Bubbles are caused by excessive credit.
(David P.)
excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
valuable asset as long as they live.
L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
and become a drag on the system.
.
.
--
Rod Speed
> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also excessive credit,
Thanks for that completely superfluous proof that you have never ever had a fucking clue about anything at all, ever.
The only place population growth occurs now is in 3rd world countrys which have fuck all credit, let alone excessive
credit.
> i.e., saying that everyone is a valuable asset as long as they live.
> L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity, and become a drag on the system.
And then there's the drunks.
John A. Weeks III
<0f7f84fa-962a-4b26...@j35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
"(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> excessive credit,
If that were true, then the highest birth rate should be
in countries that have the most available consumer credit.
But the facts show the countries with more available credit
actually have lower birth rates, and the highest birth rates
are in countries with little or no consumer credit available.
Therefore, your assertion is 100% wrong.
-john-
--
======================================================================
John A. Weeks III 612-720-2854 jo...@johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
======================================================================
betweentheeyes
news:0f7f84fa-962a-4b26...@j35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
Actually, it is a statically proven event that Population Bubble (s) are
caused by liberal Democrats.
John A. Weeks III
"betweentheeyes" <between...@supportingthesecond.org> wrote:
So that is why population boomed in China under a totalitarian
government? Like other wild assertions made by neo-conservatives,
this one is also blatantly false.
Klaus Schadenfreude
>The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
>excessive credit
The main cause is food production and advances in medicine.
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0118-33.htm
Bill Bonde { No matter what happens, it's caused by global warming )
B1ackwater wrote:
> Been watching "Logans Run" too much I see .....
>
> However, you're not ENTIRELY wrong.
>
> A deliberate effort to poop on the value/virtue
> of mega-motherhood is needed. Breeding alone ought
> not earn anyone any favors or respect.
>
The problem is that the people who should be reproducing either
aren't or aren't reproducing enough and the ones who should be kind
of holding back on the megasized families aren't holding back. Much
of the first world is seeing either zero population growth or
negative growth, excluding immigration.
The idea that old people are a drag on society is wrong. Of course
old people who are very sick or whose mentally facilities have been
lost are a cost, but it might take people until old age before they
figure something important out.
--
He and Evie soon fell into a conversation of the "No, I didn't;
yes, you did" type--conversation which, though fascinating to those
who are engaged in it, neither desires nor deserves the attention
of others.
-+E.M. Forster, "Howards End"
Bill Bonde { No matter what happens, it's caused by global warming )
"John A. Weeks III" wrote:
>
> In article
> <0f7f84fa-962a-4b26...@j35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit,
>
> If that were true, then the highest birth rate should be
> in countries that have the most available consumer credit.
> But the facts show the countries with more available credit
> actually have lower birth rates, and the highest birth rates
> are in countries with little or no consumer credit available.
> Therefore, your assertion is 100% wrong.
>
High birth rates in general are caused by the uncertainty that the
children you've already had will survive. Of course negative birth
rates can be seen as related to the cost of having children. In the
first world, the cost can be enormous.
Rod Speed
wrote:
> "John A. Weeks III" wrote:
>>
>> In article
>> <0f7f84fa-962a-4b26...@j35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
>> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
>>> excessive credit,
>>
>> If that were true, then the highest birth rate should be
>> in countries that have the most available consumer credit.
>> But the facts show the countries with more available credit
>> actually have lower birth rates, and the highest birth rates
>> are in countries with little or no consumer credit available.
>> Therefore, your assertion is 100% wrong.
> High birth rates in general are caused by the uncertainty
> that the children you've already had will survive.
It hasnt been like that for a long time now.
> Of course negative birth rates can be seen as related to the cost
> of having children. In the first world, the cost can be enormous.
Thats not the reason not one of the modern first world countrys is
even self replacing on population now if you take out immigration.
(David P.)
Stopping the suppression of influenza would
be a good first step in the right direction.
.
.
--
Klaus Schadenfreude
If your intent would be to cause untold and widespread suffering, I
suppose it would. Wouldn't a nuke be quicker?
Rod Speed
Stopping drunks would be MUCH better.
B1ackwater
happens, it's caused by global warming )"
>
>
>B1ackwater wrote:
>>
>> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> >The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
>> >excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
>> >valuable asset as long as they live.
>> >L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
>> >Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
>> >and become a drag on the system.
>>
>> Been watching "Logans Run" too much I see .....
>>
>> However, you're not ENTIRELY wrong.
>>
>> A deliberate effort to poop on the value/virtue
>> of mega-motherhood is needed. Breeding alone ought
>> not earn anyone any favors or respect.
>>
>The problem is that the people who should be reproducing either
>aren't or aren't reproducing enough and the ones who should be kind
>of holding back on the megasized families aren't holding back. Much
>of the first world is seeing either zero population growth or
>negative growth, excluding immigration.
First of all, be very careful with how you use that
"should/shouldn't be reproducing" notion. Too often it
has devolved into a sort of eugenic/pseudo-Darwinistic
line of thinking - most recently exploited in the film
"Idiocracy".
Todays success stories - business, science, arts - were
the products of yesterdays pig-ignorant turnip-munching
sheep-molesting witch-burning world-flattening medieval
dirt farmers who presented every sign of genetic mental
retardation. However the *potential* was always there,
simply masked by cultural circumstances. Given time and
the right tools, they straightened up, smartened up, and
took us to the moon and beyond.
"Should not" needs to be qualified - and bean-counter
arguments about 'resources' and 'bang per pound of
manflesh' aren't always adequate qualification because
they are inevitibly biased by the CURRENT model of
'successful societies'.
Frankly, lots of good company, living kinda poor, can be
just as 'successful' as a few people with lots of cash,
luxuries and free time.
It's a matter of perspective.
Only the extreme end of 'should not' - ie "far more
people than can possibly be fed" deserves consideration.
There ARE regions of the world where such situations
exist, and the size and scope of such grim circumstances
CAN grow as global resources are consumed faster than
thay can be produced. There's a real possibility of
extinction lurking there - if not through actual, total,
global stavation then more through resource wars that
eventually go the WMD route.
>The idea that old people are a drag on society is wrong. Of course
>old people who are very sick or whose mentally facilities have been
>lost are a cost, but it might take people until old age before they
>figure something important out.
Quite true. OFTEN true.
But the current model is money & youth oriented.
"Wisdom" and 'perspective' are less valued than
they used to be. Yesterdays ideas seem dated,
antique, irrelevant, worthless.
Of course a big global economic crash or two might
change that.
