I attended the second lecture of a series called, Climate Change & Water. The lecture, entitled, “When the Rivers Run Dry”, was held in Kimmel at 6:20pm on Thursday, October 16th, and the speaker was Fred Pearce, author of When the Rivers Run Dry: Water—The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century. Pearce explained to the audience that his research is the result of extensive traveling and first-hand accounts of the effects of the water crisis. The tone of the lecture was academic, yet persuasive, in that Pearce spoke in an informative fashion, while still expressing a deep passion and concern for the issue at hand. The audience was made up mostly of eager students, with a few faculty members and older people. Whether or not he intended this, he seemed to appeal to an audience and a generation that would make the most difference in finding a solution to this enormous problem.
Pearce began by stating that the main problem with water consumption is not what we use in the house to clean and bathe, but rather what we use to feed ourselves. For example, it takes anywhere from 280 to 650 gallons of water to grow 1 pound of rice. On another level, the amount of water necessary to feel animals that we eat and rely on to produce other food products is overwhelming. A couple of poignant statistics Pearce shared was that it takes 3,000 gallons of water to feed enough cows to make a quarter pound hamburger, and that it takes 1,000 gallons of water to feed enough cows to produce one quart of milk. Considering the emphasis on these foods in American society, this proved to be eye opening. The production of cotton for clothing is another serious culprit Pearce commented on, and shared the fact that it takes 100 bathtubs full of water to produce enough cotton for one t-shirt. He concluded this section with the fact that the average (meat-eating) person uses 100 times his/her own body weight in water for one day’s requirements. (Vegetarians use about half of that.)
Moving on, Pearce emphasized the drying up of rivers as a result of extensive draining. He used the Nile and the Indus rivers as examples, and mentioned that the Nile no longer reaches the Mediterranean Sea. Uzbekistan is the first example Pearce used as a location that faces climate change as a direct consequence of water loss. As a result of the draining of the Aral Sea, the seasons have become more extreme, but more importantly, massive amounts of salt have led to widespread anemia in the surrounding area.
The speaker moved on to discus the sources of our water, reporting that only ten percent of the earth’s water is fresh, and only one third of that is usable. A percentage of this water is groundwater; the problem with it, however, is that 90 percent of groundwater is not replaced once it is “mined”. He addressed the fact that renewable water does exist, but the percentage of it that is usable is hardly significant. Pearce then described a series of “local crises” involving less rainfall and the depletion of resources facilitated by rivers. An intimidating statistic is that every generation takes four times more river water than the last. An immediate solution to these local crises is the “virtual water trade”. Without it, places like the Middle East and China would essentially become dead zones. A problem with the virtual water trade is that food prices shoot up when major virtual water exporters, like Australia, suffer droughts.
Pearce identified the route of the modern water crisis as the Green Revolution. The “super crops” now used have a yield twice as large, yet require three times more water than their natural predecessors. As a result, over 200 million farmers in the past decade have been forced to drill for groundwater. In their areas, the water tables have fell drastically.
The final topic discussed in the lecture was the social implications of this crisis, including some potential solutions. Unless we solve this problem soon, Pearce explained, we will see wars fought over water. Desalinization is one solution often discussed but seeing as it requires very large amounts of money and energy, it is unrealistic for many countries. Some potential solutions are the universal adoption of “drip irrigation”—which reduces water needs by eighty percent, the collection of rain, the recycling of wastewater, and the adoption of water-efficient plumbing in new houses. Pearce said that the reform that is absolutely paramount is that of attitude. We must realize, he stressed, that solving this crisis requires the effort of everyone. He left us with a comparison of water to oil. Water, he said, is the new oil of the twenty-first century. It is the precious resource of the world, and faces depletion. Unlike oil, which we could live without if we absolutely needed to, we could not survive a single day without water.
This was the first lecture on a specific environmental issue that I have ever been to. I expected it to be a much more official event, yet I was pleasantly surprised by the comfortably small size and informality of the lecture. In a way I think it helped to bring the issue home and personalize the effects that water depletion will have on all of us. Most of the factual information presented in the lecture I was already familiar with, excluding the statistics Pearce presented in the first section. Although I had already understood the exorbitant amount of water we use, I never put all the numbers together to determine exactly how much water I use. I think I may start a water log, which Pearce mentioned he did as well, after attending this lecture and being forced to think about my personal water using habits. The water crisis is something I have been mindful of for a long time, which contributed to my decision to take Environmental Studies, but I do feel that this lecture made me more concerned with my own use of water, rather than the problem as a whole. I would consider the lecture to be a success in that the audience seemed very engaged, and that personally it made me think about the issue from a new perspective. The only improvement I would make would be on the computer in the room, since Pearce had prepared a PowerPoint presentation, but couldn’t seem to get the computer to work. I would also like to see this series of lectures expanded, for the water crisis is an issue of the utmost importance.
I very much liked attending this lecture because, again, it forced me to consider the issue of water usage in a new, more productive light. For that reason, I found it extremely worthwhile and will probably attend “‘No Agua, No Vida’: The Colorado River—A Photo Exhibit”, which is the next event of the series, on November 11th.
A diagram of groundwater level changes in US.
http://academic.emporia.edu/schulmem/hydro/TERM%20PROJECTS/Musgrove/files/waterdrop.gif
A photo of the drying of the Aral Sea.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/aral_sea_1989_2003.jpg
