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Health & Fitness

DID YOU KNOW The Planet's Population Growth is Making Water More Valuable Than Oil?

"To ensure that the water footprint of humanity will not grow, given projected population growth, the average water footprint per capita will have to decrease significantly. If we assume an equal share for each global citizen, water use will have to be reduced by 22.50 percent for consumers in China and India, and by 70 percent in the US over the next century." 
( www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/29/the-water-crisis-in-the-west/to-save-water-change-your-diet )

You read that right SEVENTY PERCENT.  For the last couple of months in California the severe drought in the state has meant that we have had a voluntary program that has asked everyone to reduce consumption by ten percent.  It has basically failed.  Locally in the SF Bay Area we barely reduced consumption by two percent.  Imagine a world where you are required to reduce your consumption seventy percent.   The reality is that although we can save a certain amount by changing our daily habits the largest percentage of our consumption is really indirect consumption.  Indirect consumption happens in the process of supplying the general public and an economy in general with various other products that we have come to rely on that consume vast amounts of water to be produced be they a certain diet that includes meat (full disclosure I eat meat so I am not trying to make an argument for becoming a vegetarian), general agriculture, electricity, industry and or commerce.

The fact  is that Californian's have barely been able to reduce their direct consumption five percent.  So desperate is the government growing that they are asking citizens to report on each other.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/us/californians-keep-up-with-joneses-water-use.html) In Sacramento the waste water hotline has received over six thousand calls in a month and issued over two thousand citations since it was created.  Is that what we are being reduced to?  Tattle telling or as reported in the article the public shaming of our neighbors.   Before we pit neighbor against neighbor shouldn't we also be calling on agriculture, industrial and commercial users to cut their usage too?  

If California doesn't get serious about implementing comprehensive water rationing and distribution systems for this seriously limited resource it is going to find itself in Detroit's shoes namely having to shut off water to its residents.  But it won't be because the residents can't pay but because it just doesn't have the water to supply.   ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/opinion/going-without-water-in-detroit.html )  It probably won't be this year but if the rains don't come and there is nothing done you can expect this public health crisis in about twenty-four to thirty-six months.



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