I wonder how many people bothered to listen to Granny
when she explained at length about how they managed to
live poor during the Depression and how, in retrospect,
she thinks they might have done even better. Seems like
that might be very VALUABLE information today, and for
tomorrow especially :-)
Bill Bonde { No matter what happens, it's caused by global warming )
Rod Speed wrote:
>
> Bill Bonde { No matter what happens, it's caused by global warming )
> wrote:
> > "John A. Weeks III" wrote:
> >>
> >> In article
> >> <0f7f84fa-962a-4b26...@j35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> >> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> >>> excessive credit,
> >>
> >> If that were true, then the highest birth rate should be
> >> in countries that have the most available consumer credit.
> >> But the facts show the countries with more available credit
> >> actually have lower birth rates, and the highest birth rates
> >> are in countries with little or no consumer credit available.
> >> Therefore, your assertion is 100% wrong.
>
> > High birth rates in general are caused by the uncertainty
> > that the children you've already had will survive.
>
> It hasnt been like that for a long time now.
>
Not in the first world, and in the first world the reproductive
rates are at or below replacement. But try out the third or fourth
world.
> > Of course negative birth rates can be seen as related to the cost
> > of having children. In the first world, the cost can be enormous.
>
> Thats not the reason not one of the modern first world countrys is
> even self replacing on population now if you take out immigration.
>
The cost of raising children and the knowledge that if you have one
child even, that child is likely to not die in childhood. Of course
it could happen, but it isn't anywhere near as likely as it was.
These two reasons are important reasons. Of course birth control
availability and abortion are important factors.
Bill Bonde { No matter what happens, it's caused by global warming )
People who are fearful that their children won't live to adulthood
reproduce *more* than those who are relatively sure they will live.
Leaving aside the moral issues of serviing Irish babies at table,
your plan is not going to reduce anything.
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed wrote
>> Bill Bonde { No matter what happens, it's caused by global warming ) wrote
>>> John A. Weeks III wrote
>>>>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also excessive credit,
>>>> If that were true, then the highest birth rate should be
>>>> in countries that have the most available consumer credit.
>>>> But the facts show the countries with more available credit
>>>> actually have lower birth rates, and the highest birth rates
>>>> are in countries with little or no consumer credit available.
>>>> Therefore, your assertion is 100% wrong.
>>> High birth rates in general are caused by the uncertainty
>>> that the children you've already had will survive.
>> It hasnt been like that for a long time now.
> Not in the first world, and in the first world the reproductive rates
> are at or below replacement. But try out the third or fourth world.
Not in the rest of the world either, essentially because child mortality is now so low.
>>> Of course negative birth rates can be seen as related to the cost
>>> of having children. In the first world, the cost can be enormous.
>> Thats not the reason not one of the modern first world countrys is
>> even self replacing on population now if you take out immigration.
> The cost of raising children and the knowledge that if you
> have one child even, that child is likely to not die in childhood.
That isnt the reason not one modern first world country is even self replacing on population now.
It appears to mostly be due to so many married women working now.
> Of course it could happen, but it isn't anywhere near as likely as it was.
In fact the infant mortality is now so low its an irrelevant consideration.
> These two reasons are important reasons.
Nope.
> Of course birth control availability and abortion are important factors.
Those are by far the most important factors in the modern first world.
Rod Speed
>> Klaus Schadenfreude <klausschadenfre...@yahoo.com> wrote
>>> David P. <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote
>>>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also excessive credit
>>> The main cause is food production and advances in
>>> medicine.http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0118-33.htm
>> Stopping the suppression of influenza would
>> be a good first step in the right direction.
> People who are fearful that their children won't live to adulthood
> reproduce *more* than those who are relatively sure they will live.
Nope, there is no correlation between infant mortality and the number of children people have anymore.
The real driver is cultural now.
(David P.)
> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >Klaus Schadenfreude <klausschadenfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> >> >excessive credit
> >>
> >> The main cause is food production and advances in medicine.http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0118-33.htm
> >
> >Stopping the suppression of influenza would
> >be a good first step in the right direction.
>
> I suppose it would. Wouldn't a nuke be quicker?
It's better to let Mother Nature control population.
If you put people in charge of that, you're asking
for trouble.
.
.
--
Rod Speed
> Klaus Schadenfreude <klausschadenfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> Klaus Schadenfreude <klausschadenfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
>>>>> excessive credit
>>>>
>>>> The main cause is food production and advances in
>>>> medicine.http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0118-33.htm
>>>
>>> Stopping the suppression of influenza would
>>> be a good first step in the right direction.
>>
>> If your intent is to cause untold & widespread suffering,
>> I suppose it would. Wouldn't a nuke be quicker?
> It's better to let Mother Nature control population.
If your 'parents' had done that, you wouldnt be here.
> If you put people in charge of that, you're asking for trouble.
Nope.
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> >>>> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> >>>>> excessive credit
> >>>>
> >>>> The main cause is food production and advances in
> >>>> medicine.http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0118-33.htm
> >>>
> >>> Stopping the suppression of influenza would
> >>> be a good first step in the right direction.
> >>>
> >> If your intent is to cause untold & widespread suffering,
> >> I suppose it would. Wouldn't a nuke be quicker?
> > It's better to let Mother Nature control population.
>
> If your 'parents' had done that, you wouldnt be here.
My parents were in charge of population control?!?
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote
>> David P. wrote
>>> Klaus S. <klausschadenfre...@yahoo.com> wrote
>>>> David P. <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote
>>>>> Klaus S. <klausschadenfre...@yahoo.com> wrote
>>>>>> David P. <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote
>>>>>>> The main cause of the Population Bubble is also excessive credit
>>>>>> The main cause is food production and advances in medicine.
>>>>>> http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0118-33.htm
>>>>> Stopping the suppression of influenza would
>>>>> be a good first step in the right direction.
>>>> If your intent is to cause untold & widespread suffering,
>>>> I suppose it would. Wouldn't a nuke be quicker?
>>> It's better to let Mother Nature control population.
>> If your 'parents' had done that, you wouldnt be here.
> My parents were in charge of population control?!?
That particularly obscene contribution to the population, yep.
Peter Franks
I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
'hordes' you speak of.
Perhaps you would care to elaborate on your 'theory' -- explain in the
US how hordes caused the bubble.
(David P.)
Why shouldn't there be limits on longevity?
There are limits on everything else!
.
.
--
Rod Speed
There's no limit to your stupidity!!!
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
Once a Vision of Water, Mexico's Capital Now Thirsts for It
By ELISABETH MALKIN
for the New York Times
Published: March 16, 2006
MEXICO CITY, March 15 - In his chronicle of the Spanish Conquest,
the soldier Bernal Díaz marveled at the invaders' first glimpse of
Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital set on an island in a vast lake. The
city and lakeside towns, he recalled, "rising from the water, all made
of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision."
Residents of a low-income neighborhood in Mexico City waited for
their weekly water ration as a tanker truck was filled. The city is
playing host this week to an international conference of water
experts.
After the Spaniards built Mexico City on the ruins of the Aztec city
they destroyed, they conquered the lakewaters. The Aztecs had kept
floodwaters at bay through a complex network of dikes, levees and
canals. The Spaniards ignored all that and just began to drain
the water.
