Khoti Sarque

Drought

Water is life.

Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface.

The wettest place on Earth is Meghalaya in the Himalayas in India. It gets 40 FEET of rain in a year.

The driest place on Earth is the Atacama desert in Chile, which sees rain on some years, more often none. In total it gets one INCH of rain spread over 40 years.

There is plenty of water, but 1) 97.5% of it is salt, 2) another 1.7% is ice, which will run into oceans as icepacks melt away, and 3) there is a distribution problem with the little half-per-cent or so that remains ready-to-use.

Water is most useful when clean and unsalted and in the right place at the right time.

We know how to do those things.

We need to actually do those things, and we currently do them sometimes, in some places.

We need to do them in more places and more of the time.

Climate change, a warmer planet, is making those needs more urgent. There are more violent weather patterns, more droughts, more downpours, more salt-water encroachment into fertile land. That is now; things continue to get worse.

Water management – flood control, irrigation, potable water treatment, water storage, water pipelines and aqueducts, desalination systems – is now as important as roads, railroads, electric grids, telegraphs, phones, internet networks have been in the past. Globally, nationally and locally.

Water is wealth for those who choose to manage it wisely.

W stands for Wisdom as well as Water.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/the-coming-global-water-crisis/256896/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/world-aquifers-water-wars/

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Also find these older posts…
A … Angst
B … Brag
C … Clowder
D … Down
E … Errors
F … Folly
G … Global
H … Huh?
I … Immigrants
J … Jet
K … King
L … Lunch
M … Moby
N … No!
O … Once
P … Pundit
Q … Quibbler
R … Robot
S … Sillivization
T … Telemarketing
U … Utopia
V … Vexing