10 ms·
As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
- toodlebunions 10y agoFracking should help. /s
- taesis 10y agoI wonder if solar/wind/nuclear desalination plants would be better used piping water into existing infrastructure or (somehow) refilling aquifers. ... and that is apparently already a thing XD [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer_storage_and_recovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer_storage_and_recovery
- ehnto 10y agoHey, it's where I live! I had no idea we were doing such cool work in that area. Australia as you can imagine, while often quite lush in many regions, is quite acutely aware of water as a limited resource. Most places I have lived have been under some kind of permenant water restriction policy and I think that drills into most people that it's a pretty serious matter.
- swiley 10y agoAustralia seems to (in a similar way to California) have a difficult time distributing scarce resources because they're afraid of letting market forces do it. California would have more than enough water if its bizarre distribution scheme didn't make it so cheap for people to grow crops like alphalpha.
- ianai 10y agoWell that feels like something I can be happy about for a change.
- cardamomo 10y agoI grew up next to Lake Michigan, a huge source of fresh water. Yet for decades only municipalities within the Great Lakes watershed have been allowed to draw water from them. That pact has only recently started to be challenged by thirsty nearby communities[0]. I fear that groundwater crises in the Midwest will continue to erode what I see as a rational and sustainable restriction on the Lakes' water. [0] http://www.wpr.org/great-lakes-compact-councils-oks-waukeshas-water-diversion-plan http://www.wpr.org/great-lakes-compact-councils-oks-waukesha...
- 60654 10y agoYeah, no doubt there will be challenges, so it's good that the Great Lakes Charter [1] exists to regulate (ie. restrict) access from non-neighboring communities. But, even further away from the Great Lakes, the midwest seem roughly okay for now - IA, IL, OH, IN, WI, all seem to have okay rainfall and ground water levels. But the great plains states, KS, OK, TX, etc, which were historically less arable, are set to experience greater changes for the worse :( [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Charter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Charter
- ianai 10y agoIs anywhere not facing a water shortage? Where is it "best managed" or "least bad"
- guard-of-terra 10y agoSiberia maybe? Plenty rivers, no much use for water. Now, contamination is another question I presume.
- philippnagel 10y agoIceland, Guyana and Suriname seem to be doing alright [0]. According to the United Nations yearly availability of less than 1.700 cubic meters of water per year per capita is the lower limit [1]. [0]: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.INTR.PC?year_high_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.INTR.PC?year_high... [1]: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Water_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
- ktRolster 10y agoMost of the USA East Cost, and the Gulf of Mexico for that matter, do fine. In Alabama it almost rains too much for agriculture.
- billsmithaustin 10y agoAlabama is in the midst of a drought.
- tfussell 10y agoWe're definitely not fine in the Southeast right now. Large portions of Georgia in particular are in extreme drought. See: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?GA http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?...
- fulafel 10y agoHuman settlements have always been preferentially situated on rivers and other natural freshwater sources. So yes, many places are fine.
- tkyjonathan 10y ago"thirsty grains like rice and wheat".. Yet again no mention of animal agriculture. How much water a day does a cow need Vs wheat?
- btown 10y agohttp://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-...
- fulafel 10y agoAnd more widely, much more crops are used as animal feed vs human consumption. We have no food shortage, just a high demand for luxury (meat) foods that competes with basic sustenance.
- searine 10y agoThe solution in a first world economy is not to limit options. That is just regression. The solution is to make the industrial system sustainable. If there was a power crisis, you wouldn't make everyone use pocket calculators instead of computers, you'd figure out how power generation alternatives.
- jackvalentine 10y agoOr price things so that they take in all their externalities... perhaps cheap meat isn't ethical.
- rdw 10y agoThat analogy isn't great -- plenty of places in the world have power crises, and they do respond by limiting consumption of power. In actual water crises, such as the one in California, limiting and controlling consumption is the response. Obviously, it's always better to come up with an alternative before you reach the crisis. But once you've gotten to the crisis, you're already exhausted all other options and have to be realistic.
- stretchwithme 10y agoWhen people use a resource, they should pay more than just the cost of extracting it. They should also pay for its underlying value, which bears some relation to the price you would pay if the resource were no longer available. Such prices would signal to users the actual scarcity of the resource, giving them incentive to reduce waste and find alternatives. It would also spur development of desalination and other technologies. That is one reason public ownership of a resource doesn't work very well. And shared private ownership doesn't either, if you can use as much as you want. These aren't really different. Just the size of the group. But both could work if everybody pays a market price for what they use and owners/taxpayers get paid for their share of what is used.
- cardamomo 10y agoThe question is, can we arrive at a system and culture of paying for the "underlying value" of a resource, as you put it, before those resources no longer exist?
- stretchwithme 10y agoOnly if enough people understand the reasons for doing so. And if we don't, the change will be forced upon us and at higher cost with more disruption and risk. But that's true of most of the problems we fail to understand/choose to ignore.
- ehnto 10y agoI don't disagree, but it is still a scary prospect. Humans need water. We don't need gas, or oil, heck we can even survive without electricity. We can make do. But we die without water, and it is worrying to imagine a scenario where some people can no longer afford water because the price went up due to any number of factors. The price of a resource fluctuates for reasons not always related to the actual resources inherent cost and demand dynamic, and private companies don't have the same incentives as councils or government.