The result over five centuries is the most drastic reordering of the
natural environment that just about any city has carried out. In place
of the five interconnected lakes that formed the heartland of the
Aztec Empire, a megalopolis of 20 million people sits today.
Where there was once an excess of water, there is now a looming
shortage.
This week, as the city plays host to the Fourth World Water Forum,
a six-day conference of water experts, it serves as an arresting
example of the effects on water supplies of unchecked urban growth,
shortsighted management and political inertia.
"It is a system held together by a thread," said Manuel Perló Cohen,
director of the University Program for Studies of the City at Mexico's
National Autonomous University.
Mexico City and its surrounding suburbs, broadly known as the
Valley of Mexico, now extract water from their aquifers more than
twice as fast as they replenish them.
As a result, the spongy clay on which the city is built dries up and
compresses, causing it to sink. It has fallen nearly 30 feet in the
last century and drops as much as 15 inches a year in some areas.
But in the ranking of urban worries here, crime and traffic eclipse
water for the attention of the public and politicians. Only now, in
preparation for the water conference, has the local press engaged
in a bout of collective hand-wringing over the city's water worries.
They are on full display in the city's poorer eastern limits and the
neighboring working class suburbs. There, the aquifers that supply
the district of Iztapalapa, home to 1.8 million people, are
overstretched and there is no alternate source.
Berenice Hernández and her husband, Santiago García, who live
with their nine children in a three-room concrete-block house, say
they have not had running water for four weeks.
They got up at 4 one morning last week to get to the head of the
line for the district water truck. But by the time it rumbled up the
hill to their narrow street at midafternoon, it could fill only about
a foot of the family's cistern.
"They say we waste water," said Mr. García, motioning at his tiny
house with a shrug of disbelief.
The city's response to the shortage is to take its water from
elsewhere, namely the pine-forested mountains to the west. There,
a system of pumps and treatment plants carries about a quarter
of the city's water 80 miles uphill.
But it also takes water away from the poorest inhabitants of those
mountains, diverting by almost three miles the river that once
supplied the Mazahua Indians. After 25 years, they have yet to
receive the running water they were promised in return.
"We can see that there's no will from the government," to give us
water, said Francisco Araujo Guzmán, who drove with 18 other
Mazahuas to Mexico City last week to confront local officials.
The problems around wastewater are just as bad. A decade-old
project to build four wastewater treatment plants is paralyzed by
feuding among the city, state and federal governments.
The result is that the Valley of Mexico treats less than 10 percent
of its wastewater, sending its sewage into rivers that irrigate
farmland to the north.
Jesús Campos, the chief official in charge of urban infrastructure
at the National Water Commission, warns that politicians are
underfinancing the system and misleading the public by not raising
water rates, which 50 percent of people ignore anyway.
"The population will have to pay the cost of what it takes to put
water in their house," he said.
He estimates that the city should collect five times as much as it
does from its water in order to cover costs and upgrade its public
works; after all the effort to get water to the city, some 36 percent
of it is lost to leaks.
The financing needs are enormous. Mr. Campos estimates that
the backlog for Mexico City's infrastructure is $3 billion. This year,
only 10 percent of that is budgeted.
Still, Mexico City has managed to achieve the impossible when it
has had to, as with a 25-year-old project that restored a small
section of the largest of the Aztec lakes, Lake Texcoco.
By the 1950's, the lake had become a desert. Nothing could grow
in the salty soils of its parched lakebed, and windstorms whipped
its blinding dust across the city, said Raúl Solís, one of the
engineers in charge of the project.
Now, an artificial lake attracts migratory ducks, sandpipers and
herons. The surrounding hillsides have been terraced and planted
with millions of trees. Along with more than a thousand small dams,
they now contain the rainwater, so that it will seep back into the
aquifer, where it can be used.
"The purpose," Mr. Solís said, "is to harvest the water."
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
Economic Death Spiral
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
The great danger of an aging society is that the rising costs
of government retirement programs -- mainly Social Security
and Medicare -- increase taxes or budget deficits so much
that they reduce economic growth. This could trigger an
economic and political death spiral. Our commitments to
pay retirement benefits grow while our capacity to meet
them shrinks. Workers and retirees battle over a relatively
fixed economic pie. The debate we're not having is how to
avoid this dismal future. President Bush's vague Social
Security proposal, including "personal accounts," sidesteps
the critical issues. His noisiest critics are equally silent.
Just recently the trustees of Social Security and Medicare
issued their annual reports on the programs' futures. Here's
one startling fact that emerges from a close examination of
the reports: By 2030 the projected costs of Social Security
and Medicare could easily consume -- via higher taxes -- a
third of workers' future wage and salary increases. Toss in
Medicaid (which covers nursing home care and isn't
included in the trustees' reports) and the bite grows. We're
mortgaging workers' future pay gains for baby boomers'
retirement benefits.
The facts are hiding in plain sight. The trustees' reports
project Social Security and Medicare spending. They also
estimate future wages and salaries -- the main tax base for
Social Security and Medicare. Comparing the two shows
how much retirement costs may erode wage increases.
The reports should make and highlight this calculation, but
they don't. So I asked economists Tom Saving of Texas
A&M University and Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute
to do it. They provided similar results.
Here are the basic numbers, as calculated by Elizabeth Bell,
a research assistant to Steuerle. In 2005 Social Security
and Medicare are expected to cost $822 billion (that's net
of premiums paid by recipients); by 2030 the costs are
projected to increase to $4.640 trillion. That's an increase
of $3.818 trillion. Over the same period, annual wages and
salaries are projected to rise from $5.856 trillion to $17.702
trillion -- an increase of $11.846 trillion. Despite the big
numbers, the arithmetic is straightforward: The increases in
Social Security and Medicare represent 32 percent of the
increases in wages and salaries.
This matters because Social Security and Medicare (and
Medicaid, too) are pay-as-you-go programs. Current tax-
payers pay current benefits. Future taxpayers -- mainly
future workers -- will pay future benefits. Baby boomers'
retirement benefits will come mostly from their children and
grandchildren, who will be tomorrow's workers. Even if
adopted, President Bush's personal accounts for Social
Security would hardly alter that. (They wouldn't change
Medicare and Medicaid and would only slightly affect
boomers' Social Security benefits.)
Consequently, baby boomers' children and grandchildren
face massive tax increases. Social Security and Medicare
spending now equals 14 percent of wage and salary
income, reports Bell. By 2030, using the trustees' various
projections, that jumps to 26 percent. Of course, payroll
taxes don't cover all the costs of Social Security and
Medicare. Still, these figures provide a crude indicator of
the economic burden, because costs are imposed heavily
on workers via some tax (including the income tax),
government borrowing (a.k.a. the deficit) and cuts in other
government programs.
