If you're new to Resource Depletion thinking, one place to start is
The Oil Drum, for an overview
of Peak Oil, the iconic example of Resource Depletion.
The basic premise of Peak Oil is that humankind has already burned up
most of the easy-to-acquire oil and natural gas in the world -- the stuff
that we can easily pump right out of the ground. Past peak, everything else costs
more energy to get out than it did before, causing a spiral in costs
and availability. The question is when
we hit that tipping point. When we hit the peak (and many say that
happened in 2006), then the cost of energy begins to inevitably rise
dramatically and rapidly. For modern society, when oil hits $120/barrel
to $200/barrel (or $5-$15/gallon), then all sorts of things begin to go awry.
The same premise can be
applied to nearly all our fundamental resources. Aquifirs have been
drained for agricultural irrigation. Obvious rivers have been already been dammed.
The easiest-to-get copper, magnesium,
iron, and other minerals vital for modern life has already been harvested
-- when energy was cheap! Natural gas is getting harder to find. Gold, platinum, silver, and titanium are
all oversubscribed.
Energy-intensive fertilization and monocrops
have made even most topsoil a depleted resource, unable to grow much
without pumping energy-expensive fertilizer upon it.
We are hypothesizing a 20% per year increase in
energy and material costs over the next ten years (note: oil was $50 a
barrel two years ago, and has recently exceeded $100), and for most
resource commodities because of it:
- Increased transportation costs for everything
starts creating
a fundamental worldwide recession/depression -- putting the current "just in
time" delivery and distribution systems, and globalism in general, in
jeopardy
- Commuting costs, suddenly dramatically higher, start eating into
the viability of suburbia (see The Long Emergency, by
James Howard Kunstler), deeply
affecting home values in those areas, creating even more economic
strife
- Alternative energy sources start being economically competitive (though still
expensive) -- solar, wind, water, coal, nuclear -- but can't ramp up
quickly enough to prevent the worldwide depression
- Fundamental products like food (meat, produce, even flour) rise in
price as fertilizer, mechanized production, and transportation costs
rise
- Airfare and air transport become much more expensive
- High-energy, high-fertilizer, transport-heavy agriculture becomes increasingly untenable
- Trains will likely become cost-effective again (helping large
urban areas more than remote areas)
- Internet use -- for telecommuting, entertainment, delivery
efficiencies, coordination of commuting, shopping, and more --
becomes a lifeline, not just a distraction
- The "consumer society" grinds slowly to a halt, causing dramatic disruption
in China and much of the "outsourced manufacturing" world
- The "war on terrorism" is ratcheted up to
a "war on Arab terrorism," the OPEC nations being
an easy target of blame for "holding our energy future for ransom."
- Walking-distance centralization (walk to grocery stores, etc.)
succeeds over driving-distance centralization (Wal-Mart, malls, etc.)
- Low-energy hand crafts, community gardens, bicycles, community cooperation,
and friend networks rise in value and practical utility
- Steady-state models, rather than constant-growth models, for
economic sustainability become much more interesting to economists
and citizens.
This Scenario promises a slow-motion, economically grinding spiral
down into a worldwide,
desperate depression. Even those lucky few with farms and fields will suffer,
though perhaps not as dramatically as those in mostly urban
landscapes.
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| Recent Resource Depletion News |
Got a spare Earth anywhere?
If the world continues to pillage and plunder Earth's natural resources at the rate we are now, by 2030 we will need two planets to support us.
If everyone on Earth consumed the equivalent resources of Canadians, it would take three Earths to meet the demand.
Since the late 1980s, we have been in overshoot -- meaning our ecological footprint has exceeded Earth's biocapacity to sustain our rate of consumption -- by about 30 percent.... Deforestation and land conversions in the tropics, dams, diversions, climate change, pollution and over-fishing are killing species off, the reverberations of which are felt along the food chain.
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Bolivia holds key to electric car future
Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future.
But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource... demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found.
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Is It Time to Kill Off the Flush Toilet?
