Global Water War

A consequence of the lack of Water

Kanook – Oct, 2009

Water is the essence of life, sustaining every species on this planet. Take it
away, there would be no plants, no animals, and no humanity. Scientists
today tell us the global water supply isn’t marching toward a preordained risk,
we’re already there.
If you cruise the Internet in your quest to find out how much or this Blue
Marble is covered with in H2O your find a varying amount of values, ranging
from 70% to 80%, no matter the answer there is more water than land. This
water remains pretty constant from one year to the next as it circulates
between oceans, the land and the atmosphere due to evaporation and
precipitation. The last is very critical to life on this planet, and due to the large
amount has a great deal to do with our changing climate from region to region.
Consider, nearly 98% of our world’s water is in the oceans, and fresh water
makes up less than 3% of all water on earth, with 66% of this locked up in
polar ice caps and glaciers. Fresh water lakes and rivers make up
approximately 0.009% of the fresh water and ground water approximately
0.28%, which in my opinion is a difficult number to estimate based on the
simple fact that underground aquifers are a little hard to measure.
The “Water Wars” vision is not one of countries attacking other countries,
today these wars consist of countries with rivers flowing through them cutting
off the supply of other countries downstream, they also consist of bottled
water companies, like Fiji Water1 telling the world their drinking 4000
contaminants when they drink tap-water, unlike their “living water”. By the
way they are the biggest supplier of bottled water in the USA.
In July, 2009 the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation stopped Nestle
Waters North America Incorporated’s attempt to pump more water from a
“stressed stream” and “lake” for its Ice Mountain bottled water in Mecosta,
Michigan on Monday July 6th. Under a modified injunction order Nestle cannot
pump for water from “Dead Stream” or “Thompson Lake” with the new order
saying they must “reduce” its pumping earlier in the spring and continue its
low pumping rates during the summer – I wonder how many people realize the
water their drinking from Ice Mountain are originating in a place called “Dead
Stream”.
Del Posto, a restaurant chain backed by Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich
now is shunning bottle water, along with the city of San Francisco and New
York State. The argument being the cost of transporting, packaging and the

1
http://www.alternet.org/water/141937/the_fiji_phenomenon%3A_it
%27s_a_human_rights_and_environmental_nightmare%2C_so_why_is_it_the_
%231_imported_bottled_water_in_the_us/?page=entire
absurd idea of moving water all over the world in plastic bottle is finally taking
effect.
As environmental concerns are kicking in, thanks to those Global Warming
advocates, companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co, Nestle and SABMillier are
becoming more attuned to the risk of negative consumer environmental
perceptions. As water is becoming scarcer there is a fear developing that the
so-far manageable price increases will spike and leading drink companies will
have to take action to maintain their access to water, along with fighting their
image as water hogs.
There is no doubt in the minds of some that “water is the new oil”, as climate
change and population growth drive its demand, while over 33% of the world’s
population live in water “stressed’ areas, with raising predictions that by 2025
over 66% of the world will live in water “stressed” areas.
Water is still cheap, but all over the world this is changing – whereas today it
doesn’t dig too deep into your pocketbook, but what will water cost tomorrow?
You beer drinkers, it takes on average of 4.5 liters [1.06 gallons] to make a
liter of beer [less than a ¼ of a gallon].
Countries are now imposing high taxes on water use, hopefully to teach their
population to be efficient in using it and sustain its availability. 70% of the
fresh water today is said to be in use for agriculture, while another 20% is used
for industry, large industry users of water are calculating their “water
footprint” and doing so are finding out that through the supply chain they
sometimes are using more than 14-times what they might use in their
manufacturing plants.
They are finding out, as with SABMiller that to produce 1 liter of beer in
central Europe they are using 40 liters of water, while their plant in South
Africa is using 155 liters of water to make 1 liter of beer – they calculated that
counting in their “water footprint” they used 8.4 trillion liters of water last
year, more than double what Iceland used in 2004.
In California Jim Metropulos, a senior advocate at the Sierra Club’s California
Chapter remarked on the statement made by Steven Chu Ph.D our new
Secretary of Energy, “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut
what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more
agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities
going, I’m hoping the American people will wake up.” Jim’s comments to this,
“Obviously, he’s versed on it, but he’s taking an apocalyptic view. I think it’s
not sustainable in its current form. We rely on imported water to grow high-
value crops, but maybe the agriculture we have today may not be the
agriculture we have decades from now.” That is a big “maybe”!
Look at the facts: California’s agricultural sector grows approximately 33% of
the nation’s food supply, and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled
yearly by runoff from its Sierra Nevada snowpack, along with groundwater
pumping and other less-reliable methods. This snowpack, which caused the
last water war2 in California, albeit not the last, was the war that transformed a
semi-arid LA into an “unsustainable” oasis less populous than only New York
City.
A drought that is into its 3rd year is causing California’s central valley, home
to a majority of the state’s agriculture output, to dry up where hundreds of
thousands of acres lay fallow (unused), and the resultant economic depression
is having a domino effect, and the once one-time powerhouse of the food
industry is seeing its citizens go hungry.
Like other locations in the world sustained by an uninterrupted supply of
water, the coming climate changes, man-made or not, will leave California,
and parts of Oregon and Washington dry, and all the water conservation in the
world might not change that fact just as shoving our excess CO 2 into the
ground won’t – and you think there is a water battle going on now, just wait!
Based on the exceedingly high projected carbon emissions, NOAA is
predicting that the southwestern United States will experience by 2050
permanent drought conditions, in other words the desert will stretch to the
Pacific Ocean, just as the Sahara does in western Africa to the Atlantic.
It is important to remember all the future pictures of California turning into
the Sahara are done by super-duper computers running at top speed cranking
out predictions on an event(s) that the weatherman gets wrong every other
day, except in Hawaii.
Benjamin Franklin said in 1774, “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of
water!” I, along with a few others, think he was wrong. The people here in the
good-old-US-of-A, seem to not appreciated the value of water, even as some
areas get a spurt of rust once-in-a-while when they turn on the tap, but then
again we are little more than spoiled, were we’re hooked on the water being
there when we want it. And we get that unlimited amount of water for a basic
monthly charge that is pennies compared to our cell phone service or our
CATV bill.
Growing up in Southeast Alaska in a small town that averaged over 80” of
rainfall every year, we even ran out of water in the 50s, but for a far different
reason than today, our mud reservoir was too small and when the winter hit
and we got a dry run of weather it pumped mud. So it was shut down and the
water mains in town had saltwater pumped through them to fight fire, our
drinking water was from a large wooden barrel that was filled by the water
truck every other day.
Since that time, here in this country water has become an invisible resource,
we only miss it when it is not there and until it’s gone we’re mostly ignorant to
its value. In other words, American’s treat water about like everything else
they have today, “it is our God-given right to have it, and it will be ours
forever.” I remember traveling overseas and getting into discussions about
our overuse of all of the our resources, whereas my standard reply was, “well

2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars
we have worked hard and furious, generating wealth for our country and if we
choose to drive vehicles that only get 11 mpg that is our RIGHT!”
Tell me, where are we going to import water? Canada? You might get a
gallon or two from our neighbors up north, but I’ll guarantee you’ll pay through
the nose and will not be able to do much about it!
Well there is always war!