It can be argued that the costs are bearable. The wage
gains in the trustees' reports could prove too pessimistic.
Like all forecasts, they're subject to errors. Even if they
come true, they assume that tomorrow's wages will be
higher than today's. Productivity increases; wages rise.
In 2030, under the trustees' "intermediate" assumptions,
workers' before-tax incomes would be about a third higher
than now, says Saving. What's the gripe if workers lost --
through steeper taxes -- some of that? Why shouldn't they
generously support parents and grandparents? Well,
maybe they will. But there are at least two possible flaws
in this logic.
The first is that, on a year-to-year basis, wage gains
would be tiny -- less than 1 percent. When they've gotten
that low before, people have complained that they're
"on a treadmill" and that the American dream has been
repealed. Even these gains might be diluted by further
tax increases to trim today's already swollen budget
deficits. The second and more serious threat is that higher
taxes would harm the economy. They might dull economic
vitality by reducing investment and the rewards for work
and risk-taking. Productivity and wage gains might be
smaller than predicted. Then we'd flirt with that death spiral:
We'd need still-higher taxes to pay benefits, but those
taxes might depress economic growth more.
One way or another, workers may get fed up paying so
much of their paychecks to support retirees, many of
whom (they would notice) were living quite comfortably.
Because the dangers are so obvious, we ought to be
minimizing them now. We ought to redefine the
generational compact to lighten -- somewhat -- the
burden of an aging population on workers. The needed
steps are clear: to acknowledge longer life expectancies
by slowly raising eligibility ages for Social Security and
Medicare; to limit future spending by curbing retirement
benefits for the better-off; to keep people in the
productive economy longer by encouraging jobs that mix
"work" and "retirement."
All advanced societies face a similar problem: how to
support more retirees with (relatively) fewer workers. But
we won't engage it. Politicians, the media and public
"intellectuals" of all political stripes refuse to acknowledge
generational conflicts and the need to make choices,
some possibly unpopular. Let someone else make them,
years from now when (of course) they will be much tougher.
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_060724_1.html
The Plastic Sea
Commentary by Paul Watson
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
On the beach on San Juan Island, Washington, Allison Lance walks her
dogs every morning. She carries a plastic bag in her hand to carry the
bits and pieces of plastic debris she picks up. Each morning she fills
the bag, but by the next morning there is always another bag to be
filled. Joey Racano does the same in Huntington Beach further south in
California. The harvest of plastic waste is never-ending. Allison's
and Joey's beaches and practically every beach around the world are
similarly cursed.
Recently in the Galapagos I retrieved plastic motor oil bottles and
garbage bags from a remote beach on the island of Santa Cruz. Every
year during crossings of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans,
spotting plastic is a daily and regular occurrence.
A June 2006 United Nations Environmental Program report estimated that
there is an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating on or
near the surface of every square mile of ocean.
We live in a plastic convenience culture; virtually every human being
on this planet uses plastic materials directly and indirectly every
single day. Our babies begin life on Earth by using some 210 million
pounds of plastic diaper liners each year; we give them plastic milk
bottles, plastic toys, and buy their food in plastic jars, paying with
a plastic credit card. Even avoiding those babies by using
contraceptives results in mass disposal of billions of latex condoms,
diaphragms, and hard plastic birth control pill containers each year.
Every year we eat and drink from some thirty-four billion newly
manufactured bottles and containers. We patronize fast food
restaurants and buy products that consume another fourteen billion
pounds of plastic. In total, our societies produce an estimated sixty
billion tons of plastic material every year.
Each of us on average uses 190 pounds of plastic annually: bottled
water, fast food packaging, furniture, syringes, computers, computer
diskettes, packing materials, garbage bags and so much more. When
you consider that this plastic does not biodegrade and remains in our
ecosystems permanently, we are looking at an incredibly high volume
of accumulated plastic trash that has built up since the mid-twentieth
century.
Where does it go? There are only three places it can go: our earth,
our air, and our oceans.
All the plastic that has ever been produced has been buried in
landfills, incinerated, and dumped into lakes, rivers, and oceans.
When incinerated, the plastics disperse non-biodegradable pollutants,
much of which inevitably find their way into marine ecosystems as
microscopic particles.
Back in 1991, my ship, the Sea Shepherd, was anchored in the harbor
of Port of Spain, Trinidad. It began to rain a hard steady downpour. A
few hours later, the entire surface area of the harbor was dirty
white, as if an ice floe had entered this tropical port. The "floe"
consisted of Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and assorted plastic
materials as far as the eye could see and it had come down from the
streets, gutters, and streams into the harbor. And, of course, it was
all washing out to sea, dispersed by wind and tide.
What happened to it after that? The sun and the brine broke it down
into little pellets of Styrofoam and little pieces of plastic - each
an insidious, floating, deadly mine set adrift in an ocean of life.
And over the years these little nodules have drifted. Many have been
ingested by birds and fish. Weeks or months later, their victims
decompose on the surface of the water or on a beach, re-exposing the
nodules to the light of the sun, to be blown by the winds back into
the sea. These vicious little inorganic parasites continue to maim and
kill in an endless assault upon life in our oceans.
The simple fact is that when you drop a Styrofoam cup onto the street,
you're causing more damage than you would by dropping a stick of
dynamite into the ocean. You set in motion an invasion of thousands
of killer plastibots that will cause death and destruction for
centuries
to come.
Eighteen billion disposable diapers end up in the oceans each year;
Americans alone toss 2.5 million plastic bottles into the sea every
hour. Our oceans are full of floating plastic debris. There is no
place in the oceans where a fine trawl will not reveal plastic
nodules. Studies by Captain Charles Moore and the Algalita Foundation
found that even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, plastic nodules
have been found to outweigh plankton by a ratio of six to one. Similar
studies in the Atlantic have revealed the same ratio.
In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks, marooned on a desert island in the
South Pacific, finds a plastic siding of a portable outhouse washed up
on the beach. The stuff is everywhere. I have found plastic bottles
with Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English writing littering the
beaches of even the most remote Aleutian Islands.
And yet we give this global threat very little thought at all. It is
out of the sight of land-dwelling humanity, and thus out of mind. The
only industry that seems concerned about plastic pollution is the
marine insurance business. The intake of plastics into the cooling
systems of engines is one of the leading causes of maritime engine
failures. Last year, Japanese insurance companies paid $50 million in
claims involving plastic-related engine and prop damage.
Drifting in our seas are tens of thousands of miles of monofilament
ghost drift nets and lines. This same netting ensnares ship props and
the necks of sea lions and turtles. Over the years, my crew has
retrieved hundreds of floating monofilament nets from the sea. All of
them contained the rotting corpses of fish and birds.
