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The Forum > Article Comments > Only a price on water can end threat to food security > Comments

Only a price on water can end threat to food security : Comments

By Colin Chartres, published 24/8/2009

There is a looming global water crisis which climate change will aggravate by making rainfall more erratic in many regions.

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rstuart, you're right, I wasn't being entirely serious. The drip, drip just annoys the hell out of me.
As someone who hasn't had the benefit of town water for 25 years, certain things really stand out to me. The first being, flying over any major town, much less a city, shows a huge and entirely wasted water catchment.
Keep in mind, the vast bulk of Australian roofs are only a few kilometres from the coast, so almost all the water that runs off those roofs goes straight out to sea.
If all those roofs had a 2 way connection to the water grid, so they could contribute,as well as use, the collection would be far greater than 11% domestic use.
Many of those roofs are factories and warehouses, remember.
And they would also contribute to flood mitigation, which is another very sore point, in my personal book.
On my farm, I copied the philosphy of that wise and famous ancient ruler of Sri Lanka (whatshisname 111) who said every drop of rain that falls on the island should stay on the island. I had a dam on every gully that ran through a fence.
On the driest continent in the world, we need to give a lot more thought to capturing flood waters.
Posted by Grim, Thursday, 27 August 2009 6:48:20 AM
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Pelican is right, water is not the problem it is population that is
the problem.

The worlds population is not sustainable in an energy depleting world.
Some of the real experts believe that peak oil occurred in the middle
of 2008. Whether they are right or wrong does not matter as we are
looking at short time period in this context.

Taking Pakistan as an example as someone as done here.
They are already in fuel and electricity crisis.
They cannot afford their oil imports now, how are they going to
increase their imports of fuel to produce and distribute more food ?
Will there be an increasing amount of fuel available to them ?

Only large scale agriculture can sustain populations like we have
now let alone another billion or two. Such agriculture cannot
exist in the future, so the population must decrease.
It now seems certain that the decrease will be by starvation and
by a reduction in fertility caused by poor diet and starvation.

Like global warming, water is the wrong problem to worry about.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 31 August 2009 3:40:00 PM
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