To flush or not to flush. That was the question that designers and ecologists were asking each other this week as hundreds of people who spend a lot of time thinking about these things convened for the annual World Toilet Summit and Expo in Macau... the flushing loo -- that human innovation that lifted the industrialized world out of its own dirt, cholera and dysentery -- is quickly becoming one of the more egregious instruments of waste in this time of acutely finite resources.
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NOAA takes stock of assessment scientists and comes up short
Now, it turns out that there's a shortage of scientists to tell us that there's a shortage of fish.
A new federal report warns that the nation is facing a critical shortage of stock assessment scientists, the specialists who crunch numbers from various surveys to estimate the abundance of various fish populations.... Miller noted that many important species that live entirely in the Chesapeake have never had stock assessments, including such species as oysters, soft clams, razer clams, horseshoe crabs, catfish and white perch,
"All would be eminently suitable candidates for an assessment, but there simply are not the staff around to do it," he said.
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Drought more menacing, but it gets less mention
Drought? What drought? The rains still haven’t come. Lake Lanier drops ever lower. And Georgia’s water wars with Florida and Alabama slog along.
Yet last fall’s doomsday water scenarios have disappeared from newspaper front pages and state officials’ lips. Instead, this fall, Georgians are consumed with the financial crisis, the presidential election and gas prices. Meanwhile, the new year promises Year Four of the drought that has fundamentally affected the way North Georgians live.
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Is water the new oil?
...Already, 1bn people do not have enough clean water to drink, and at least 2bn cannot rely on adequate water to drink, clean and eat - let alone have enough left for nature.... The Stockholm International Water Institute talks about 'an acute and devastating humanitarian crisis'; the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, warns of a 'perfect storm'; Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, has raised the spectre of 'water wars'. And, as the population keeps growing and getting richer, and global warming changes the climate, experts are warning that unless something is done, billions more will suffer lack of water - precipitating hunger, disease, migration and ultimately conflict.
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Calif. cuts water deliveries to cities, farms
The state said Thursday it would cut water deliveries to their second lowest level ever, prompting warnings of water rationing for cities and less planting by farmers.
The Department of Water Resources announced it will deliver just 15 percent of the amount that local water agencies throughout California request every year. That marks the second lowest projection since the first State Water Project deliveries were made in 1962.
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Most fish goes into animal feed
A nine-year study by the University of British Columbia has found that 90 percent of small fish caught in the world's oceans every year such as anchovies, sardines and mackerel are processed to make fishmeal and fish oil.
Factory-farmed fish, pigs and poultry are consuming 28 million tonnes of fish a year, or roughly six times the amount of seafood eaten by Americans, according to the study.... The institute's executive director, Dr Ellen Pikitch, said: "It defies reason to drain the ocean of small, wild fishes that could be directly consumed by people in order to produce a lesser quantity of farmed fish."
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Bush approach to restricting fishing meets local resistance
The local fishing community on Guam is joining the Northern Marianas in a battle against a plan in Washington, D.C., to classify the Marianas Trench a national marine monument.... "We're only little guys with little boats," he said of Guam's local fishing community.
All of Guam's small boat fishing operations combined catch 50 tons of fish a year, he said.
A purse seiner -- which local fishermen don't use -- can catch 1,500 tons in just one fishing trip, he said.
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Diversity of trees in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest defies simple explanation
Trees in a hyper-diverse tropical rainforest interact with each other and their environment to create and maintain diversity, researchers report in the Oct. 24 issue of the journal Science....
It is difficult to determine the effects of climate change, habitat fragmentation and species extinctions on life's diversity without a coherent model of how communities are organized; but a unified theory of diversity patterns in ecological communities remains elusive. The most complex biological systems -- such as tropical rainforests -- are the most important testing grounds for theories that attempt to generalize across ecological communities; as they pose the greatest challenge. At Yasuni, in addition to the 600 species of birds and 170 of mammals, there are approximately 1,100 species of trees in the 25 hectare plot―more than in all of the U.S. and Canada, combined.
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A National Renewable Portfolio Standard? Not Practical
To sum up, we estimate that the states could accommodate 10 percent of the electricity coming from wind (or solar, if the costs were to come down) at any one time. With some attention and adjustment, we find that the electricity system could accommodate 15 percent or even 20 percent....
