I appreciate void making this thread, as I don't recall such a thread in PaRD before (not to say there hasn't been one). I do think, as is the case with most everything that could ever be talked about in PaRD, that this issue is way more exciting and complex than people might originally make it out to be. While I do agree that the issue is more complicated than simply chalking this up as another issue cause by climate change (and the reluctance to address it), I do think it is impossible to talk about this issue without acknowledging that climate change is a significant factor behind the water shortage. I don't view this as a "No, but..." so much as it is a "Yes, and...". Yes, climate change has a significant relevance to this issue, but it exists in complex interaction with poor water management, the commodification of water for private companies, over-farming in dry regions, and the poor efforts at long-term consideration of new development/expansion of residential areas.

Here in California, the southern areas of the state are particularly struggling with water access due to diminishing resources from the Colorado River and the challenge of increased dependency on the northern portion of the state to pump water down to them. It seems to me to be a general trend that as new cities and residential areas were being built across the country, especially in the US southwest, that there was little consideration about long-term sustainability. Development projects seem somewhat short-sighted in that getting building rights is dependent upon developers having a plan to ensure that all potential residents have access to water before their plan can get approved; however, there's little that needs to be ensured for long-term sustainability that would last for decades, or really, centuries. This also likely stems from a human bias that virtually all of us have in that we're not very future-oriented (far in the future) as a species in terms of our planning and decision making. Many of us are really more concerned with out immediate well-being, and the well-being of immediate generations, such as our own children and grandchildren. The idea of planning for generations that will be born 250 years from now requires intentional effort that isn't very common as of yet.

But I digress, and use the example of hhow much of the southwest has resulted in development occurring in really dry, arid, desert-like areas in which local/nearby water is hard to come by. It's certainly been made possible to build a system that diverts water to these regions to meet the immediate needs of the people living there, but it's not very sustainable, and we're seeing the unfurling of this instability take place now. California in particular has had major inter-state tension between the north and south due to the south's dependency on the north's water supply. If I remember correctly, this argument of water rights and responsibilities is one of the largest motivating factors behind the effort to split California into 2 separate entities.

this i agree with

i got a 24 pack of alkaline water iso fg

WA will pump CA water build the pipeline

And then Canada will pump to WA, and then...wait

Lol
Don’t you knwow climate change stops at the border?

This post was edited by theCrossbones on Sep 26 2020 05:33pm

Good response, not much to disagree with here tbh.

I honestly think that if scientists are right and global warming will be as bad as they say some of those southwestern areas will become increasingly uninhabitable. You ever hear about the Australian town which during the day it gets to like 120+ Fahrenheit and they're basically living in caves?

I think people are a bit shortsighted with refusing/being against developing parts of the artic. Like 70% of the worlds fresh water is locked in the glaciers. We could get to a point where we need to build massive pipelines from the north to help these dry areas.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 26 2020 06:20pm

That's half of aus lol.

Good post, and I would argree with almost all of it. I think, however, that you undersell the importance of population growth in arid regions for these issues. The areas most affected by water shortage right now, the Middle East, Northern and Eastern Africa, and the Southwestern United States, have all seen rapid growth in recent decades.

Take Maricopa county, home of the Phoenix metro area, as an example: it's located in the middle of the desert and grew from a population of 1.5m in 1980 to 4.5m today. With such an explosive growth taking place in such a dry place, it seems inevitable to run into issues with water supply. It's a similar story with Syria, which grew from 9m in 1981 to 21m in 2011, before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. Dito for Khartoum, the capital of Sudan and also located in the middle of the desert, which grew from a pop of 1.3m in 1983 to 5.2m in 2008.

If I had to rank the causes of the increasing fresh water shortages around the world, I would say its 1. population growth/overpopulation, 2. climate change, 3. waste and mismanagement, 4. corporate greed.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 26 2020 06:41pm

We have no utilidor, everything is trucked everyday on various rotations (for instance i get water & sewer services on mon/wed/sat), everyone has a holding tank inside their home. Workers don't show up, you run out of water. Storm day, you run out of water. They just miss or forget your house, you run out of water. You got water but they didnt empty the sewer tank, you cant run water.

You quickly get used to flushing your toilet once a day, when i go to shower and the water is warming it goes into gallon jugs which I then use for drinking water or put back into the tank.

Its amazing what you can quickly adapt to. I still fucking hate working out or spending all day on a 2-stroke machine smelling like gas and oil only to have the shower not run when i get home or worse yet... stop mid way when covered in soap and have to dump my extra cold water over my head.

This post was edited by SBD on Sep 26 2020 10:16pm