Is water going to be the next reason for war? August 5, 2007
Posted by Al in : fighting,nature,people,politics , trackbackIt looks as though oil will soon run out, and as a species we will need to find a way around this. As a fuel, oil can probably be replaced fairly easily and fairly soon, but as a base for many plastics and chemicals, oil may take some beating. The one common factor of all oil based products is that they are not vital to our survival, and therefore oil’s importance as a resource is high, but we can live without it.
Water, on the other hand, is vital. Not only can we not live without it, but also we cannot grow crops or raise livestock without it. As a commodity, water may be the most important commodity in the world – and it’s running out. Of course water, as a whole, is not running out; but fresh water, preferably clean, is running out fast. Populations are expanding in areas which don’t have the water capacity to sustain them; heavy industry is using and contaminating water supplies; irrigation is taking water away from sources, and is preventing that water ever filtering down to the aquifers it once would have reached; and aquifers once thought inexhaustible are turning out to be exhaustible after all.
Given the importance of water, and the increasing imbalance between population and water supply, then it is inevitable that conflicts will arise over water supplies. Unless an efficient desalination process is invented, and the power to operate such plants is found, then water wars can’t be too far away.
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