By Michael Snyder
~
Economic Collapse
March 6, 2013
The world is rapidly running out of
clean water. Some of the largest lakes and rivers on the globe
are being depleted at a very frightening pace, and many of the
most important underground aquifers that we depend on to
irrigate our crops will soon be gone. At this point,
approximately 40 percent of the entire population of the planet
has little or no access to clean water, and it is being
projected that by 2025 two-thirds of humanity will live in
“water-stressed” areas.But most Americans are not too
concerned about all of this because they assume that North
America has more fresh water than anyone else does. And actually
they would be right about that, but the truth is that even North
America is rapidly running out of water and it is going to
change all of our lives.Today, the most important
underground water source in America, the Ogallala Aquifer, is
rapidly running dry. The most important lake in the western
United States, Lake Mead, is rapidly running dry. The
most important river in the western United States, the
Colorado River, is rapidly running dry.Putting our heads in the sand and
pretending that we are not on the verge of an absolutely
horrific water crisis is not going to make it go away. Without
water, you cannot grow crops, you cannot raise livestock and you
cannot support modern cities. As this global water crisis gets
worse, it is going to affect every single man, woman and child
on the planet. I encourage you to keep reading and learn more.The U.S. intelligence community
understands what is happening. According to one shocking
government report that was released last year, the global need
for water will exceed the global supply of water
by 40 percent by the year 2030…“This sobering message emerges
from the first U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment of
Global Water Security. The document predicts that
by 2030 humanity’s ‘annual global water requirements’ will
exceed ‘current sustainable water supplies’ by forty
percent.”Oh, but our scientists will find a
solution to our problems long before then, won’t they?But what if they don’t?
Most Americans tend to think of a
“water crisis” as something that happens in very dry places such
as Africa or the Middle East, but the truth is that almost the
entire western half of the United States is historically a very
dry place. The western U.S. has been hit very hard by drought in
recent years, and many communities are on the verge of having to
make some very hard decisions.For example, just look at what is
happening to Lake Mead. Scientists are projecting that Lake Mead
has a 50 percent chance of running dry by the year 2025. If that
happens, it will mean the end of Las Vegas as we know it. But
the problems will not be limited just to Las Vegas. The truth is
that if Lake Mead runs dry, it will be a major disaster for that
entire region of the country. This was explained in a recent
article
by Alex Daley…“Way before people run out of
drinking water, something else happens: When Lake Mead falls
below 1,050 feet, the Hoover Dam’s turbines shut down less
than four years from now, if the current trend holds and
in Vegas the lights start going out.“Ominously, these water woes are
not confined to Las Vegas. Under contracts signed by
President Obama in December 2011, Nevada gets only 23.37% of
the electricity generated by the Hoover Dam. The other top
recipients: Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California (28.53%); state of Arizona (18.95%); city of Los
Angeles (15.42%); and Southern California Edison (5.54%).“You can always build more power
plants, but you can’t build more rivers, and the mighty
Colorado carries the lifeblood of the Southwest. It services
the water needs of an area the size of France, in which live
40 million people. In its natural state, the river poured
15.7 million acre-feet of water into the Gulf of California
each year. Today, twelve years of drought have reduced the
flow to about 12 million acre-feet, and human demand siphons
off every bit of it; at its mouth, the riverbed is nothing
but dust.“Nor is the decline in the water
supply important only to the citizens of Las Vegas, Phoenix,
and Los Angeles. It’s critical to the whole country. The
Colorado is the sole source of water for southeastern
California’s Imperial Valley, which has been made into one
of the most productive agricultural areas in the US despite
receiving an average of three inches of rain per year.”Are you starting to get an idea of
just how serious this all is?But it is not just our lakes and our
rivers that are going dry. We are also depleting our groundwater
at a very frightening pace as a recent
Science Daily article discussed…“Three results of the new study
are particularly striking: First, during the most recent
drought in California’s Central Valley, from 2006 to 2009,
farmers in the south depleted enough groundwater to fill the
nation’s largest human-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las
Vegas — a level of groundwater depletion that is
unsustainable at current recharge rates.“Second, a third of the
groundwater depletion in the High Plains occurs in just 4%
of the land area. And third, the researchers project that if
current trends continue some parts of the southern High
Plains that currently support irrigated agriculture, mostly
in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to
do so within a few decades.”In the United States we have massive
underground aquifers that have allowed our nation to be the
breadbasket of the world. But once the water from those aquifers
is gone, it is gone for good. That is why what is happening to
the Ogallala Aquifer is so alarming. The Ogallala Aquifer is one
of the largest sources of fresh water in the world, and U.S.
