Water situation in western US may be tight, but it's dire in places like China and India. We should factor water issues into concepts like TEOTWAWKI and "return to natural size"...
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
data.worldbank.org
| Australia | 22,039 | | Brazil | 27,512 | | Canada | 82,647 | | China | 2,093 | India
| 1,184 | | Mexico | 3,427 | Russian Federation
| 30,169 | | 9,044 |
China’s Coal-Fired Economy Dying of Thirst as Mines Lack Water
bloomberg.com
About half of China’s rivers have dried up since 1990 and those that remain are mostly contaminated. Without enough water, coal can’t be mined, new power stations can’t run and the economy can’t grow. At least 80 percent of the nation’s coal comes from regions where the United Nations says water supplies are either “stressed” or in “absolute scarcity.”
China has about 1,730 cubic meters of fresh water per person, close to the 1,700 cubic meter-level the UN deems “stressed.” The situation is worse in the north, where half China’s people, most of its coal and only 20 percent of its water are located.
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Premier Li Keqiang vowed at a March press briefing to crack down on pollution. “Being rich and well-off isn’t OK either if the environment deteriorates,” Li said.
Implementing such promises has proved elusive. In April, a group of 60 officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection told Zhang Haibin, an associate professor at Peking University, that they “don’t dare to really monitor” pollution because it would affect growth, Zhang said at a forum. The officials said when “economic growth conflicts, environmental targets always give way,” Zhang said.
Rains or Not, India Is Falling Short on Drinkable Water
nytimes.com
Half of the water supply in rural areas, where 70 percent of India’s population lives, is routinely contaminated with toxic bacteria. Employment in manufacturing in India has declined in recent years, and a prime reason may be the difficulty companies face getting water.
And India’s water problems are likely to worsen. A report that McKinsey & Company helped to write predicted that India would need to double its water-generation capacity by the year 2030 to meet the demands of its surging population.
A separate analysis concluded that groundwater supplies in many of India’s cities — including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai — are declining at such a rapid rate that they may run dry within a few years. |
