Problems

Right now more than a billion people don't have access to safe drinking water. Water-related diseases are the leading cause of death in the world, and are responsible for 80% of all the sicknesses.

According to the World Resources Institute, some 41% of the world's population-- or 2.3 billion people- "live in river basins under 'water stress,' meaning they are subject to frequent water shortages. Some 1.7 billion of these people live in `highly stressed' water basins where problems with local food production and economic development abound."

The world's fresh water supply has been diminishing for centuries, due to chemical pollution from industries, and bacterial pollution from human and animal waste. Among the nations that currently have serious water problems are India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Ethiopia and Honduras. The World Bank predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water.The United Nations General Assembly recognized the extent of the problem by declaring the years 2005 to 2015 as the International Decade for Action, "Water for Life."

Now the current distribution of the world's fresh water, and ultimately the systems that support all water in the world, are threatened by the Climate Crisis. Droughts will be larger and longer. But even when more rain falls it will end up meaning less water: warmer temperatures mean moisture will fall earlier as rain rather than snow, which slowly melts into the land; warmer seas, etc. mean the normal rainfall is dumped in big storms, in a time too short for the land to absorb and hold it.

We are likely already seeing the first Climate Crisis war in Darfur, where "increasing drought cycles and the Sahara's southward expansion" created conflicts between nomadic and urban groups over water and land.

Deserts are rapidly expanding in Africa and Asia, as the land is ravaged of forests and vegetation, a situation that the Climate Crisis is unlikely to improve.

Desalinization to turn abundant sea water into fresh water was once believed to be the cure-all, but it turns out to have many problems, one of which is the cost and amount of energy required. So we mostly depend on the fresh water that exists in the world.

Another possible problem looms, however: privatization of water delivery systems and water supplies. Huge corporations are now busy buying up water reserves with the aim of selling it as bottled water or in bulk shipments, and they are already using their clout to lower water quality standards. (The aforementioned World Bank is backing some of these companies.)

One has to assume that companies buying up systems and resources are out to make a profit, and know that as water gets scarcer, they are in position to hold the biggest gun to the head of the public ever conceived. It could make "Urinetown" look like a socialist utopia.

Water, goes the glib cliché, will be the new oil. But try drinking oil when the water runs out. Human beings can survive without a trip to WalMart indefinitely. But without water, we are all dead within days.