A national system must also deal with the fact that the best wind resources are in the Great Plains, about 1,000 miles from the Southeast where the electricity is likely to be needed. Policymakers must remain mindful of the difficulty of expanding transmission infrastructure. Community opposition will be widespread, the cost will be high, and the lines themselves will be vulnerable to disruption by storms or terrorists.
Thus, although a 20 percent national RPS might be physically possible with a very large transmission network and large amounts of spinning reserve, the logistical barriers will be high and the costs daunting. Embarking on this path without considering alternative strategies to reach the same ultimate goal would be short-sighted.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Well-grounded fears of aquifer depletion
But this year, as Palisades' well dropped to its lowest level, as housing and commercial development expanded, as quarry production continued and as natural gas drilling stood on the horizon in Nockamixon, Stanfield said homeowners should start taking notice.
Stanfield, who volunteers as vice chairman of the Bridgeton-Nockamixon-Tinicum Groundwater Management Committee, said in the several years he has monitored water levels, the high school's well is at the highest variation he has seen — with the water level rising and falling.
"It suggests that the aquifer they are drawing from is seriously stressed and there needs to be a review of how to respond to this," he said.
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SOMALIA: Poor rains intensify human suffering and deprivation
The situation in Somalia has deteriorated into an "unfolding humanitarian disaster" with shocking levels of human suffering and deprivation, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned.
"Rates of malnutrition in most of southern and central Somalia are above emergency threshold levels of 15 percent and in many areas greater than 20 percent and increasing," said an analysis prepared by FAO's Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU).
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Still no answers: A new study doesn't tell us what to do about oysters and the bay
The study's failure to endorse the Asian oyster is bound to disappoint those who think it's the salvation of an industry that has been devastated right along with the creature it depends on. Once so abundant that heaps of oysters broke the surface of local waters, the native oyster has become rare indeed, due to disease, poor water quality and over-fishing.
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Global Hunger Index 2008: hunger situation in 33 countries is 'very serious' to 'grave'
"Almost a billion starving people is a scandal for the world. In contrast to the banks, they themselves are not guilty for their plight. The general rethinking about the role of the state and the international community, brought about by the financial crisis, must be extended to also cover the hunger crisis. The world needs a rescue package to combat global hunger, and we therefore demand that funding for the development of agriculture in developing countries be increased by at least ten billion euros every year and that fairer trading conditions should be created."
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Bleak warning that UK fish face extinction
A hidden catastrophe is unfolding off the coasts of Britain which could leave our seas filled with only algae and jellyfish, a leading conservation organisation warns today. The Marine Conservation Society says severe overfishing is the biggest environmental threat facing Britain and is having a profound effect on marine ecosystems. The warning comes in Silent Seas, a report released as the government prepares its marine bill for parliament.... Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the MCS, said: "There's a moral imperative: we simply shouldn't be living in such a way that drives species to extinction."
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Guzzling the West's Water
What is particularly ironic about livestock-caused stream dewatering is that it usually makes little economic sense. In much of the West, the value of leaving water in the river to sustain native fisheries or to provide for water-based recreation is often vastly greater than that of the beef produced with the same amount of water. Leaving water in the river to support fishing may ultimately be far more beneficial to local economies than using it for irrigation. Yet we regularly sacrifice the fish to produce beef -- a commodity that is already produced more economically and with less environmental impact in other, naturally wetter, parts of the country.
In biology, it can be useful to categorize causative factors as either proximate or ultimate. In the arid West, livestock production is often the ultimate cause of species endangerment, though other factors, often more readily recognized, may be proximate causes. Thus, many dams in the West are proving to be ecological disasters, yet the dams themselves are only proximate causes of deteriorating aquatic ecosystems. Many dams would not have been built but for the demand for water storage for irrigation.
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World Fisheries Waste $50 Billion as Stocks Decline, UN Says
The damage to fish stocks through over-fishing has resulted in larger fleets chasing fewer resources, the report said. The waste amounts to 63 percent of the $80 billion worth of fish caught each year, the UN said in a summary of the report.