In a well-documented beach clean-up in Orange County, California,
volunteers collected 106 million items, weighing thirteen tons. The
debris included preproduction plastic pellets, foamed plastics, and
hard plastics; plastic constituted 99 percent of the total material
collected. The most abundant item found on the beaches of Orange
County was preproduction plastic pellets, most of which originated
from transport losses. Approximately one quadrillion of these pellets,
or 60 billion pounds, are annually manufactured in the United States
alone. You never hear about these spillages in the newspaper, and
there is not a single plastic pellet spillage response crew anywhere
in the world.
The plastic products that end up in the sea from consumers constitute
less than 30 percent of the total plastics dumped into the oceans each
year. The greater amount comes from accidental spillage of plastic
resin pellets produced by the petrochemical industry for the purpose
of manufacturing consumer plastic products, or the breakdown of
finished products into Styrofoam nodules or hard plastic particles.
Plastic nodules are lost routinely in both the shipping and
manufacturing stages, spilling from shipboard containers or from
trucks onto streets and into storm drains.
Oil spills occur every day in our oceans, and major spills occur on
average every two weeks somewhere in the world's marine ecosystem.
Although these oil spills are notorious killers of marine wildlife,
their deadly impact is confined to relatively small areas
geographically, and the impact is reduced with time. The Exxon Valdez
spill, for example, was confined to Alaska's Prince William Sound, and
although the impact on wildlife was felt for many years, the ecosystem
is slowly recovering. Yet this other kind of petrochemical spill is
more invasive and permanent. This type of spill is cumulative. The
spillage is never cleaned up and removed, but accumulates perpetually.
I don't think that I am exaggerating when I say that the spillage of
plastic resin pellets poses a significant and unappreciated threat to
survival of sea life. The oceans are becoming plasticized. This threat
becomes more lethal each year as the cumulative amount increases.
The impact of this spillage contributes to more casualties than all of
the
world's annual oil spills, yet we know very little about the problem.
In fact, the public does not even recognize plastic resin pellet
spillage as a problem at all.
Plastic pellets also pose an additional threat. They act as a
transport medium for toxic chemicals. Many of these pellets contain
polychlorinated biphenyl's (PCB). The chemicals were either absorbed
from ambient seawater or used in the manufacture of plasticizers prior
to the 1970's. This transfer of PCB's from ingested pellets into birds
was conclusively proven and documented in the fatty tissues of great
shearwaters (Puffinus gravis). Studies have shown that 75 percent of
all shearwaters examined contained ingested plastic.
Of 312 species of seabirds, some 111 species, or 36 percent, are
known to mistakenly ingest plastic. In Hawaii, sixteen of the eighteen
resident seabird species are plastic ingestors, and 70 percent of this
ingestion is of floating plastic resin pellets. Seabirds in Alaska
have been found to have stomachs entirely filled with indigestible
plastic. Penguins on South African beaches have suffered high chick
mortality from eating plastic regurgitated by the parents, and 90
percent of blue petrel chicks examined on South Africa's remote
Marion Island had plastic particles in their stomachs.
It is a global problem, and for seabirds there are no safe places. For
most people, the ocean is a big toilet. The belief is that garbage,
sewage, and plastics are dispersed and taken away.
Unfortunately, nothing is really ever "taken away"; it is simply
perpetually circulated. The oceans are pulsating with powerful
currents, and these currents keep plastic debris in constant
circulation. As a result, debris travels in what are called "gyres."
The gyre concentrates the garbage in areas where currents meet.
For example, one of the largest of these movements in the Atlantic
is called the central gyre, and it moves in a clockwise circular
pattern
driven by the Gulf Stream. The central gyre concentrates heavily in
the northern Sargasso Sea, a place that is also host to numerous
spawning fish species.
The number of floating plastic pellets found in the Sargasso Sea has
been measured in excess of 3,500 parts per square kilometer. The
same ratio of 3,500 parts per square kilometer was found in the waters
of the southern coasts of Africa. This study found that plastic
pollution
had increased in South African waters from 1989 to the present by 190
percent.
Birds, turtles, and fish mistake the tiny nodules for fish eggs.
Garbage bags, plastic soda rings, and Styrofoam particles are
regularly eaten by sea turtles. A floating garbage bag looks like a
jellyfish to a turtle. The plastic clogs the turtles' intestines,
robbing the animals of vital nutrients, and it has been the cause of
untold turtle losses to starvation. All seven of the world's sea
turtle species suffer mortality from both plastic ingestion and
plastic entanglement. One turtle found dead off Hawaii carried over
1,000 pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. And recently, a
land-based turtle rescued in a Florida waterway by Stephen Nordlinger
was unable to submerge due to the amount of Styrofoam trapped in its
body, making it permanently buoyant.
The amount of plastic pellets present on beaches is astonishingly
high. In New Zealand, one beach was found to contain over 100,000
pellets per square meter. Thus, it is not so farfetched to suggest
that people are in fact sunbathing on plastic beaches - literally. I
have stopped my ship in mid-ocean and found flip-flops, suntan oil
bottles, plastic Coke bottles, garbage bags, and even large floating
industrial plastic sheets. In each place sampled, we have also found
plastic pellets.
Once, on the bottom of the Mediterranean off France, I witnessed a
scene that appalled me. The entire bottom was made of plastic. Bottles
and plastic bags swaying with the tide, replacing the sea grasses and
algae. It was especially sad to see one little fish scurry from behind
a white plastic bag to take cover from me in a sunken automobile tire.
Brushing aside another drifting white bag, I spied a flicker of red on
the bottom. What I found was a plastic face staring up at me with a
great big smile and two enormous plastic ears. It was the decapitated
head of a Mickey Mouse doll.
It's a plastic sea out there.
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/world/asia/30water2.html
India Digs Deeper, but Wells Are Drying Up,
and a Farming Crisis Looms
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: September 30, 2006
TEJA KA BAS, India - Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a
cultivator of cucumber and wheat, has all but given
up growing food. No more suffering through drought
and the scourge of antelope that would destroy what
little would survive on his fields.
Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of what
counts here as the most precious of commodities:
the water under his land.
Each year he bores ever deeper. His well now
reaches 130 feet down. Four times a day he starts
up his electric pumps. The water that gurgles up,
he sells to the local government - 13,000 gallons
a day. What is left, he sells to thirsty neighbors. He
reaps handsomely, and he plans to continue for as
long as it lasts.
"However long it runs, it runs," he said. "We know
we will all be ultimately doomed."
Mr. Yadav's words could well prove prophetic for
his country. Efforts like his - multiplied by some
19 million wells nationwide - have helped India
deplete its groundwater at an alarming pace over
the last few decades.
The country is running through its groundwater so
fast that scarcity could threaten whole regions like
this one, drive people off the land and ultimately
stunt the country's ability to farm and feed its people.
With the population soaring past one billion and
with a driving need to boost agricultural production,
Indians are tapping their groundwater faster than
nature can replenish it, so fast that they are hitting
deposits formed at the time of the dinosaurs.