farmers use water from it to irrigate more than 15 million acres
of crops each year. The Ogallala Aquifer covers more than
100,000 square miles and it sits underneath the states of Texas,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and
South Dakota. Most Americans have never even heard of it, but it
is absolutely crucial to our way of life. Sadly, it is being
drained at a rate that is almost unimaginable.The following are some facts about
the Ogallala Aquifer and the growing water crisis that we are
facing in the United States. A number of these facts were taken
from one of my previous articles. I think that you will
agree that many of these facts are quite alarming…1. The Ogallala
Aquifer is being drained at a rate of approximately
800 gallons per minute.2. According to the
U.S. Geological Survey, “a
volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie”
has been permanently drained from the Ogallala Aquifer since
1940.3. Decades ago, the
Ogallala Aquifer had an average depth of approximately 240 feet,
but today the average depth is
just 80 feet. In some areas of Texas, the water is gone
completely.4. Scientists are
warning that nothing can be done to stop the depletion of the
Ogallala Aquifer. The ominous words
of David Brauer of the Ogallala Research Service should
alarm us all…
“Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That’s all we
can do.”5. According to a
recent
National Geographic article, the average depletion rate of
the Ogallala Aquifer is picking up speed….
“Even more worrisome, the draining of the High Plains water
account has picked up speed. The average annual depletion
rate between 2000 and 2007 was more than twice that during
the previous fifty years. The depletion is most severe in
the southern portion of the aquifer, especially in Texas,
where the water table beneath sizeable areas has dropped
100-150 feet; in smaller pockets, it has dropped more than
150 feet.”6. According to the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. interior west is now
the driest that it has beenin 500 years.
7. Wildfires have
burned millions of acres of vegetation in the central part of
the United States in recent years. For example, wildfires burned
an astounding
3.6 million acres in the state of Texas alone during 2011.
This helps set the stage for huge dust storms in the future.8. Unfortunately,
scientists tell us that it would be normal for extremely dry
conditions to persist in parts of western North America for
decades. The following is from an articlein the Vancouver Sun…
“But University of Regina paleoclimatologist Jeannine-Marie
St. Jacques says that decade-long drought is nowhere near as
bad as it can get.
“St. Jacques and her colleagues have been studying tree ring
data and, at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science conference in Vancouver over the weekend, she
explained the reality of droughts.
“‘What we’re seeing in the climate records is these
megadroughts, and they don’t last a decadethey last 20
years, 30 years, maybe 60 years, and they’ll be
semi-continental in expanse,’ she told the Regina
Leader-Post by phone from Vancouver. So it’s like what we
saw in the Dirty Thirties, but imagine the Dirty Thirties
going on for 30 years. That’s what scares those of us who
are in the community studying this data pool.'”9. Experts tell us
that U.S. water bills are likely to soar in the coming
years. It is being projected that repairing and expanding our
decaying drinking water infrastructure will cost more than one
trillion dollars over the next 25 years, and as a result our
water bills will likelyapproximately triple over that time period.
10. Right now, the
United States uses approximately
148 trillion gallons of fresh water a year, and there is no
way that is sustainable in the long run.11. According to a
U.S. government report,36 states are already facing water shortages or will be
facing water shortages within the next few years.12. Lake Mead
supplies about 85 percent of the water to Las Vegas, and since
1998 the level of water in Lake Meadhas dropped by about 5.6 trillion gallons.