Scientists say the world's fisheries may collapse by 2048 if catch levels are maintained. Government subsidies have reduced incentives for change, the UN-World Bank report said. Reducing fleet capacity would increase profitability and allow fish stocks to recover, increasing yields, the report said.
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Pacific fishing collapse predicted
The collapse of commercial fishing in the Pacific has been predicted within five years by Greenpeace.
The comment accompanies the close of the fourth meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commissions Technical and Compliance Committee, reports Radio New Zealand.
Greenpeaces Pacific Oceans campaigner, Lagi Toribau said big fishing companies are depleting the fisheries there in the same way as they have others.
Toribau said the commission, which was set up four years ago, has failed to address the extent of pirate fishing.
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Mexico tourism boom kills coral quicker than climate change
Human waste, like that from Cancun's hotels and night spots, aggravates threats to coral worldwide, such as overzealous fishing, which hurts stocks of fish that eat reef-damaging algae....
Across the Caribbean, the amount of reef surface covered by live coral has fallen about 80 percent in the past 30 years, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says.
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Topsoil's Limited Turnover: A Crisis In Time
...Records show that topsoil erosion, accelerated by human civilization and conventional agricultural practices, has outpaced long-term soil production. Earth's continents are losing prime agricultural soils even as population growth and increased demand for biofuels claim more from this basic resource.
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Tartar River water banned for using because Armenians poison it
Local residents said the river became very turbid and they found dead bodies of fishes and other river inhabitants.
Armenians began to clean silt layer in Sarsang reservoir with the support of Russian company. The process was shown on Armenian TV channels broadcasted to Nagorno Karabakh.
They shed slops from Sarsang and other reservoirs into Tartar River.
Experts of the Azerbaijan Water Problems Institute found out that 90 per cent of the river water is useless.
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Gas shortage spurs telework in southeast U.S.
Gas shortages in the southeast United States are prompting companies to consider expanding their telework programs so employees can conserve fuel. Other options workers are weighing include greater use of carpools and public transit, along with alternative scheduling arrangements such as four-day work weeks.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Atlantic tuna return thousands of miles to birthplace to spawn
New research findings reported in Science have critical implications for how bluefin tuna are managed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.... Despite the high level of mixing, the team also observed that over 95 percent of adult bluefin tuna returned to their place of origin in either the Gulf of Mexico or Mediterranean Sea to spawn.... "Rates of homing reported here are extremely high and comparable to Pacific salmon, which are known to return to the streams in which they were initially spawned, with very high frequency," according to co-author Barbara Block from Stanford University.
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Topsoil's Limited Turnover: A Crisis in Time
Records show that topsoil erosion, accelerated by human civilization and conventional agricultural practices, has outpaced long-term soil production. Earth's continents are losing prime agricultural soils even as population growth and increased demand for biofuels claim more from this basic resource.... Top geomorphologist David R. Montgomery of the University of Washington says that "ongoing soil degradation and loss present a global economic crisis that, although less dramatic than climate change or a comet impact, could prove catastrophic nonetheless, given time."
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Report blasts slow progress on Everglades restoration
After eight years, the ambitious effort to restore the Everglades has produced stacks of science and engineering studies, created a sprawling bureaucracy and burned though $7 billion or so of taxpayer money.
But it hasn't restored much of anything.
That's the conclusion of a National Research Council progress report on the Everglades released Monday.
It finds that while the great marsh and its wildlife continue to decline, projects intended to revive the River of Grass have been tied up in red tape, interagency turf battles, budget shortfalls and waffling political support. Construction runs years behind schedule and billions over budget.... "Portions of the ecosystem are close to thresholds that, if they continue to deteriorate, it will be too late."
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Nurseries replenishing B.C.'s forests wither on the vine
This year she grew a crop of 22 million young trees, which she harvested and sent off to market. Logging companies bought those seedlings and so did tree-planting contractors.
With British Columbia's forests in a massive die-off because of a pine beetle infestation, Ms. Dawes's agri-business should be thriving. But it isn't. It is struggling to survive because of a downturn in the forest industry -- and because the federal government no longer recognizes silviculture as farming.... Silviculture operators, who until then had been covered by CAIS, thought they would simply join other farmers in a smooth transition to the new programs.