"What we will do?" wondered Pavan Agarwal, an
assistant engineer with the state Public Health
and Engineering Department, as he walked across
a stretch of dusty fields near Mr. Yadav's water farm.
"We have to deliver water."
He swept his arms across the field, dotted with
government wells. This one, dug 10 years ago,
had already gone dry. In that one, the water had
sunk down to 130 feet. If it were not for the fact
that electricity comes only five hours a day, every
farmer in the area, Mr. Agarwal ventured, would
be pumping round the clock.
Saving for a Dry Day
If groundwater can be thought of as a nation's
savings account for dry, desperate drought years,
then India, which has more than its share of them,
is rapidly exhausting its reserve. That situation is
true in a growing number of states.
Indian surveyors have divided the country into
5,723 geographic blocks. More than 1,000 are
considered either overexploited, meaning more
water is drawn on average than is replenished by
rain, or critical, meaning they are dangerously
close to it.
Twenty years ago, according to the Central
Groundwater Board, only 250 blocks fell into
those categories.
"We have come to the worst already," was the
verdict of A. Sekhar, who until recently was an
adviser on water to the Planning Commission
of India. At this rate, he projected, the number
of areas at risk is most likely to double in the
next dozen years.
Across India, where most people still live off
the land, the chief source of irrigation is ground-
water, at least for those who can afford to pump it.
Here in Jaipur District, a normally parched area
west of New Delhi known for its regal palaces,
farmers depend on groundwater almost ex-
clusively. Across Rajasthan State, where Jaipur
is situated, up to 80 percent of the groundwater
blocks are in danger of running out.
But even fertile, rain-drenched pockets of the
country are not immune.
Consider, for instance, that in Punjab, India's
northern breadbasket state, 79 percent of ground-
water blocks are classified as overexploited or
critical; in neighboring Haryana, 59 percent; and
in southern tropical Tamil Nadu, 46 percent.
The crisis has been exacerbated by good
intentions gone awry and poor planning by state
governments, which are responsible for
regulating water.
Indian law has virtually no restrictions on who can
pump groundwater, how much and for what purpose.
Anyone, it seems, can - and does - extract water
as long as it is under his or her patch of land. That
could apply to homeowner, farmer or industry.
Electric pumps have accelerated the problem,
enabling farmers and others to squeeze out far
more groundwater than they had been able to
draw by hand for hundreds of years.
The spread of free or vastly discounted electricity
has not helped, either. A favorite boon of politicians
courting the rural vote, the low rates have encour-
aged farmers, especially those with large land-
holdings, to pump out groundwater with abandon.
"We forgot that water is a costly item," lamented
K. P. Singh, regional director of the Central Ground-
water Board, in his office in the city of Jaipur. "Our
feeling about proper, judicious use of water vanished."
The Politics of Water
With the proliferation of electric pumps, he added,
it took only 20 years for Rajasthan's groundwater
reserves to sink to their current levels. Twenty more
years of the same policy could be catastrophic.
The central government has been coaxing states to
require the harvesting of rainwater, for instance by
installing tanks or digging ponds, so the water will
seep into the earth and recharge the aquifers.
Other solutions are politically trickier. Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh has warned of the consequences
of free or cheap electricity and urged state officials
to crack down on pumping. But state officials,
attuned to potential backlash, have been slow
to respond.
Tighter restrictions would in any case run up against
one of the government's top priorities, one that India
has long considered vital for its independence: the
goal of growing its own food.
The fear now, among those who study Indian agri-
culture, is that without a careful review of water
policy and a switch to crops that use less water,
India stands to imperil its food production.
Here in the dust bowl of Rajasthan, desperate
water times have already called for desperate
water measures.
On a parched, hot morning not far from Mr. Yadav's
home, a train pulled into the railway station at a
village called Peeplee Ka Bas. Here, the wells
have run dry and the water table fallen so low that
it is too salty even to irrigate the fields.
The train came bearing precious cargo: 15 tankers
loaded with nearly 120,000 gallons of clean, sweet
drinking water.
The water regularly travels more than 150 miles,
taking nearly two days, by pipeline and then by rail,
so that the residents of a small neighboring town
can fill their buckets with water for 15 minutes every
48 hours.
It is a logistically complicated, absurdly expensive
proposition. Bringing the water here costs the state
about a penny a gallon; the state charges the
consumer a monthly flat rate of 58 cents for about
5,300 gallons, absorbing the loss.
A Parched Village
The growing water shortage has transformed life in
Peeplee Ka Bas. Its men left long ago to seek work
elsewhere. The women remain to spend the blister-
ing summer mornings digging ponds in the barren
earth, hoping to catch monsoon rains.
Where farming once provided a livelihood, now
digging puts food on the table. For a day's labor,
under this public works program intended to help
the poorest families, each woman is paid the
equivalent of 40 cents, along with 24 pounds of
wheat.
It was not always this way. Once farming made
sense. Many of the women digging on a recent
morning remembered growing their own food -
peas, tomatoes, chili peppers, watermelons -
and selling it, too, at the nearest town market.
Year by year, the wells began to run dry. And
there were several years of little to no rain.
Meera, a mother of three who uses only one
name, who is lucky enough to come from a
landowning family, still watched her husband
leave the village to find work in a cement
factory.
There were times, she acknowledged, when
it became difficult to feed the children. Now
she finds herself digging ponds for a bag of
wheat. And praying for rain. "Our life is not life,"
Meera said. "Only when it rains, there's life."
A half-hour's drive along a narrow country road,
just next door to Mr. Yadav's water farm, live a
pair of brothers, Nandalal & Jeevanlal Chowdhury.
They have so far resisted following Mr. Yadav's
lead in selling what water is left under their land,
mainly because it requires a hefty investment to
buy pumps. This year, the water in their well
dropped to 130 feet, twice as deep as 10 years
ago.
Only millet grows here now, a crop that takes
relatively little water, and cattle fodder. Their
last vegetable harvest was five years ago.
They know they will not go on farming forever.
The water will not last. They will search for other
work, elsewhere. Jeevanlal Chowdhury was
vague on what prospects the land would hold
for his children.
"We are close to the finishing point," he said.
His daughter, a sixth grader, listened intently
to the conversation. "The water is almost gone."
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/world/asia/29water.html
In Teeming India, Water Crisis Means Dry Pipes
and Foul Sludge
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: September 29, 2006
New Delhi, 9/28 --The quest for water can drive a woman mad.
Ask Ritu Prasher. Every day, Mrs. Prasher, a homemaker in
a middle-class neighborhood of this capital, rises at
6:30 a.m. and begins fretting about water.
It is a rare morning when water trickles through the pipes.
More often, not a drop will come. So Mrs. Prasher will
have to call a private water tanker, wait for it to show up,
call again, wait some more and worry about whether
enough buckets are filled in the bathroom in case no
water arrives.