- cardamomo 10y ago
- jseliger 10y agoIt is surprising to not see desalinization mentioned, here or in the article. Consider https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the... or https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534996/megascale-desalination https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534996/megascale-desalina.... I have no special knowledge of desalinization apart from a distant relative who has worked on such projects, but the absence of it in the discussion is notable given its recent prominence.
- n0b0dythere 10y agoFor agriculture, hopefully this would be perfect. I've drank desalinated water before, many times. It's absolutely awful, tastes soft and doesn't quench your thirst like water normally does. hard to describe, it's like a mage cast a "create water" spell to make it, and it tastes like something that's wet and should be water, but just really isn't.
- hyperbovine 10y agoDesal can potentially alleviate drought in urban environments -- at a steep energy and environmental cost -- but is simply not in the running for producing food at a large scale. For example, ag in California alone consumes ~30 million acre-feet (MAF) a year [1]. The total installed desal capacity worldwide is around 35 MAF/yr [2]. [1] http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108 http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108 [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/272756219_fig2_Figure-2-Global-installed-desalination-capacity-2010-2016-Adapted-from-11 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/272756219_fig2_Figure-2-...
- jcfrei 10y agoDesalination seems perfectly capable of creating enough fresh water for agriculture. Desal requires plenty of electricity but with a big investment into new nuclear power plants these demands could be easily met. Switching to irrigation with desal water will come at a cost but I don't think it will be dramatic in the developed world.
- apsec112 10y ago"Rising temperatures and growing demands for thirsty grains like rice and wheat could drain much of the world’s groundwater in the next few decades, new research warns." Wait, what? A global water shortage is one problem that global warming would actually help fix. There might be local droughts, but it's meteorologically obvious that higher temperatures = higher evaporation = higher global rainfall. A warm ocean pumps out more water vapor, and warm air can hold more moisture (which is why Antarctica is so dry).
- auggierose 10y agoIs that also the reason why the desert is so moist?
- adekok 10y ago> t's meteorologically obvious that higher temperatures = higher evaporation = higher global rainfall It doesn't help the Southern US if Central America has higher rainfall. i.e. there is no guarantee that the rain falls where it's needed for farming. Much the opposite, as it turns out.
- foota 10y agoIn theory, couldn't agricultural centers move?
- anigbrowl 10y agoYes. In practice, the economic dislocations involved are often severe.
- pm90 10y agoYes but in general politics comes in the way. Agriculture is not just a way to make food, but a source of livelihood for millions of people. Most non-developed countries depend on agriculture to provide work for their people. This would affect them the most, putting most of them out of work. There's also the simple factor that countries want to be self-sufficient in their food production.
- delbel 10y agoUnlikely a problem given the discovery of a largest fresh water bodies ever known was just discovered: http://inhabitat.com/scientists-discover-freshwater-reserves-under-ocean-100-times-greater-than-what-humanity-has-used-since-1900/ http://inhabitat.com/scientists-discover-freshwater-reserves...
- stuckagain 10y ago_More_ fossil water may not be the solution we seek.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoExplain?
- Elrac 10y agoLike fossil fuels, fossil water is not a self-renewing, i.e. sustainable resource. When it's used up, we're back where we started. Also, it seems this stuff isn't really convenient to come by. Granted, though, if 100 centuries' worth of water is really extractable, this may be pushing the problem so far into the future that we can buy a lot of timer for better solutions.
- jwatte 10y agoThe point of view of "business friendly" Republicans is generally that if the resource lasts for 25 years, that will make life better for people who live now. In that viewpoint, why would you prioritize some theoretical future people's needs over the needs of people right now? I think many knee jerk liberals haven't yet internalized this viewpoint, and don't (yet) have great answers to that question. (Or turn it around: if you think this is wrong, but don't have a good answer, that makes you a knee jerk liberal!) PS: I say this as a centrist liberal.
- stuckagain 10y agoFood shock =~ meat shock. 95% of our agriculture is dedicated to raising meat. Cutting meat production immediately relieves any and all water problems.
- FlyingSnake 10y ago> 95% of our agriculture is dedicated to raising meat That's a really tall claim, and I don't believe we don't dedicate resources to grow wheat, rice, corn etc. Do you have sources for that?
- stuckagain 10y agoHow tall do you think it is, exactly?
- chiefalchemist 10y ago95% sounds over the top but it's certainly true that raising animals for human consumption is resource intensive. Yes, there is and should be a concern. The problem with predictions like this - e.g., "We need GMOs..." - is they presume we'll continue to be completely stupid. Yes, change is difficult. But it's not impossible.
- dTal 10y agoTo be fair, that's usually a safe presumption; any plan that ignores the stupidity of humans is doomed to failure.
- chiefalchemist 10y agoWell yeah. But we might have much choice this time.
- vivekd 10y agoI don't want to minimize the concerns of groundwater loss, but I don't see it resulting in a food shortage as the article suggests. It just means we'll have to desalinate. Yes that will mean food prices go up, but they also go up in relation to other things like rising gas prices. Preserving ground water is important, but tying it to looming food shortages seems alarmist.
- jwatte 10y agoWell, in another 25 to 35 years, we'll hit the 3 degrees C warming that will start collapsing the global food supply system. Wars have been fought over less.
- ilaksh 10y agoJust to throw it out there, there are alterative types of agriculture such as ultra-local production, aeroponics, hydroponics, vertical farming, etc. that _could_ be significantly less resource intensive if executed correctly on a large scale. I'm not saying that I am sure they will use less water but we could try and if we focus on being efficient with electricity and land it could make a big difference. For example aeroponics doesn't have to use artificial lighting.