Saturday, May 18, 2013

The Looming Threat of Water Scarcity


 Water Scarcity Figure 1

 Some 1.2 billion people—almost one fifth of the world—live in areas of physical water scarcity, while another 1.6 billion face what can be called economic water shortage.1 The situation is only expected to worsen as population growth, climate change, investment and management shortfalls, and inefficient use of existing resources restrict the amount of water available to people. It is estimated that by 2025 fully 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, with almost half of the world living in conditions of water stress.2

What are alternatives to this situation? Since our population continues to grow how quickly will we see signs of water scarcity? Will it ever have an impact in your lifetime, your  children's lifetimes?   
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3 comments:

  1. I think we will see a lot of people not having children in the future. One of the studies in environmental economics is how this scarcity will cause the cost of life to be too expensive for people. Either this would happen or there would become a restriction on how many children people are allowed to have.

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  2. Michigan should attempt to monopolize the great lakes, and all of our inland lakes. As we can see, the demand for clean water is going to keep increasing, so we should invest now.

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  3. This is actually very interesting, I didn't realize this was such a problem in the United States. I agree with Alex, there is a huge opening to make money in the future.

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