by @anarchyroll
7/30/2014
“Insurmountable water crisis” jumps off the page, don’t you agree?
Massive droughts won’t just be for California anymore by 2040 unless societies move away from water intensive power production. Does that mean hydroelectric power is a no go? No, it means the opposite. It turns out that the largest usage of water in the industrialized world is the water used to cool (coal and nuclear) power plants.
Yes we need electricity, but you know what we need more than electricity? You guessed it, we need to be able to live, and we can’t do that without fresh, drinkable water.
Reducing pollution seems like less and less of a hippy issue when we’re talking about an “insurmountable” water shortage in less than three decades. If three decades seems like a long time, worry not, because there are seven states running out of water in the continental United States right now.
A global shortage from which there is no going back in three decades, a national shortage going on currently, sounds like commercial/industrial conservation should be on the menu. Instead, businesses in the US and the UK are doubling down on fracking which in addition to poisoning fresh water reserves, also uses massive amounts of freshwater as part of its process.
Fracking has been viewed as the light at the end of the tunnel in regards to energy concerns. But in the face of a national and global water scarcity both now and in the future, fracking is nothing more than a freight train. Cheap energy creating economic booms are useless if we are all dying of thirst.
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