Then they found out that not only had they lost their status as farmers - but they also had to pay back any funds they'd been given under CAIS, dating back to 2003.
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Iran Sinking as Groundwater Resources Disappear
Iran's insatiable demand for water, which is being drawn out of aquifers far faster than it can be replenished, is causing large chunks of farmland to sink and buildings to crack, according to a new study. Estimates suggest the water levels in Iranian aquifers have declined by an average of nearly 1.5 feet (half a meter) every year over the last 15 years. As the water is removed, soil and rock lose their support, leading to compaction and sinking.
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Long-term Global Food Crisis Looms: Experts Urge Immediate Action
Declining agricultural productivity and continued growing demand have brought the world food situation to a crossroads. Failure to act now through a wholesale reinvestment in agriculture -- including research into improved technologies, infrastructure development, and training and education of agricultural scientists and trainers -- could lead to a long-term crisis that makes the price spikes of 2008 seem a mere blip.
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Iranians deplete aquifers, land is sinking
Researchers say increasing demand for groundwater in Iran is depleting that nation's water supplies, resulting in land surface deformations.
An international team of scientists said decades of unrestrained groundwater extraction are linked to land surface deformation on local and regional scales.... "Comparing ground deformation in Iran with other basins around the world revealed that Iran currently hosts some of the fastest sinking valleys and plain aquifers in the world," the scientists said.
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Running dry
The world has a water shortage, not a food shortage: MOST people may drink only two litres of water a day, but they consume about 3,000 if the water that goes into their food is taken into account. The rich gulp down far more, since they tend to eat more meat, which takes far more water to produce than grains. So as the world's population grows and incomes rise, farmers will -- if they use today's methods -- need a great deal more water to keep everyone...
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Global food situation at a crossroads
Declining agricultural productivity and continued growing demand have brought the world food situation to a crossroads. Failure to act now through a wholesale reinvestment in agriculture -- including research into improved technologies, infrastructure development, and training and education of agricultural scientists and trainers -- could lead to a long-term crisis that makes the price spikes of 2008 seem a mere blip.
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Kyrgyzstan Rations Electricity
Trolleybuses stand abandoned, and cars jam intersections because traffic lights do not work. Economic activity is also at a standstill, and people return home to darkness.
Since late August, when the government imposed nationwide electricity rationing, this has been life in Kyrgyzstan. It is the first time since the dire years of the 1990s that Kyrgyzstan has faced widespread outages. Every day power is cut for eight hours in different parts of the country. The government has imposed a rotating rationing scheme to preserve dwindling water supplies from the main regional reservoir in Toktogul. Three hundred kilometers west of Bishkek, Toktogul is the largest water reservoir in Central Asia.
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Water for food: the forgotten crisis
This year, the world and, in particular, developing countries and the poor have been hit by both food and energy crises. As a consequence, prices for many staple foods have risen by up to 100 per cent.
When we examine the causes of the food crisis, growing population, changes in trade patterns, urbanisation, dietary changes, biofuel production, and climate change and regional droughts are all responsible.... The causes of water scarcity are essentially identical to those of the food crisis. There are serious and extremely worrying factors that indicate water supplies are close to exhaustion in some countries. Population growth in the next approximately 40 years will see an increase from 6.5 to up to 9.0 billion. Essentially every calorie of food requires a litre of water to produce it. Therefore, on average we require 2,000-3,000 litres of water per person [per day] to sustain our daily food requirements.
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Hurricane Ike Shuts Largest U.S. Biodiesel Refinery
The nation's largest biodiesel refinery, located on the Houston Ship Channel, will be shut down for the next six to eight weeks because of damage and loss of power caused by Hurricane Ike, company officials say.
The publicly traded owner-operator GreenHunter Energy says damages at its Renewable Fuels Campus were mainly due to floodwater, which crested the 100-year flood plain level, rather than wind damage from Hurricane Ike.
Completed in March, the refinery is capable of producing 105 million gallons of biodiesel a year.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Can Offshore Drilling Really Make the U.S. Oil Independent?
