Today is World Water Day and a U.S. report by the office of the Director of National Intelligence marks the day by predicting wars over water. With the world expected to add another two billion people by 2030, the report says that global water demand is likely to outstrip current sustainable supplies by 40 percent by then. Climate change will of course have an accelerating impact throughout the century.
The report also claims that the U.S. will have a new avenue for global leadership in helping to mitigate the problem worldwide, as it has expertise in water management in both the public and private sectors. If that’s so, the D.N.I. has to explain why American towns are running out of water as global warming bites, sending the entire SouthWest into years of drought.
To conserve what little water is left, the state of Texas restricted water use in 1,000 cities and towns last year. Of those, 17 are considered critical — in danger of running out of water in six months or less.
Topping that list is the town of Spicewood Beach, a community of 500 homes on the shores of Lake Travis near Austin. Spicewood relies on wells fed by water from both the lake and the aquifer below the town. Too much water use and too little rainfall last year caused the water table to sink to historic lows. This January, Spicewood Beach became the first Texas town to run out of water.
Now, a 7,000-gallon water truck arrives in Spicewood Beach each day to supply the homes.
Texas is already planning to take out more water from its rivers and aquifers than is actually there to take out in the first place – and with the population expected to boom by 80% by 2060, there’s no attempt at all to take account of climate change which means there’ll be even less water to go around by then. according to Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe:
Across Texas, towns experienced record low rainfall but also record high temperatures last year. Some towns, including Robert Lee, experienced more than 100 days of 100-degree temperatures. Those conditions are likely to become increasingly normal for the region, Hayhoe said, and that could make already severe droughts even worse.
”œWhat climate change is doing is it’s increasing our temperatures, and higher temperatures mean faster evaporation,” she says, ”œSo you need more water to provide the same amount of irrigation for crops if temperatures are higher. And that’s what we see happening here in Texas and in many places around the world.”
The pattern is being repeated across the SouthWest and through into California. Too little is being done because too many are in a state of denial. There’s no way that the Southern states can sustain their current water use beyond the middle of the century, let alone see the kinds of population growth being predicted but, especially in the Republican desert states, denialism means that an oncoming disaster is being ignored. Unless the federal government takes action, calls climate change a matter of national security and takes planning and implementing policies to cope out of these denialists hands now, by 2050 we’ll be left with a massive dustbowl punctuated by thousands of ghost towns and a few huge cities that suck up all the water. Beyond that, we might see forced migrations of millions as even those cities run dry. An American civil water war in the latter part of the century is not inconceivable.
Update Vikram Sood, former head of India’s external intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing, was characteristically ahead of the pack in 2007.
It is ironic that the State which permits T Boone Pickens and the Bush Gang to buy up water rights is suddenly in the midst of the worst drought in the US.
That, water is the new oil cannot be overstated.
where water rights are often separate from land ownership, I have seen battles over water. It ain’t pretty and the losers generally end up folding their tends and departing. Large parts of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico are about to find out why the Anasazi abandoned the Mesa Verde area.
Glacier-fed river systems are being impacted as glaciers shrink, which is very bad news for parts of Asia.
The Eastern US is better off than the Southwest, but fracking may use and/or pollue the water table in areas that would otherwise be okay, at least for the foreseeable future.
The shrinking of glaciers, reduced snowpack, irregular precipitation (no rain where water storage exists, flooding in areas never prepared for heavy rain) and increased evaporation from higher temperatures – the human race is going to have to learn how to get by on a lot less water.
If had money to invest, I’d build water purification systems, desalinization equipment, etc.
It is worth remembering that the Founding Fathers were all traitors.
But are there still green golf courses in Texas? If there are, well then…
Nobody said there would absolutely no water anywhere starting today.
Doubt if that truck brings water for their local golf course…
BTW: Ever watch “The Milagro Beanfield War?”
When it’s not a novel or movie, there won’t be a lot of laughs.
It is worth remembering that the Founding Fathers were all traitors.
I know he is from Oklahoma and that may be insulting to Texans, but the rest of the country awhile ago figured out James Inhofe was crazy. Just as crazy as Jim DeMint and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and all the other climate change deniers. Some of them are not entirely stupid, so they are also a bit evil. But not as evil as Lee Raymond, the former CEO of Exxon-Mobil, who put millions of dollars into climate hoax institutes and “researchers”, as well as media figures and politicians. That’s why I am in favor of naming the next 100,000 years of dessicated earth climate the Raymond Epoch.
Texas has least 25 water parks.
The Texas infrastructure is held taegether wi boogers an’ string! It leaks like a collander an’ we’ve nae way o’ movin’ water from the places that hae’ it tae the places that don’t, Cap’n. An’ dinnae even get me started oan the power and phone infrastructure, that craps oot ev’ry time there’s a wee bitty rain! It’s tak more than a few Dilithium crystals tae fix decades o’ private enterprise sucking oot profits instead o’ re-investin’, Cap’n.
How Las Vegas is drying up – video
This Nasa video shows irrigated vegetation (red) and impervious surfaces (gray) expand outwards from the valley. Lake Mead (black) begins to decline in the past decade as the city expands. This video has no sound.
Also see:
Las Vegas bets on desert water pipeline as Nevada drinks itself dry
Cattle ranchers, Native Americans and Mormons fear US state’s chief engineer will allow 300-mile pipeline to tap groundwater
Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. ~ Phil Jackson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/23/las-vegas-pump-water-approved
Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. ~ Phil Jackson