This may be a short-term issue, versus the long-term issue of not having enough fresh water to drink. Scientists have been warning about this for a while now. W

This may be a short-term issue, versus the long-term issue of not having enough fresh water to drink. Scientists have been warning about this for a while now. We can probably advance the technology of purifying water to make it cheaper and more widespread, but we can't solve getting enough fresh water just by inventing a new gadget. To keep from running out of fresh water, we'd need to stop growing the population, or stave off the amount of water used for agriculture, or re-engineer all our wastewater systems for treatment and reuse, or build massive amounts of expensive desalination plants along with a massive global distribution network. All of these are possible, but we also have to actually start the process before it becomes too painful.