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World faces ‘water-energy’ crisis | GlobalPost
World faces ‘water-energy’ crisis | GlobalPost.
World faces ‘water-energy’ crisis

Surging populations and economies in the developing world will cause a double crunch in demand for water and energy in the coming decades, the UN said Friday.
In a report published on the eve of World Water Day, it said the cravings for clean water and electricity were intertwined and could badly strain Earth’s limited resources.
“Demand for freshwater and energy will continue to increase over the coming decades to meet the needs of growing populations and economies, changing lifestyles and evolving consumption patterns, greatly amplifying existing pressures on limited natural resources and on ecosystems,” the report said.
Already, 768 million people do not have access to a safe, reliable source of water, 2.5 billion do not have decent sanitation and more than 1.3 billion do not have mains electricity.
About 20 percent of the world’s aquifers today are depleted, according to the report.
Agriculture accounts for more than two-thirds of water use.
The World Water Development Report, the fifth in the series by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), is an overview collated from data from scientific studies and investigations by agencies.
It said ever more freshwater will be needed for farming, construction, drinking, cooking, washing and sewerage, but also for energy production — 90 percent of which uses water-intensive techniques today.
The report gave this snapshot of the future:
– Global water demand is likely to increase by 55 percent by 2050.
– By then, more than 40 percent of the world’s population will be living in areas of “severe” water stress, many of them in the broad swathe of land from North Africa and the Middle East to western South Asia.
– Asia will be the biggest hotspot for bust-ups over water extraction, where water sources straddle national borders. “Areas of conflict include the Aral Sea and the Ganges-Brahmaputra River, Indus River and Mekong River basins,” said the report.
– Global energy demand is expected to grow by more than a third by 2035, with China, India and Middle Eastern countries accounting for 60 percent of the increase.
– In 2010, energy production gobbled up 66 billion cubic metres (2,300 billion cu. feet) of fresh water — more than the average annual flow of the River Nile in Egypt.
By 2035, this consumption could rise by 85 percent, driven by power plant cooling systems that work with water.
– Thirsty energy –
Shale deposits and tar sands, driving an energy boom in North America, are especially hefty in their demands for water to force out the precious gas and oil, the report said.
Even so, “they are outstripped by far by biofuels,” said researcher Richard Connor, who headed the study.
Renewable sources like solar and wind energy that use far less water are gaining ground, and accounted for about a fifth of global electricity output in 2011, the report said.
But they are unlikely to expand this share significantly if fossil fuels continue receiving the bulk of subsidies, it said.
Oil, gas and coal had subsidies of $523 billion (376 billion euros) in 2011, nearly 30 percent more than in 2010, compared to $88 billion for renewables, the report said, citing International Energy Agency (IEA) figures.
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have plenty of potential for hydro-energy, which reuses the precious resource, it added.
Hydro-electric dams have been extremely controversial. Big projects deliver gigawatts of power but critics say they are ecologically damaging and prone to massive cost overruns.
The review called for a global effort in efficiency gains, pointing the finger at the arid countries of the Middle East where between 15 and 60 percent of water is wasted through leaks or evaporation even before the consumer opens the tap.
The report also called for smart choices in allocating the trillions of dollars likely to be invested in water and energy infrastructure over the next two decades.
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World faces 'water-energy' crisis | GlobalPost
World faces ‘water-energy’ crisis | GlobalPost.
World faces ‘water-energy’ crisis

Surging populations and economies in the developing world will cause a double crunch in demand for water and energy in the coming decades, the UN said Friday.
In a report published on the eve of World Water Day, it said the cravings for clean water and electricity were intertwined and could badly strain Earth’s limited resources.
“Demand for freshwater and energy will continue to increase over the coming decades to meet the needs of growing populations and economies, changing lifestyles and evolving consumption patterns, greatly amplifying existing pressures on limited natural resources and on ecosystems,” the report said.
Already, 768 million people do not have access to a safe, reliable source of water, 2.5 billion do not have decent sanitation and more than 1.3 billion do not have mains electricity.
About 20 percent of the world’s aquifers today are depleted, according to the report.
Agriculture accounts for more than two-thirds of water use.
The World Water Development Report, the fifth in the series by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), is an overview collated from data from scientific studies and investigations by agencies.
It said ever more freshwater will be needed for farming, construction, drinking, cooking, washing and sewerage, but also for energy production — 90 percent of which uses water-intensive techniques today.
The report gave this snapshot of the future:
– Global water demand is likely to increase by 55 percent by 2050.
– By then, more than 40 percent of the world’s population will be living in areas of “severe” water stress, many of them in the broad swathe of land from North Africa and the Middle East to western South Asia.
– Asia will be the biggest hotspot for bust-ups over water extraction, where water sources straddle national borders. “Areas of conflict include the Aral Sea and the Ganges-Brahmaputra River, Indus River and Mekong River basins,” said the report.
– Global energy demand is expected to grow by more than a third by 2035, with China, India and Middle Eastern countries accounting for 60 percent of the increase.
– In 2010, energy production gobbled up 66 billion cubic metres (2,300 billion cu. feet) of fresh water — more than the average annual flow of the River Nile in Egypt.
By 2035, this consumption could rise by 85 percent, driven by power plant cooling systems that work with water.
