What Should We Do About Water?

[j654dgj7]

We're running out of water. More than 1 trillion gallons of water are being used for vegetation and factories in the US alone, and we are quickly running out of that 1% of water that is fresh and salt free. It is not unthinkable that thirst is coming to the industrialized world very soon.

What can we do about it?

Go!



If you want to donate and help with this issue right away, www.water.org is a great charity that does a lot of good around the world. Thank you.

 

[Flavus Aquila]

The vast majority of fresh water, which falls either as snow, or rain, is either absorbed into the ground and lost to subterranean aquifers, which together with rivers, eventually leech most of the fresh water into the ocean.

I think that fresh water either needs to be better managed with dams, or perhaps desalinisation is the way to go.


The other option is to shift agriculture away from fresh-water based crops towards sea-water based crops (ie. seaweed). Perhaps this would need to go through the livestock feed cycle, as seaweed is usually too high in iodine to be a human staple; but perhaps livestock could be fed seaweed and then given a one-month transition to traditional feeds before slaughter, to purge excess iodine from the system. Of course certain organs would no longer be of commercial value because of bio accumulation issues.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Drink it while we still can.

Eventually only the rich will be able to afford clean water, those who cant get clean water will just have to start to drink beer as they did in the middle ages. This will add fuel to the fire of the rich who can then say the poor are not successful because they are all a lot of drunks. The cycle will continue as normal, just with a lot more drunk people.

 

[muir]

We should stop wasting it!

People spend so much money and time making their lawn pristine or on perfectly tended golf courses when there are starving people out there and those that can afford to eat are eating toxic processed crap

We should shift our society towards taking care of needs not wants and turn the land over to organic food production

So many people are living in a bubble at the moment; the older generation are from the unsustainable consumerism generation and they have left our generation to become the austerity generation...they've dropped the ball big time and few of them show any signs of stopping their established patterns of behaviour

Maybe we should all bring the older generation to task and tell them to sort out the mess they have made

 

[Shaqie]

We should stop wasting it!

I like it when someone says "we". You and your buddies will defiantly stop wasting it, don't expect the same from your neighbours though. I really wonder how an idea like that could spread massively, and please don't say "Corporations won't allow it", we all know that. There should defiantly be an awesome solution. Please don't say "Corporations won't allow that either".

 

[Eventhorizon]

We could filter all the dirty water through filters made of underpants or socks like Bear Grylls.

 

[sprinkles]

We should stop wasting it!

People spend so much money and time making their lawn pristine or on perfectly tended golf courses when there are starving people out there and those that can afford to eat are eating toxic processed crap

We should shift our society towards taking care of needs not wants and turn the land over to organic food production

So many people are living in a bubble at the moment; the older generation are from the unsustainable consumerism generation and they have left our generation to become the austerity generation...they've dropped the ball big time and few of them show any signs of stopping their established patterns of behaviour

Maybe we should all bring the older generation to task and tell them to sort out the mess they have made

Oh but fuck that though because regulations.

Around here if you don't maintain a lawn you get fined a ticket. People can actually report you and complain.

We don't water the grass and cut it as little as possible though. It does fine and grows lush because that's how grass is supposed to be! We only cut it when basically forced.

It's fucking stupid to waste gas and resources on grass.

 

[rawr]

drink it.

 

[the]

It will be a good equalizer for Mother Nature to kill of some population that insists on leaving the lights on all night.

 

[magister343]

Most lawns are only about as bad for the environment as are parking lots. Of course, a parking lot make of pervious concrete instead of asphalt is better for the environment than a lawn.

