Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!
Imagine yourself lost on a life raft in the middle of the sea ! Your throat is parched, so badly you finally relent to drinking from the sea, knowing full well it will kill you. Yet you drink. Perhaps this tale is a foreboding of things to come.
Although the surface of the earth is seventy percent water, how much is drinkable? Only about three percent of Earth's water is freshwater. Of that, only about 1.2 percent can be used as drinking water; the rest is locked up in glaciers, ice caps, and permafrost, or buried deep in the ground. Most of our drinking water comes from rivers and streams.
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled unprecedented new limits on the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS as a way to tackle drinking water contamination. The proposal targets six notorious PFAS – PFOA, PFOS, GenX, PFBS, PFNA, and PFHxS.
One hundred years ago water was abundant, and great reservoirs were built and filled from the runoff of mountains, and glaciers. Some were enormous holding tanks fashioned by dams built at a time when arid lands were sparsely populated.
In many countries, we see remnants of civilizations gone, abandoned cities, dwellings built into cliffsides, and structures seen only with satellite mapping of roads, and buildings covered by earth and vegetation.
Did water shortages, pandemics, or earthquakes put a swift end or a slow end to those settlements?
Mass migrations are occurring as I write this blog, in Turkey, Sudan, and Northern Africa. Political instability is fueled by a shortage of water and/or food.
Political instability is often the result of climate-induced disruptions to agricultural systems, but responses to disasters are crucial determinants of when and where conflict may occur. Historically famines have been aggravated by the failure of political elites to respond appropriately and by political economy doctrines that obscured their causes. Little evidence suggests that such events or conflicts over scarce water supplies turn to violence.
Climate change will cause populations to migrate, although it is difficult to be precise about exactly how and where except in the case of low-lying coastal states that face entirely predictable inundation. International political instabilities and related failures to anticipate climate change curtail fossil fuel usage, and unilateral attempts to adapt to climate disruptions are the major issues facing the future of climate change governance in the Anthropocene.
Populations no longer trust the water coming from their faucets. Witness the increase in the use of bottled water. The search for safe, clean, and uncontaminated water has increased.
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