"Your whole day goes just planning how you'll get water,"
a weary Mrs. Prasher, 45, recounted one morning this
summer, cellphone in hand and ready to press redial for
the water tanker. "You become so edgy all the time."
In the richest city in India, with the nation's economy
marching ahead at an enviable clip, middle-class
people like Mrs. Prasher are reduced to foraging for
water. Their predicament testifies to the government's
astonishing inability to deliver the most basic services
to its citizens at a time when India asserts itself as a
global power.
The crisis, decades in the making, has grown as fast
as India in recent years. A soaring population, the
warp-speed sprawl of cities, and a vast and thirsty
farm belt have all put new strains on a feeble, ill-kept
public water and sanitation network.
The combination has left water all too scarce in
some places, contaminated in others and in cursed
surfeit for millions who are flooded each year. Today
the problems threaten India's ability to fortify its
sagging farms, sustain its economic growth and
make its cities healthy and habitable. At stake is
not only India's economic ambition but its very
image as the world's largest democracy.
"If we become rich or poor as a nation, it's because
of water," said Sunita Narain, director of the Center
for Science and Environment in New Delhi.
Conflicts over water mirror the most vexing changes
facing India: the competing demands of urban and
rural areas, the stubborn divide between rich and
poor, and the balance between the needs of a
thriving economy and a fragile environment.
New Delhi's water woes are typical of those of many
Indian cities. Nationwide, the urban water distribution
network is in such disrepair that no city can provide
water from the public tap for more than a few hours
a day.
An even bigger problem than demand is disposal.
New Delhi can neither quench its thirst, nor
adequately get rid of the ever bigger heaps of
sewage that it produces. Some 45 percent of the
population is not connected to the public sewerage
system.
Those issues are amplified nationwide. More than
700 million Indians, or roughly two-thirds of the
population, do not have adequate sanitation.
Largely for lack of clean water, 2.1 million children
under the age of 5 die each year, according to the
United Nations.
The government says that 9 out of 10 Indians have
access to the public water supply, but that may
include sources that are going dry or are
contaminated.
The World Bank, in rare agreement with Ms. Narain,
warned in a report published last October that India
stood on the edge of "an era of severe water scarcity."
"Unless dramatic changes are made - and made
soon - in the way in which government manages
water," the World Bank report concluded, "India will
have neither the cash to maintain and build new
infrastructure, nor the water required for the
economy and for people."
The window to address the crisis is closing.
Climate change is expected only to exacerbate the
problems by causing extreme bouts of weather -
heat, deluge or drought.
A River of Waste
The fabled Yamuna River, on whose banks this
city was born more than 2,000 years ago, is a
case study in the water management crisis
confronting India.
In Hindu mythology, the Yamuna is considered to
be a river that fell from heaven to earth. Today,
it is a foul portrait of crippled infrastructure -
and yet, still worshiped. From the bridges that
soar across the river, the faithful toss coins and
sweets, lovingly wrapped in plastic. They scatter
the ashes of their dead.
In New Delhi the Yamuna itself is clinically dead.
As the Yamuna enters the capital, still relatively
clean from its 246-mile descent from atop the
Himalayas, the city's public water agency, the
New Delhi Jal Board, extracts 229 million gallons
every day from the river, its largest single source
of drinking water.
As the Yamuna leaves the city, it becomes the
principal drain for New Delhi's waste. Residents
pour 950 million gallons of sewage into the river
each day.
Coursing through the capital, the river becomes
a noxious black thread. Clumps of raw sewage
float on top. Methane gas gurgles on the surface.
It is hardly safe for fish, let alone bathing or
drinking. A government audit found last year
that the level of fecal coliform, one measure
of filth, in the Yamuna was 100,000 times the
safe limit for bathing.
In 1992, a retired Indian Navy officer who once
sailed regattas on the Yamuna took his govern-
ment to the Supreme Court. The retired officer,
Sureshwar D. Sinha, charged that the state had
killed the Yamuna and violated his constitutional
right, as a practicing Hindu, to perform ritual
baths in the river.
Since then, the Supreme Court ordered the
city's water authority to treat all sewage flowing
into the river and improve water quality. In 14
years, that command is still unmet.
New Delhi's population, now 16 million, has
expanded by roughly 41 percent in the last 15
years, officials estimate. As the number of
people living - and defecating - in the city
soars, on average more than half of the
sewage they pour into the river goes untreated.
A government audit last year indicted the Jal
Board for having spent $200 million and
yielding "very little value." The construction of
more sewage treatment plants has done little
to stanch the flow, in part because sewage
lines are badly clogged and because power
failures leave them inoperable for hours at a time.
"It has not improved at all because the quantity
of sewage is constantly increasing," said R. C.
Trivedi, a director of the Central Pollution
Control Board, which monitors the quality of the
Yamuna River. "The gap is continually widening."
Making matters worse, many New Delhi neigh-
borhoods, like Janata Colony - Hindi for
People's Colony - are not even connected to
sewage pipes. Open sewers hem the narrow
lanes of the slum. Every alley carries their stench.
Some canals are so clogged with trash & sludge
that they are no more than green-black ribbons
of muck. It is a mosquitoes' paradise. Malaria
and dengue fever are regular visitors.
Not long ago, a 2-year-old boy named Arman
Mustakeem fell into one such canal and drowned.
His parents said they found him floating in the
open sewer in front of their home.
These canals empty into a wide storm drain. It,
in turn, runs through the eastern edges of the
city, raking in more sewage and cascades of
trash, before it merges with effluent from two
sewage treatment plants, and finally, enters
the Yamuna.
Carrying the capital's waste on its back, the
Yamuna meanders south to cities like Mathura
and Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. It is their
principal source of drinking water, too. New
Delhi's downstream neighbors are forced to
treat the water heavily, hiking up the cost.
With New Delhi slated to host the Common-
wealth Games in 2010, the government
proposes to remake this riverfront with a sports
and recreation complex. In the meantime, the
Yamuna, vital and befouled as it is, bears the
weight of New Delhi's ambitions.
At dawn each morning, men sink into the still,
black waters to retrieve whatever can be
bartered or sold: rings from a dead man's
finger, coins dropped by the faithful, the
remnants of rubber sandals, plastic water bottles.
The dhobis, who launder clothes, line up on one
stretch of riverbank, pounding saris and bed-
sheets on stone tablets. A man shovels sand
from the river bottom: every bullock cart he fills
for a cement maker will fetch him a coveted
$5.50. Men and boys bathe.
"This river is worshiped," said a bewildered
Sunny Verma, 24. "Is this the right way of
worshiping it?"
So shaken was Mr. Verma on his first visit to the
Yamuna this year that he now works full time to
shake up others. He joined an environmental
group called We for Yamuna.
"If you want to worship the river, you should give
it more respect," he said. "You should treat it the
right way. You should question the government.
You should ask the state to actually do some-
thing for the river."
