We?re all looking at food these days and yet it takes several times the weight of the food in water to grow it. A figure I last recall back in a food security class was that it takes roughly 1000 tons of water to grow 1 ton of grain. When we ship food, we?re actually shipping water (and it took hundreds of tons of water to pull out the oil to make the fuel for the ship I might add – especially if it?s something like what we?re seeing with the Alberta tar sands).

At the same time, water everywhere is a) getting dirtier or b) vanishing like the wind. Pollution in Lake Erie and the Detroit River, waste dumping in cities like Seoul, the river Thames and many more examples can be found of pollution. These days people take in so many pharmaceuticals that geography researchers can actually tell a lot about a neighbourhood?s drug use by testing the sewage water (http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/11022/abstract.html). Some of these drugs like birth control pills can really mess with the hormones (grins – talk about pollution – don?t forget your toothpaste has chemicals in it too – think Triclosan).

Regarding vanishing water, we?re draining underground water reserves (aquifers) like there?s no tomorrow to either bottle water (the Nestle water bottling plant in Guelph, Ontario for example), irrigate our crops (the worst example is Mexico, where they?ve drained so much water that the land has literally shrunk, losing elevation – in one picture I saw with a telephone pole, it looked like Mexico?s elevation had fallen 20 ft) or some other huge technological reason (like putting water in a reservoir behind a dam like the Three Gorges Dam is doing – this Scientific American article gives a good idea of what I?m talking about).

Climate change or climate chaos are making many places drier and cutting down their water supply. An example is California (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-06/uoc–ncs060302.php). Some previous research I did on climate change impacts on agriculture indicated Californian agriculture would take a huge hit while places like Pennsylvania would see more rain (and water) meaning that growing food there ?may? be better in the future (way more factors than just rain to get a good crop these days).

Talk about cost accounting!

Feel free to revise my figures if you have more detailed information at hand.

Here?s an article on Canada?s ?water? (below).
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Canada?s Fragile Fresh Water System

Water seems abundant in Canada, but is it really?
In the land of glacial waters and spring thaws the last thing most Canadians think about is where their next drink of clean water is coming from. Big mistake. Canada does not have a limitless supply of fresh water. Only a small fraction of the water we see when visiting the Great lakes, for example, is “new” and if we consume it or pollute it or otherwise make it unusable it will not be readily replaced.
In today’s Globe and Mail John Austin makes his case to Canadians that we have to protect and conserve this finite resource:
Water is something Canadians and Americans take very much for granted, particularly people in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, where water’s abundance has long been the foundation of agriculture, industry, trade and economic development. Around the world, water matters powerfully, and in new ways. Not only is it a vital and increasingly precious source of life ? access and proximity to it is a valuable commodity in today’s economy.
Most Canadians haven’t yet realized that their country faces an imminent shortage of fresh water. A March 19 Ipsos-Reid poll showed that 80 per cent of Canadians are confident that the country’s supply will meet long-term needs. Two-thirds don’t think there is a shortage. This attitude helps explain why Canada is second only to the United States when it comes to wasting water.
Part of the challenge is that most don’t understand the important distinction between regular fresh water and renewable fresh water. Canada has about 20 per cent of the world’s regular fresh water, which gives the false illusion of an immensely abundant supply. But little of this water is replenished annually. Most of Canada’s fresh water is a legacy of the melting large ice sheets that once covered much of the country’s land mass. When water is used or evaporates, it doesn’t always return in useful quantity or quality.
That’s why we talk about renewable water sources. Roughly 7 per cent of the world’s renewable fresh water is found in Canada. More than half of it flows northward into the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay, which leaves the 85 per cent of Canadians who live close to the U.S. border with access to just 2.6 per cent of the world’s renewable fresh water.
The Great Lakes are an intricate part of our two countries’ shared environment, health and economy. They provide drinking water to 8.5 million Canadians while supporting 45 per cent of Canada’s industrial capacity and 25 per cent of its agricultural capacity. They contribute $180-billion a year to Canada-U.S. trade, sustaining a $100-million commercial fishing industry and a $350-million recreational finishing industry.
According to Environment Canada, water directly contributes between $7.5-billion and $23-billion a year to the country’s economy. On the U.S. side, a recent Brookings Institution study suggested that making priority renovations of sewer infrastructure, cleaning up toxic areas and protecting important pieces of the Great Lakes ecosystem would eventually pay off with $80-billion to $100-billion worth of regional economic development.
Exacerbated by climate change, even the world’s largest freshwater resource is not immune. Home to a broad variety of natural habitats, the Great Lakes are under serious threat. Huge swaths of wetlands have been lost, thousands of kilometres of rivers have been impaired and much shoreline has been degraded. Invasive species ply the waters, and climate change places human and ecosystem health in peril.
For the past decade, drought and warmer temperatures have caused constant decreases in the water levels of Lake Superior, which feed into the other four lakes ? just one of the risks facing the system. That’s why McMaster University’s Dofasco Centre for Engineering and Public Policy gathered leading water and energy experts from Canada and the United States last week to confront the emerging public policy challenge. The conference ?Energy 2100: Making the Lakes Great? addressed the challenge of developing energy policies to sustain the Great Lakes ecosystem and the health of people living within its basin.
While most Canadians believe that water is a human right, it is important to realize that it’s a finite resource and part of a fragile ecosystem. We need our actions and policies to reflect the importance of maintaining that balance.

John Austin is a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, director of the Great Lakes Economic Initiative and vice-president of the Michigan State Board of Education

Originally:

Posted by Robert Ouellette on 04/28 at 07:52 AM

http://corporateknightsforum.com/index.php/CKtemplates/CKcomments/2007/

Keywords: climate change, fresh water, Great Lakes, drought, temperature, scarcity, water, oil, climate chaos, energy, drug, pharmaceutical, irrigation, pollution

Originally Posted:

Ffenyx Rising

http://ffenyx.wordpress.com