No one disputes that a lot of oil lies untapped under the rocky floors of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans off the U.S. coasts... The [Minerals Management Service] has estimated that there are around 18 billion barrels in the underwater areas now off-limits to drilling. That's significantly less than in oil fields open for business in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal Alaska and off the coast of southern California, where there are 10.1 billion barrels of known oil reserves as well as an estimated 85.9 billion more... But here's the catch: There is a chance that the MMS has miscalculated the amount of offshore oil, because its estimates are based on 30- to 40-year-old data.
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New study says high grain prices are likely here to stay
An ethanol-fueled spike in grain prices will likely hold, yielding the first sustained increase for corn, wheat and soybean prices in more than three decades, according to new research by two University of Illinois farm economists.
Corn, an ethanol ingredient that has driven the recent price surge, could average $4.60 a bushel in Illinois, nearly double the average $2.42 a bushel from 1973 to 2006, said Darrel Good and Scott Irwin, professors of agriculture and consumer economics.
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NASA study illustrates how global peak oil could impact climate
The burning of fossil fuels -- notably coal, oil and gas -- has accounted for about 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era. Now, NASA researchers have identified feasible emission scenarios that could keep carbon dioxide below levels that some scientists have called dangerous for climate.... To better understand the possible trajectory of future carbon dioxide, Kharecha and Hansen devised five carbon dioxide emissions scenarios that span the years 1850-2100. Each scenario reflects a different estimate for the global production peak of fossil fuels, the timing of which depends on reserve size, recoverability and technology.
"Even if we assume high-end estimates and unconstrained emissions from conventional oil and gas, we find that these fuels alone are not abundant enough to take carbon dioxide above 450 parts per million," Kharecha said.
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Biofuels War: The New Scramble for Africa by Western Big Money Profiteers
African civil society is calling for a moratorium on new biofuels investments in Africa amid concern that that the biofuels revolution will bring more food insecurity, higher food prices and hunger to the continent.
In Tanzania, thousands of farmers growing cereals like corn and rice are already being evicted from fertile land with good access to water, for biofuel sugar cane and jatropha plantations on newly privatized land.
According to the anti-biofuels investment campaigners, whole villages are being cleared or grabbed, but families have been given minimal compensation or opportunities for their loss of land, community and way of life.
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Biofuels 200 times more expensive than forest conservation for global warming mitigation
The British government should end subsidies for biofuels and instead use the funds to slow destruction of rainforests and tropical peatlands argues a new report issued by a U.K.-based think tank.... [The study] says that "avoided deforestation" would be a more cost-effective way to address climate change, since land use change generates more emissions than the entire global transport sector and offers ancillary benefits including important ecosystem services.... They find that the biofuel initiative will save 2.6-3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year at a cost of ($1 billion), while a similar investment in preventing deforestation and peatland destruction could result in avoided emissions of 40-200 million tons of CO2 per year or a 50 times greater amount of avoided emissions. The savings would be equivalent to 37 percent of all UK carbon dioxide emissions for 2005.
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Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid's Limits
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.... The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
"We need an interstate transmission superhighway system," said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
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Eating rats to beat global food crisis
Rat meat has become such a popular alternative to other dearer meats in Cambodia that its price has increased fourfold.
As inflation pushes the price of beef beyond the reach of the poor, increased demand for rat meat has pushed up rodent prices.... This month, an Indian official said eating rats was a way to beat rising global food prices. Vijay Prakash, the secretary of Bihar's welfare department, said regular rat snacks would also translate into fewer rodents eating precious grain stocks, 50 percent of which are lost in the north-eastern Indian state every year to the creatures.
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Urgent Steps Needed To Combat Food Wastage - Report
"The United States and some other developed states throw away nearly a third of their food each year, according to a report that said on Thursday the world was producing more than enough to feed its population... The authors said that in the United States, up to 30 percent of food, worth some $48.3 billion, is thrown away each year.
"That's like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion litres of water into the garbage can -- enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people," the report said."
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After 5 years of war, Iraqis desperate for water
"At a communal water station in a Baghdad slum, a young boy's skinny arms fly up and down as he uses a bicycle pump to coax water from the dry ground.
His efforts produce a languid stream that will tide over his family -- and the families of the children waiting near him to fill their cooking pots -- until the next day.
