Credit: www.vernkummersplumbing.com
Seven out of 10 people on earth can count on running water to be available in their homes. That means it’s always there when we need it, whatever we need it for.
Until it isn’t: Cape Town, London, Sao Paulo, Jakarta, Istanbul, Tokyo, and Mexico City could be facing “Day Zero” — meaning they will run out of water — in the next few decades unless their water use radically changes.
Less than 1 percent of the world’s water supply is readily available for human use (the rest is salty, frozen at the poles, or trapped underground). Yet we use it in wildly inefficient ways: We lose it to leaky pipes. We dump waste in it. We try to grow some of our most water-intensive crops in the desert. Really.
So how have we built a world where we don’t have enough of its most valuable resource? What happens when we run out? And what can we do to solve the problem now?
Vox tackled these questions on this week’s episode of our Netflix show, Explained. We have new episodes every Wednesday on […]
I think President Carter installed solar hot water heating panels on the White House roof which were new and somewhat popular in the 70s and 80s, photovoltaics were expensive then. Ronny Raygun promptly removed them. So many believe that Carter was a bad president though even at the time I didn’t think so and believe history has already raised his standing.
I’ve often wondered how our country would be if Carter had been reelected and if Gore had assumed his rightful position as president. “Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.” Master Yoda, The Phantom Menace
Carter was way ahead of his time! I think desalination plants are the best way for Cape Town, and other areas that will need more water in the future, and they should at least already be in the planning stages by now.
Post Script: I lived in a home in Florida which had solar hot water which was installed back in the 1950’s and the idea is not new and works very well. It supplied water for two families, not just one.