Am I consuming too much water? How big influence my water usage has? It seems my usage of water is like a drop in the ocean but still some areas in the world are suffering lack of suitable water. If you are looking at the map of the world there is water everywhere but actually only 1% of it is available and suitable for our use. I know very little about the development of sea water purification systems but those systems are today too expensive, use too much energy, and have insufficient capacity. Positive thinking and we will solve this problem in the future. However how long time it would take until the new technology reaches the countries and regions that desperately already need it. Discussion in the class produced also conclusion that actually the driest regions are also the poorest ones that has many other problems than the lack of water. The regions are also many times suffering contaminations, which can destroy the little suitable water they have. One of the problems is not only the lack of water but the pollution of the water left.
For me it was quite socking to hear that in 2000 twice as much water was used than in 1960. And we definitely can’t say that this speed is slowing down. Of course this is estimation and it’s really hard to measure the global water usage, but still population growth and development in developing countries will increase the number. Agriculture it’s the biggest consumer of fresh water and more water is needed to feed the bigger crowd. One forecast says in the 21th century wars will be fought over water and this might be true or I guess water will be at least one of the reasons for the conflicts.
Climate change has an impact on the weather and some regions have been suffering unusual heavy rains and other regions unusual long try season. People living in those areas are used to live along these altering seasons but now they are incapable to handle the situation when this alternation is changing. Especially this increases the push effect of rural areas to the urban areas. I think we are not going to see only strong urbanization in the future but also stream of refugees, which are forced to leave from their country because of the environmental reasons like lack of suitable drinking water. In some point there has been discussion how much increased evaporation and cloudiness because of the warming will effect on rains. A weather specialist maybe has answer for this but anyway some regions are still drowning.
It seems I can’t save the world and help those people to have enough water by taking 2 minutes shower instead of 5 minutes, buying products that need only little water to be produced or left my daily cup of coffee, but it will relieve my conscience.
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