This is a daily ritual for millions of Iraqis who lack access to sufficient clean water and proper sewage five years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein."
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"Water Mafias" Put Stranglehold on Public Water Supply
"Worldwide corruption driven by mafia-like organizations throughout water industries is forcing the poor to pay more for basic drinking water and sanitation services, according to a new report.
If bribery, organized crime, embezzlement, and other illegal activities continue, consumers and taxpayers will pay the equivalent of U.S. $20 billion dollars over the next decade, says the report, released this week at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden."
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Everyone knows industry needs oil. Now people are worrying about water, too
Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, which it calls an "unsustainable" rate of growth. Water, unlike oil, has no substitute. Climate change is altering the patterns of freshwater availability in complex ways that can lead to more frequent and severe droughts.
Untrammelled industrialisation, particularly in poor countries, is contaminating rivers and aquifers. America's generous subsidies for biofuel have increased the harvest of water-intensive crops that are now used for energy as well as food. And heavy subsidies for water in most parts of the world mean it is often grossly underpriced -- and hence squandered.
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52-city Report Examines Use Of Wastewater In Urban Agriculture
As developing countries confront the first global food crisis since the 1970s as well as unprecedented water scarcity, a new 53-city survey conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) indicates that most of those studied (80 percent) are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture. In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Our Good Earth
"...This year food shortages, caused in part by the diminishing quantity and quality of the world's soil ... have led to riots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By 2030, when today's toddlers have toddlers of their own, 8.3 billion people will walk the Earth; to feed them, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates, farmers will have to grow almost 30 percent more grain than they do now. Connoisseurs of human fecklessness will appreciate that even as humankind is ratchetting up its demands on soil, we are destroying it faster than ever before. "Taking the long view, we are running out of dirt," says David R. Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington in Seattle."
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Spanish fear day when tap will run dry
"BARCELONA, Spain -- Water woes spiraled to such depths this year that the top regional environment minister here—a confirmed agnostic—confessed to climbing the stony shrine of the Virgin of Montserrat for a bit of solace. Winter rains refused to fall, shriveling reserves to severe drought levels and prompting a water shipment from France. Catalonia's go-to guy for the environment, Francesc Baltasar, told local radio that fear made for a quick, if dubious, epiphany at the feet of the Virgin Mary."
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Democrats waver over offshore drilling ban
"Under fire from Republicans, top Democratic politicians in the United States are considering lifting a ban on new offshore oil drilling... Democrats have hitherto said new drilling would do little to relieve consumer pain at the pump, accusing Republicans of misleading the public and being a pawn of big oil companies. Yet signs are emerging that they are easing their opposition to the comprehensive ban."
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Armstrong tops list of city's largest water users
"Every minute, about five gallons of water passed through the sinks, sprinklers, fountain and pool at Lance Armstrong's house in June, making the retired professional cyclist Austin's biggest water-using individual that month.
A total of 222,900 gallons of water was used at Armstrong's home, according to the most recent city records available. That's about what 26 average Austin households use in a month."
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West Africa: Overfishing Linked to Food Crisis, Migration
According to a recent report by the nongovernmental organisation ActionAid, West African seas are being devastated by legal and illegal overfishing, while local fishing industries decline. Moreover, the economic partnership agreements in their currently proposed form only exacerbate this problem.
The overfishing of West African coastal waters, often by large European trawlers and sometimes by "fishing pirates" who trawl without any authorisation, has largely depleted local fish stocks.
This has a direct impact on the rising rate of unemployment and on the ever-increasing flow of West Africans who embark on perilous journeys to Europe, in search of a better life.
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Organic Food Has No More Nutritional Value Than Food Grown With Pesticides, Study Shows
New research in the latest issue of the Society of Chemical Industry's (SCI) Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture shows there is no evidence to support the argument that organic food is better than food grown with the use of pesticides and chemicals. Many people pay more than a third more for organic food in the belief that it has more nutritional content than food grown with pesticides and chemicals.... "[T]he study does not support the belief that organically grown foodstuffs generally contain more major and trace elements than conventionally grown foodstuffs."
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