Can't they get water from the ocean?
How can England possibly be running out of water?
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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#22> Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. Seems like there's most of a solution here, just staring us in the face, no? Problem being of course, that the privatised water companies have little incentive or investment in order to tackle the problem. Are we ready t…
The system works fine for electricity and gas, because the grid itself is maintained by the government. You have private energy producers competing to produce electricity, and private energy companies buying it off them and selling it to the consumer. Maybe it would be more efficient if it was maintained solely by the state, but it's not too bad.
Unfortunately, the water system doesn't work that way. It has been parcelled off to various private companies, giving them a natural monopoly.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#23> Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. Seems like there's most of a solution here, just staring us in the face, no? Problem being of course, that the privatised water companies have little incentive or investment in order to tackle the problem. Are we ready t…
The market will regulate itself! There will appear a new water company that makes things right and obviously will get all the customers, do not worry!
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#24> Future generations, who will be dealing with long, dry summers, would probably be shocked at the profligate way clean tap water was used to flush toilets, water gardens and run washing machines. Climate change means societal change. There was a time that Northern Africa was one of the best places in the world to grow crops. They were at the top of civilization for thousands of years. Climate changed, what people co…
> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?
Meanwhile, the average lifespan in the UK has shot from 46 years in 1900, when the primary heating and power source was coal, to 81 years now. It's easy to forget how much worse things were before.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#25[dead]
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#26As a German, what amazes me, it seems like many people in England are on a water flatrate, as far as I understand it. No one (?) in Germany is.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#27> Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. Seems like there's most of a solution here, just staring us in the face, no? Problem being of course, that the privatised water companies have little incentive or investment in order to tackle the problem. Are we ready t…
In a free market, if clean water gets expensive enough, then infrastructure overhauls to actually cut down on the leaks become economical. If everything is nationalized, you're relying on political goodwill instead to pay for those overhauls.
I have no clue how UK's "privatized water companies" work though. I'm not going to be too surprised if UK's system somehow manages to combine all the disadvantages of private ownership with all the disadvantages of state ownership in a single system.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#28Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#29Can't they get water from the ocean?
The desalination plants all ended up getting swallowed by the very water sources they were originally desalinating.
Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?
#30Can't they get water from the ocean?