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Important, but crisis is dependent on where and who you are
First off, water has always been a critical issue for all living things. Without it, stuff dies, plain and simple. We DON'T need another cabinet member or organization to deal with water. We already have programs/rules/laws in place and if they are not working, fix that rather than adding another broken cog to the wheel.
Through natural availability and technology, those of us in 1st and 2nd world nations typically have access to useable water sources and outside of disasters, spikes in the prices of certain agricultural products due to drought, or not being able to keep our yards green because of local laws, we rarely face noticeable shortages in our day to day lives. So yes, based on that, there is a lack of public awareness when it comes to the long term availability of that water. Make sure to add water awareness in the school curriculum. Educate our youth to how much water they use, what a water table is, and the estimated levels of those water tables. Expose them to sustainability projects like those of Pepsi Co. Basically get them involved and you'll start to see change.
Absolutely agree that lack of investment in infrastructure is one of the biggest issues we have. Elected leaders would rather have their name on a park than a new sewage facility. Infrastructure has largely been ignored for the past half a century in the U.S. and that is now biting us in the butt. People need to demand that their local government concentrate on those less glamorous but more important endeavors, that they were established to take care of in the first place. I live in Hawaii and we're a prime example of these issues. We are surrounded by sun, water, and wind, but we are dealing with water and energy shortages, not to mention excessive costs for those resources, but instead of stronger solar incentives, desalinization plants, or large wind and water turbine farms, we are going to build a multibillion dollar commuter train.
As for the ZPG proponents, if you don't like kids, don't have any. If you want to hand out condoms, please put your money where your mouth is and do so. Reproduction is natural and needed and I feel saddened that your lives have been so tainted that you wish to take the most fundamental aspect of humanity away from others. Anyhow, industrialized nations aren't able to maintain their populations as is, so we don't need a Chinese one child policy. The problem lies more in the welfare state of the entire world. We tend to want to help our fellow humans by giving them the basic resources that allow for life, such as food and water, which then promotes population growth in areas that already cannot sustain that level of life. In industrialized nations, welfare is creating new and larger generations of welfare recipients that are displacing the more affluent portions of the population. There needs to be a refocusing of our efforts through education and enabling people to be self reliant. A recent example is rather than sending mosquito nets to Malaria infested countries, charities are helping those impacted establish that industry within their own nations. That in turn creates jobs, better education, less reliance on large families, etc. That will lead to smarter usage of resources such as water.
Bit off topic here, but maximum supportable population keeps coming up in this forum. As for what population the world could sustain, based off of currently available technology (assuming it was evenly distributed around the world and fully incorporated), I would be willing to surmise that the Earth could support three to four times more people than we have now with a quality of life that second world countries currently have. Not saying it would be pretty, or that I would want a world covered in human hives, but it is in the realm of possibilities.
Sorry that was all over the place, but I was trying to cover the broad responses that I was reading above. Anyhow, these are just my opinions and my intention isn't to anger anyone else on here but to further discussion of what I think we believe are important issues.
Through natural availability and technology, those of us in 1st and 2nd world nations typically have access to useable water sources and outside of disasters, spikes in the prices of certain agricultural products due to drought, or not being able to keep our yards green because of local laws, we rarely face noticeable shortages in our day to day lives. So yes, based on that, there is a lack of public awareness when it comes to the long term availability of that water. Make sure to add water awareness in the school curriculum. Educate our youth to how much water they use, what a water table is, and the estimated levels of those water tables. Expose them to sustainability projects like those of Pepsi Co. Basically get them involved and you'll start to see change.
Absolutely agree that lack of investment in infrastructure is one of the biggest issues we have. Elected leaders would rather have their name on a park than a new sewage facility. Infrastructure has largely been ignored for the past half a century in the U.S. and that is now biting us in the butt. People need to demand that their local government concentrate on those less glamorous but more important endeavors, that they were established to take care of in the first place. I live in Hawaii and we're a prime example of these issues. We are surrounded by sun, water, and wind, but we are dealing with water and energy shortages, not to mention excessive costs for those resources, but instead of stronger solar incentives, desalinization plants, or large wind and water turbine farms, we are going to build a multibillion dollar commuter train.
As for the ZPG proponents, if you don't like kids, don't have any. If you want to hand out condoms, please put your money where your mouth is and do so. Reproduction is natural and needed and I feel saddened that your lives have been so tainted that you wish to take the most fundamental aspect of humanity away from others. Anyhow, industrialized nations aren't able to maintain their populations as is, so we don't need a Chinese one child policy. The problem lies more in the welfare state of the entire world. We tend to want to help our fellow humans by giving them the basic resources that allow for life, such as food and water, which then promotes population growth in areas that already cannot sustain that level of life. In industrialized nations, welfare is creating new and larger generations of welfare recipients that are displacing the more affluent portions of the population. There needs to be a refocusing of our efforts through education and enabling people to be self reliant. A recent example is rather than sending mosquito nets to Malaria infested countries, charities are helping those impacted establish that industry within their own nations. That in turn creates jobs, better education, less reliance on large families, etc. That will lead to smarter usage of resources such as water.
Bit off topic here, but maximum supportable population keeps coming up in this forum. As for what population the world could sustain, based off of currently available technology (assuming it was evenly distributed around the world and fully incorporated), I would be willing to surmise that the Earth could support three to four times more people than we have now with a quality of life that second world countries currently have. Not saying it would be pretty, or that I would want a world covered in human hives, but it is in the realm of possibilities.
Sorry that was all over the place, but I was trying to cover the broad responses that I was reading above. Anyhow, these are just my opinions and my intention isn't to anger anyone else on here but to further discussion of what I think we believe are important issues.
Posted by PDFITZG1974@...
27th Oct 2010