13. It has been
estimated that the state of California only hasa 20 year supply of fresh water left.
14. It has been
estimated that the state of New Mexico only hasa 10 year supply of fresh water left.
15. Approximately
40 percent of all rivers in the United States and
approximately46 percent of all lakes in the United States have become so
polluted that they are are no longer fit for human use.The 1,450 mile long Colorado River
is a good example of what we have done to our precious water
supplies. It is probably the most important body of water in the
southwestern United States, and it is rapidly dying.The following is an excerpt from an
outstanding article
by Jonathan Waterman about how the once mighty Colorado
River is rapidly drying up…“Fifty miles from the sea, 1.5
miles south of the Mexican border, I saw a river evaporate
into a scum of phosphates and discarded water bottles. This
dirty water sent me home with feet so badly infected that I
couldnt walk for a week. And a delta once renowned for its
wildlife and wetlands is now all but part of the surrounding
and parched Sonoran Desert. According to Mexican scientists
whom I met with, the river has not flowed to the sea since
1998. If the Endangered Species Act had any teeth in Mexico,
we might have a chance to save the giant sea bass (totoaba),
clams, the Sea of Cortez shrimp fishery that depends upon
freshwater returns, and dozens of bird species.“So let this stand as an open
invitation to the former Secretary of the Interior and all
water buffalos who insist upon telling us that there is no
scarcity of water here or in the Mexican Delta. Leave the
sprinklered green lawns outside the Aspen conferences, come
with me, and Ill show you a Colorado River running dry from
its headwaters to the sea. It is polluted and compromised by
industry and agriculture. It is overallocated, drought
stricken, and soon to suffer greatly from population growth.
If other leaders in our administration continue the
whitewash, the scarcity of knowledge and lack of
conservation measures will cripple a western civilization
built upon water.”But of course North America is in
far better shape when it comes to fresh water than the rest of
the world is. In fact, in many areas of the world today water
has already become the most important issue.The following are some incredible
facts about the global water crisis that is getting even worse
with each passing day…1. Total global
water use
has quadrupled over the past 100 years, and it is now
increasing faster than it ever has been before.2. Today, there are
1.6 billion people that live in areas of the globe that are
considered to be “water-stressed”, and it is being projected
that two-thirds of the entire population of the globe will be
experiencing “water-stressed” conditions by the year 2025.3. According to
USAID,one-third of the people on earth will be facing “severe” or
“chronic” water shortages by the year 2025.4. Once upon a
time, the Aral Sea was the 4th largest freshwater lake in the
entire world. At this point, it
less than 10 percent the size that it used to be, and it is
being projected that it will dry up completely by the year 2020.5. If you can
believe it, the flow of water along the Jordan River is down to
only
2 percent of its historic rate.6. It is being
projected that the demand for water in China will exceed the
supply
by 25 percent by the year 2030.7. According to the
United Nations, the world is going to need at least
30 percent more fresh water by the year 2030.8. Sadly, it is
estimated that approximately
40 percent of the children living in Africa and India have
had their growth stunted due to unclean water and malnutrition.9. Of the 60
million people added to the cities of the world each year, the
vast majority of them live in deeply impoverished areas
that have no sanitation facilities whatsoever.10. It has been
estimated that75 percent of all surface water in India has been heavily
contaminated by human or agricultural waste.11. Sadly,
according to one UN study on sanitation, far more people in
India have access to a cell phone than to a toilet.12. Every
8 seconds, somewhere in the world a child dies from drinking
dirty water.13. Due to a lack
of water, Saudi Arabia has given up on trying to grow wheat and
will be 100 percent dependent on wheat imports
by the year 2016.14. Each year in
northern China, the water table drops by an average of
about one meter due to severe drought and overpumping, and
the size of the desert increases by an area equivalent to the
state of Rhode Island.15. In China,
80 percent of the major rivers have become so horribly
polluted that they do not support any aquatic life at all at
this point.So is there any hope that the coming
global water crisis can be averted?If not, what can we do to prepare?