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Sin City Water Grab Pits Mammon Against Mormons As U.S. West Dries Up
March 12th, 2015
Via AgWeb, an article on water tensions in the U.S. southwest: It’s Mammon versus Mormon as Las Vegas and its glittering towers of glass and greed seek to quench their growing thirst by draining billions of gallons of water from under the feet of ranchers whose cattle help feed the church’s poor. The biblical battle […]
Read more »Iran: Beset by Water Woes From Wetlands to Afghan Border
March 11th, 2015
Via Bloomberg, a look at the western Afghan – eastern Iran water crisis: Aziz Sabouri was 10 when he started herding cattle along the shores of the Hamoun Lakes by the Afghan border in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. Now 80, his face craggy with deep lines, Sabouri stands in the middle of a vast tract […]
Read more »Why Freshwater Shortages Will Cause The Next Great Global Crisis
March 10th, 2015
Via The Guardian, an interesting yet sobering look at why freshwater shortages will cause the next global crisis: The drying Paraibuna dam, part of the Cantareira water system that provides greater São Paulo in Brazil with most of its water. Last week in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, home to 20 million people, and […]
Read more »South Africa: And There Is The Water Crisis
March 10th, 2015
Several articles on South Africa’s water challenge. The first, via Business Day, offers some commentary on South Africa problems: ON FEBRUARY 7 and 8, maintenance was scheduled on the Eikenhof Pump Station, one of Rand Water’s satellite booster pumping stations for water extracted from the Vaal Dam, which forms part of the Johannesburg water network. This […]
Read more »A Thirsty, Violent World?
March 9th, 2015
Courtesy of the New Yorker, a detailed article on the potential for water related conflict: Angry protesters filled the streets of Karachi last week, clogging traffic lanes and public squares until police and paratroopers were forced to intervene. That’s not rare in Pakistan, which is often a site of political and religious violence. But last […]
Read more »Water: Worldwide Threat Assessment
March 9th, 2015
Water again holds a prominent place in the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s annual worldwide threat assessment: Extreme weather, climate change, and public policies that affect food and water supplies will probably create or exacerbate humanitarian crises and instability risks. Globally averaged surface temperature rose approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius (about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1951 to […]
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