensions, and distract them from working with the United States.” The same report predicted that before 2040, the world’s demand for fresh water would not keep up with the supply, unless we managed our water far better than we do today. Just this year, World Central Kitchen worked closely with the World Food Programme to deliver 27,000 food kits to Guatema...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news