 

[sprinkles]

Most lawns are only about as bad for the environment as are parking lots. Of course, a parking lot make of pervious concrete instead of asphalt is better for the environment than a lawn.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-cowboys/

Soil Sequestration
Grass absorbs carbon dioxide the same way trees do, but on a smaller scale. Through photosynthesis, each plant takes carbon from the atmosphere and uses it to build more plant matter. When grass dies or trees are cut down, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. But grass plants also release carbon out of their root tips to fungi in the soil, says Stephen Porder, who teaches biogeochemistry at Brown University. “When those roots die or the fungi die, they’re eaten by some microbe or worm, and a portion of that carbon gets stabilized,” he explains. “It gets stuck onto a clay mineral or a particle and stays in the soil.”

The best way to maximize the amount of carbon that gets trapped underground is to maximize grass growth. Overgrazing and drought are the biggest challenges to carbon sequestration because they prevent plants from putting down healthy roots.

 

[muir]

We need to start thinking about what is really important

Is it important to spend an afternoon playing golf or mowing and watering a lawn? Will that feed people?

The land could be used for permaculture

So that is one answer: PERMACULTURE

We live under an ideology at the moment called 'consumer-ism'; this ideology is about using adverts to emotionally manipulate people into believing that they need things that they don't need. People begin to want things they don't need because they feel they must have it to be a credible member of society or because it will make them feel more complete as a person...that's a cultural sickness that we need to heal

To do that requires a shift in consciousness...a shift in how people see things and feel and think about things. The way to do this is to open up alternative dialogues...to challenge the staus quo, to think outside the box and help others do the same

But the people manipulating the public just want to sell things; these things are invariably made out of PLASTIC and plastic is made out of OIL. We are living in the age of OIL

But the oil won't last forever. Instead of our society spending billions of dollars running football stadiums and football teams or the olympics etc and burning oil in the transportation of players and fans around from venue to venue we could be spending that money and energy on building the technology to convert plastic waste back into oil. Instead of doing this we are burying the plastic or letting it wash out to sea; this is madness!

There are so many things we could be doing...i don't even know where to begin discussing such matters

We are living on a planet that is driven by incredibly powerful forces whether they are solar, wind, wave, tidal, electro-magnetic etc. All these things are generating MASSIVE amounts of energy all the time which we could harness but the people behind the oil industry want us using oil because they profit from oil, petrochemicals and plastics etc

We have to take the political system back off the people behind the oil companies. The people who own the 4 biggest oil companies also own the 4 biggest banks so they are also controlling the financial system which we must also reclaim. Part of the consciousness shift is the waking up of the public to the fact that the same people control the oil industry and the financial industry and those same people have bought out our government; this in turn makes people question why the economy is bombing and why the purchasing power of their money is declining which then feeds the consciousness shift even more as people seek more answers and begin discussing these matters with others...its a postive feedback loop

All these things are inter-related and part of the same struggle; to create a new system requires people to first become dissatisfied with the old one....which is happening

HYDROPONICS is also another way to grow food without using so much water

 

[sprinkles]

Get rid of restaurants. I'm sure that'd save a lot of water.

People don't appreciate that shit anyway. Going to restaurants and complaining about other patrons. Bitch at least you got money to go and a restaurant to go to.

Restaurants are really extravagant to me anyway and I don't like to go there. Get rid of them. They are wasteful and hard to spell anyway - restaurant is one of the most commonly misspelled words.

Getting rid of restaurants could save a lot of food waste and shipping and refrigeration and cut out a lot of garbage.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Shaqie]

One of you is very Zealous, one of you mind you.

 

[sprinkles]

One of you is very Zealous, one of you mind you.

Many don't know exactly how much one of us lets slide on a daily basis.

You haven't really seen zeal yet. But since people seem to think it's so cool to show their zeal lately, I'm just starting to get warmed up.

 

[Kanamori]

With zero-point, cold fusion and desalination, water for human consumption, by itself, is kind of a moot point... expensive if things go wrong enough, maybe. That being said, it would probably be wise of us not to rely too heavily on man-made, or man-specific, solutions because it could cause -- or at least be symptomatic of larger issues -- needless waste and the (eventual) resultant macro ecological problems which could be very difficult, or at least work intensive, to fix.