10-209 Global Water War

Global Water War A consequence of the lack of Water Kanook – Oct, 2009 Water is the essence of life, sustaining every species on this planet. Take it away, there would be no plants, no animals, and no humanity. Scientists today tell us the global water supply isn’t marching toward a preordained risk, we’re already there. If you cruise the Internet in your quest to find out how much or this Blue Marble is covered with in H2O your find a varying amount of values, ranging from 70% to 80%, no matter the answer there is more water than land. This water remains pretty constant from one year to the next as it circulates between oceans, the land and the atmosphere due to evaporation and precipitation. The last is very critical to life on this planet, and due to the large amount has a great deal to do with our changing climate from region to region. Consider, nearly 98% of our world’s water is in the oceans, and fresh water makes up less than 3% of all water on earth, with 66% of this locked up in polar ice caps and glaciers. Fresh water lakes and rivers make up approximately 0.009% of the fresh water and ground water approximately 0.28%, which in my opinion is a difficult number to estimate based on the simple fact that underground aquifers are a little hard to measure. The “Water Wars” vision is not one of countries attacking other countries, today these wars consist of countries with rivers flowing through them cutting off the supply of other countries downstream, they also consist of bottled water companies, like Fiji Water1 telling the world their drinking 4000 contaminants when they drink tap-water, unlike their “living water”. By the way they are the biggest supplier of bottled water in the USA. In July, 2009 the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation stopped Nestle Waters North America Incorporated’s attempt to pump more water from a “stressed stream” and “lake” for its Ice Mountain bottled water in Mecosta, Michigan on Monday July 6th. Under a modified injunction order Nestle cannot pump for water from “Dead Stream” or “Thompson Lake” with the new order saying they must “reduce” its pumping earlier in the spring and continue its low pumping rates during the summer – I wonder how many people realize the water their drinking from Ice Mountain are originating in a place called “Dead Stream”. Del Posto, a restaurant chain backed by Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich now is shunning bottle water, along with the city of San Francisco and New York State. The argument being the cost of transporting, packaging and the 1

http://www.alternet.org/water/141937/the_fiji_phenomenon%3A_it %27s_a_human_rights_and_environmental_nightmare%2C_so_why_is_it_the_ %231_imported_bottled_water_in_the_us/?page=entire

absurd idea of moving water all over the world in plastic bottle is finally taking effect. As environmental concerns are kicking in, thanks to those Global Warming advocates, companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co, Nestle and SABMillier are becoming more attuned to the risk of negative consumer environmental perceptions. As water is becoming scarcer there is a fear developing that the so-far manageable price increases will spike and leading drink companies will have to take action to maintain their access to water, along with fighting their image as water hogs. There is no doubt in the minds of some that “water is the new oil”, as climate change and population growth drive its demand, while over 33% of the world’s population live in water “stressed’ areas, with raising predictions that by 2025 over 66% of the world will live in water “stressed” areas. Water is still cheap, but all over the world this is changing – whereas today it doesn’t dig too deep into your pocketbook, but what will water cost tomorrow? You beer drinkers, it takes on average of 4.5 liters [1.06 gallons] to make a liter of beer [less than a ¼ of a gallon]. Countries are now imposing high taxes on water use, hopefully to teach their population to be efficient in using it and sustain its availability. 70% of the fresh water today is said to be in use for agriculture, while another 20% is used for industry, large industry users of water are calculating their “water footprint” and doing so are finding out that through the supply chain they sometimes are using more than 14-times what they might use in their manufacturing plants. They are finding out, as with SABMiller that to produce 1 liter of beer in central Europe they are using 40 liters of water, while their plant in South Africa is using 155 liters of water to make 1 liter of beer – they calculated that counting in their “water footprint” they used 8.4 trillion liters of water last year, more than double what Iceland used in 2004. In California Jim Metropulos, a senior advocate at the Sierra Club’s California Chapter remarked on the statement made by Steven Chu Ph.D our new Secretary of Energy, “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going, I’m hoping the American people will wake up.” Jim’s comments to this, “Obviously, he’s versed on it, but he’s taking an apocalyptic view. I think it’s not sustainable in its current form. We rely on imported water to grow highvalue crops, but maybe the agriculture we have today may not be the agriculture we have decades from now.” That is a big “maybe”! Look at the facts: California’s agricultural sector grows approximately 33% of the nation’s food supply, and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled yearly by runoff from its Sierra Nevada snowpack, along with groundwater pumping and other less-reliable methods. This snowpack, which caused the

last water war2 in California, albeit not the last, was the war that transformed a semi-arid LA into an “unsustainable” oasis less populous than only New York City. A drought that is into its 3rd year is causing California’s central valley, home to a majority of the state’s agriculture output, to dry up where hundreds of thousands of acres lay fallow (unused), and the resultant economic depression is having a domino effect, and the once one-time powerhouse of the food industry is seeing its citizens go hungry. Like other locations in the world sustained by an uninterrupted supply of water, the coming climate changes, man-made or not, will leave California, and parts of Oregon and Washington dry, and all the water conservation in the world might not change that fact just as shoving our excess CO 2 into the ground won’t – and you think there is a water battle going on now, just wait! Based on the exceedingly high projected carbon emissions, NOAA is predicting that the southwestern United States will experience by 2050 permanent drought conditions, in other words the desert will stretch to the Pacific Ocean, just as the Sahara does in western Africa to the Atlantic. It is important to remember all the future pictures of California turning into the Sahara are done by super-duper computers running at top speed cranking out predictions on an event(s) that the weatherman gets wrong every other day, except in Hawaii. Benjamin Franklin said in 1774, “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water!” I, along with a few others, think he was wrong. The people here in the good-old-US-of-A, seem to not appreciated the value of water, even as some areas get a spurt of rust once-in-a-while when they turn on the tap, but then again we are little more than spoiled, were we’re hooked on the water being there when we want it. And we get that unlimited amount of water for a basic monthly charge that is pennies compared to our cell phone service or our CATV bill. Growing up in Southeast Alaska in a small town that averaged over 80” of rainfall every year, we even ran out of water in the 50s, but for a far different reason than today, our mud reservoir was too small and when the winter hit and we got a dry run of weather it pumped mud. So it was shut down and the water mains in town had saltwater pumped through them to fight fire, our drinking water was from a large wooden barrel that was filled by the water truck every other day. Since that time, here in this country water has become an invisible resource, we only miss it when it is not there and until it’s gone we’re mostly ignorant to its value. In other words, American’s treat water about like everything else they have today, “it is our God-given right to have it, and it will be ours forever.” I remember traveling overseas and getting into discussions about our overuse of all of the our resources, whereas my standard reply was, “well 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

we have worked hard and furious, generating wealth for our country and if we choose to drive vehicles that only get 11 mpg that is our RIGHT!” Tell me, where are we going to import water? Canada? You might get a gallon or two from our neighbors up north, but I’ll guarantee you’ll pay through the nose and will not be able to do much about it! Well there is always war!