3 ms·
simple answer: there's no water, so unlike your US examples you can't use massive public diversion projects to make these areas fit for habitation.
by privacypoller 8y ago
simple answer: there's no water, so unlike your US examples you can't use massive public diversion projects to make these areas fit for habitation.
- practice9 8y ago> simple answer: there's no water even deep under the ground?
- stephen_g 8y agoNah, the Great Artesian Basin has been overexteacted for decades for agriculture. It can’t be relied upon long term if you start using it in areas with big population growth.
- reaperducer 8y agoNot even within a few hundred miles? Los Angeles, New York and lots of other American cities bring water in from hundreds of miles away.
- stephen_g 8y agoThe outflow of the Mississippi River is literally like six or seven times larger than from all our river systems combined, to put it in perspective. We’d probably have to build heaps of desalination plants around the coast and pipe it in to put more people further out.
- reaperducer 8y agoThe outflow of the Mississippi River is literally like six or seven times larger than from all our river systems combined That's a fun bit of trivia. But I'm not sure what that has to do with the discussion. The sources of New York and Los Angeles water are up to a thousand miles away from the Mississippi River watershed. Neither gets its water from there.
- stephen_g 8y agoThe point of my example is that just one river system out of several in the US is many times bigger than all the rivers in Australia. What I mean is that the problem is not the distance, but that sufficient water just isn't available anywhere in the continent.