As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
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As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
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Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#2Fracking should help.
/s
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#3I wonder if solar/wind/nuclear desalination plants would be better used piping water into existing infrastructure or (somehow) refilling aquifers.
... and that is apparently already a thing XD [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer_storage_and_recovery
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#4I grew up next to Lake Michigan, a huge source of fresh water. Yet for decades only municipalities within the Great Lakes watershed have been allowed to draw water from them. That pact has only recently started to be challenged by thirsty nearby communities[0]. I fear that groundwater crises in the Midwest will continue to erode what I see as a rational and sustainable restriction on the Lakes' water.
[0] http://www.wpr.org/great-lakes-compact-councils-oks-waukesha...
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#5I wonder if solar/wind/nuclear desalination plants would be better used piping water into existing infrastructure or (somehow) refilling aquifers. ... and that is apparently already a thing XD [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer_storage_and_recovery
Well that feels like something I can be happy about for a change.
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#6Is anywhere not facing a water shortage? Where is it "best managed" or "least bad"
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#7"thirsty grains like rice and wheat"..
Yet again no mention of animal agriculture. How much water a day does a cow need Vs wheat?
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#8When people use a resource, they should pay more than just the cost of extracting it. They should also pay for its underlying value, which bears some relation to the price you would pay if the resource were no longer available.
Such prices would signal to users the actual scarcity of the resource, giving them incentive to reduce waste and find alternatives. It would also spur development of desalination and other technologies.
That is one reason public ownership of a resource doesn't work very well. And shared private ownership doesn't either, if you can use as much as you want. These aren't really different. Just the size of the group.
But both could work if everybody pays a market price for what they use and owners/taxpayers get paid for their share of what is used.
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#9When people use a resource, they should pay more than just the cost of extracting it. They should also pay for its underlying value, which bears some relation to the price you would pay if the resource were no longer available. Such prices would signal to users the actual scarcity of the resource, giving them incentive to reduce waste and find alternatives. It would also spur development of desalination and other tec…
I don't disagree, but it is still a scary prospect. Humans need water. We don't need gas, or oil, heck we can even survive without electricity. We can make do. But we die without water, and it is worrying to imagine a scenario where some people can no longer afford water because the price went up due to any number of factors. The price of a resource fluctuates for reasons not always related to the actual resources inherent cost and demand dynamic, and private companies don't have the same incentives as councils or government.
Re: As Groundwater Dwindles, a Food Shock Looms
#10When people use a resource, they should pay more than just the cost of extracting it. They should also pay for its underlying value, which bears some relation to the price you would pay if the resource were no longer available. Such prices would signal to users the actual scarcity of the resource, giving them incentive to reduce waste and find alternatives. It would also spur development of desalination and other tec…
The question is, can we arrive at a system and culture of paying for the "underlying value" of a resource, as you put it, before those resources no longer exist?