– Thirsty energy –
Shale deposits and tar sands, driving an energy boom in North America, are especially hefty in their demands for water to force out the precious gas and oil, the report said.
Even so, “they are outstripped by far by biofuels,” said researcher Richard Connor, who headed the study.
Renewable sources like solar and wind energy that use far less water are gaining ground, and accounted for about a fifth of global electricity output in 2011, the report said.
But they are unlikely to expand this share significantly if fossil fuels continue receiving the bulk of subsidies, it said.
Oil, gas and coal had subsidies of $523 billion (376 billion euros) in 2011, nearly 30 percent more than in 2010, compared to $88 billion for renewables, the report said, citing International Energy Agency (IEA) figures.
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have plenty of potential for hydro-energy, which reuses the precious resource, it added.
Hydro-electric dams have been extremely controversial. Big projects deliver gigawatts of power but critics say they are ecologically damaging and prone to massive cost overruns.
The review called for a global effort in efficiency gains, pointing the finger at the arid countries of the Middle East where between 15 and 60 percent of water is wasted through leaks or evaporation even before the consumer opens the tap.
The report also called for smart choices in allocating the trillions of dollars likely to be invested in water and energy infrastructure over the next two decades.
ri/mlr/fb
Ponzi World (Over 3 Billion NOT Served): This Graceless Age…
Ponzi World (Over 3 Billion NOT Served): This Graceless Age….
This Graceless Age…
The consumption-oriented lifestyle could in no way scale across 7 billion people, so this was always a zero sum game between haves and have nots.
Global policy-makers saved the globalized ponzi scheme from itself in 2008. Now having squandered all resources, the odds that they can save it again are somewhere between zero and impossible. The first melt-down to weaken the model. This next one to kill it, for good…
The New Rome
Worthless political thought dealers. Vacuous media buffoons. Country club CEOs hell bent on liquidating their own country. Wall Street greed idolators. Self-important billionaires sprinkling their Central Bank-inflated wealth on the indolent masses. Hollywood’s fake gods and goddesses saving the world one comic book remake at a time. Steroid-bloated millionaire athletes pimping factory slave made sneakers to poverty-stricken inner city youth at $150 a pair. Testosterone-depleted boy-men running around like refugees, incapable of anything beyond their own immediate self-gratification. Idiocratic masses, stewing in a lethal cauldron of junk food and junk culture – too stoned to realize how stoned they are.
Life Without SUVs: Inconceivable
Third grade math indicates that the consumption-oriented lifestyle is in no way scalable across 7 billion people. In the U.S. alone, 5% of the world’s population consume 20% of global resources. It’s a tale of moral and intellectual bankruptcy that today’s thought dealers would allow so much legacy industrial assets to be liquidated just to propagate the fundamentally unsustainable for a few years longer. Despite doubling 229 years worth of national debt in just the past 7 years, today’s dumbfucked leaders, clueless academics, and the Idiocracy at large just can’t face the idea that their overriding mission to consume this planet, is now ending.
Anyone who reads this after-the-collapse, must come to terms with the fact that they were financially bludgeoned merely because they took all of the above decadence for granted – “business as usual”. And the fact that they were incapable of third grade math or otherwise had their heads buried straight up their own ass. Even at this late stage, the vast majority are totally bought in to the status quo and its inherent exploitation-based mentality. It’s totally unquestioned.
What to tell the grandchildren?
“Yeah, we thought it was odd – trying to borrow our way out of a debt crisis. And we really felt bad about bankrupting your generation, but those shopping sprees were fantastic. Personally, I was skeptical trusting the same morons with the global financial system after they crashed it in 2008, but then Bernanke gave them a free bailout and a lot more gambling money, so they seemed happy. I was really taken aback when the Chinese stopped lending us their money – after all, we’d been paying them $.10 on the dollar in wages. Totally ungrateful. Overall though, I’ll be honest, I was too busy watching the Dow, the NFL and Faux News, so I really had no clue what the hell was going on in the real world…”.
And now, we just learned, 400 Priests defrocked by the Pope over a two year period, for child molestation. A thousand plus years of shameful secrets disgorged in one exhale. Do we really believe that this is all a modern problem? That this legacy of sexual abuse has not been secretly propagated for centuries? Of course not. Suffice to say, This is a bad time to be left faithless, going into what will very likely be the most deadly period in human history.
I highly doubt that the U.S. would ever turn full blown communist – let’s face it, today’s phony Obama-socialism is nothing more than foodstamp-based riot control while billionaires complete the estate sale. Those Americans who honestly think that the U.S. is on the verge of socialism, need to take their first-ever trip outside of the U.S. and get some fucking perspective. That said, there are several well known countries where opinions are turning decidedly against capitalism, not the least of which is Japan. Suffice to say, the age of Sociopathic Corporations run by sociopathic frat boys is coming to its inevitable bad ending.
What difference can one man make in all of this madness? I’ve met enough good people in my lifetime to know that they are out there. They are just few and far between. Therefore the hope is that the impending “reset” bludgeons today’s amoral self-absorbed jackasses and their dumbfuck ideas into abject oblivion, all while keeping enough of decent humanity still intact to rebuild upon.
I realize that’s a stretch, but it’s all I’ve got…
P.S. Scroll down. My new blog background reflects the end of a graceless age and the (eventual) promise of a new and better one. Not the end. The beginning.
Or it might just be the stronger Prozac. Who knows?