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Fresh Water Crisis

In 2007, there are about 6.5 billion humans on the planet. Each of those humans needs about 48 oz of water each day to survive. That's about 6 cups of water for 6.5 billion humans. That comes out to about 2,437,500,000 gallons of fresh water each and every day consumed by humans.

Next we have toilets and waste water treatment. In the USA and other toileted countries, we use fresh water as our "pot" water. Each flush is about 1 gallon of water. In the USA, every citizen flushes the toilet about once per day, so that's about 300,000,000 gallons of waste water used each day. Add in Europe at 350,000,000 gallons, and we're up to over 3 billion gallons of water used every day. I don't know what the usage would be for the other areas of the planet, so I will estimate that it will increase the usage to 4 billion gallons.

There are a few trillion gallons of water in the Antarctic ice cap. One trillion gallons of fresh water would give the entire world about 250 days of fresh water. 1000 billion gallons divided by 4 billion gallons used each day is 250 days. Doomsday?

There's no definitive estimate on the amount of fresh groundwater on our continents. It's obviously more than 1 trillion, otherwise we'd all be dead already. Fortunately, though, that fresh water is replenished with rain from the evaporating soil and oceans. If our oceans didn't evaporate surface water into the air, we'd be on a Mars-like desert planet.

If you really want to see first-hand what your precious fresh water is creating, go visit El Centro, California. It's in the dessert, literally, yet there are huge farms of leafy greens growing. Thank you Colorado and Arizona for sharing the dwindling Colorado River. Need more food for thought? Go visit Borrego Springs, California. There, also in the dessert, they grow huge groves of grapefruit trees. Have you ever seen a grapefruit? Well, it needs quite a bit of water to survive. The aquifer under Borrego Springs is nearly empty. In about 100 years it will be gone and so will Borrego Springs with it.

For all of you activists, consider fresh water as your cause. You can save all of the monkeys and dogs from clinical trials, but in the end, you'll lay alongside the rest of those evil scientists, dying from dehydration because you've missed the real problem on this planet. We don't have enough fresh water to sustain our people. Don't think so? Go visit Israel and Palestine. There, the fresh water table is polluted by the ocean because the sands can't keep it away anymore.

Fresh water is something that you can not live without. If we keep growing our population at the current rate (not likely), then we will see a global crisis for potable water at the same time that we burn up our last chunk of coal (in about 148 years). What's even worst is that biotechnology will have found a way to keep me and you alive up to that age, so we'll be there together. Hooray. At least we'll have reduced CO2 emissions and saved some monkeys.

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