Deluge and Drought
Mrs. Prasher has the misfortune of living in a
neighborhood on New Delhi's poorly served
southern fringe.
As the city's water supply runs through a 5,600-
mile network of battered public pipes, 25 to 40
percent leaks out. By the time it reaches her,
there is hardly enough.
On average, she gets no more than 13 gallons
a month from the tap and a water bill from the
water board that fluctuates from $6 to $20, at
its whimsy, she complains, since there is never
a meter reading anyway.
That means she has to look for other sources,
scrimp and scavenge to meet her family's
water needs.
She buys an additional 265 gallons from private
tankers, for roughly $20 a month. On top of that
she pays $2.50 toward the worker who pipes
water from a private tube-well she and other
residents of her apartment block have installed
in the courtyard.
Nearly a fourth of New Delhi households,
according to the government commissioned
Delhi Human Development Report, rely at least
in some part on such wells. It is one of the
principal reasons groundwater in New Delhi is
drying up faster than virtually anywhere in the
country: 78 percent of it is considered over-
exploited.
Still, the new posh apartment buildings sprouting
across New Delhi and its suburbs sell themselves
by ensuring a 24-hour water supply - usually by
drilling wells deep underground. "Imagine never
being thirsty for water," boasts a newspaper
advertisement for one new development.
Warning of "an unparalleled water crisis," the study
released in August found that 25 percent of New
Delhi households had no access to piped water,
and that 27 percent got water for less than three
hours a day. Nearly two million households, the
report also found, had no toilet.
The daily New Delhi hustle for water only adds to
the strains on the public system.
A few years ago, for instance, to compensate for
the low water pressure in the public pipeline, Mrs.
Prasher and her neighbors began tapping directly
into the public water main with so-called booster
pumps, each one sucking out as much water as
possible.
It was a me-first approach to a limited and
unreliable public resource, and it proliferated
across this me-first city, each booster pump
further draining the water supply.
The situation for New Delhi, and all of India, is
only expected to worsen. India now uses an
estimated 829 billion cubic yards of water every
year - that is more than guzzling an entire Lake
Erie. But its water needs are growing by leaps.
By 2050, official projections indicate, demand
will more than double, and exceed the 1.4 trillion
cubic yards that India has at its disposal.
Yet the most telling paradox of the city's water
crisis is that New Delhi is not entirely lacking in
water. The problem is distribution, hampered
by a feeble infrastructure and a lack of
resources, concedes Arun Mathur, chief
executive of the Jal Board.
The Jal Board estimates that consumers pay
no more than 40 percent of the actual cost of
water. Raising the rates is unrealistic for now,
as Mr. Mathur well knows. "It would be easier
to ask people to pay up more if we can make
water abundantly available," he said. A
proposal to privatize water supply in some
neighborhoods met with stiff opposition last
year and was dropped.
So the city's pipe network remains a punctured
mess. That means, like most everything else in
this country, some people have more than
enough, and others too little.
The slums built higgledy-piggledy behind Mrs.
Prasher's neighborhood have no public pipes
at all. The Jal Board sends tankers instead.
The women here waste their days waiting for
water, and its arrival sets off desperate
wrestling in the streets.
Kamal Krishnan quit her job for the sake of
securing her share. Five days a week, she
would clean offices in the next neighborhood.
Five nights a week, she would go home to
find no water at home. The buckets would
stand empty. Finally, her husband ordered
her to quit. And wait.
"I want to work, but I can't," she said glumly.
"I go mad waiting for water."
Elsewhere, in the central city, where the
nation's top politicians have their official
homes, the average daily water supply is
three times what finally arrives even in
Mrs. Prasher's neighborhood.
Mrs. Prasher rations her water day to day as
if New Delhi were a desert. She uses the
leftover water from the dog bowl to water the
plants. She recycles soapy water from the
laundry to mop the balcony.
And even when she gets it, the quality is
another question altogether.
Her well water has turned salty as it has
receded over the years. The water from the
private tanker is mucky-brown. Still, Mrs.
Prasher says, she can hardly afford to reject it.
"Beggars can't be choosers," she said. "It's water.
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/world/asia/01india.html
Often Parched, India Struggles to Tap the Monsoon
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: October 1, 2006
SURAT, India - Early on a Monday morning during the
August monsoon, after several days of torrential rains,
the engineers in charge of a massive dam about 50
miles upstream from this diamond-polishing hub faced
a harrowing crisis.
With water brimming well past the permitted levels at
the 350-foot Ukai Dam, according to official records,
and the skies showing no sign of relief, the engineers
apparently threw open the reservoir's 21 sluice gates.
Water then did what water does. It surged downriver,
swallowing this city of three million people like a
hungry beast. The diamond lanes of India became a
warren of muck and ruin.
In less than three days, at least 120 people died.
More than 4,000 animal carcasses were later hauled
out of the mud. Two weeks after the floods, Surat's
diamond-polishing factories were practically empty
of workers, who had fled fearing disease. An industry
group estimated the losses at $60 million.
Exactly what happened in Surat is still under investi-
gation. But the deluge has drawn new attention to a
puzzle that is crucial to securing India's future: how
to harness and hold on to its rich but capricious rains.
The problem is a matter of bitter and enduring
debate in this country - and the answer may hold
a key to India's prosperity. Every year, India is
crippled by floods in some areas, even as it is
parched in blighted corners elsewhere.
India's average annual rainfall rate hovers at an
abundant 46 inches, as much as Ireland's. Yet
growing water scarcity threatens both farms and
cities. With the population hitting 1.1 billion, the
amount of water available to each Indian is
roughly the same as the amount available to the
average Sudanese, according to the Food and
Agriculture Organization.
India's rains tend to come in short, furious bursts,
meaning that much of that water escapes as
untapped potential, washing into the sea and
wreaking havoc on the fragile villages and
flourishing cities that stand in its way.
India is likely to become even more vulnerable,
environmentalists warn. Global climate change
threatens to make weather patterns even more
erratic. Steadily shrinking Himalayan glaciers
will inexorably melt and rush down the flood plains.
Floods in India are already a perennial and costly
affair, especially in human terms. The southwest
monsoon killed 2,545 people in less than four
months this year, according to the Ministry of
Home Affairs.
Part of the problem lies in India's rapid and
unruly development. As water demand has
soared, the natural sponges of Indian cities -
lakes, ponds, marshes, mangroves - have
been lost to construction. Only a handful of city
and state governments have lately begun to
mandate rainwater harvesting to slowly
replenish groundwater.
Moreover, the country faces a water storage
crunch. Traditional small-scale Indian storage
systems, from temple tanks to elaborate step-
wells, have fallen into disrepair. China, a
country with similar development issues,
manages to store five times the water that
India does per person, the World Bank
estimates. But the Chinese government, with
scant public debate, has moved thousands of
people to make way for colossal water projects.
India, too, has tried. But here, in the world's
largest democracy, the big-money water
solution - the big dam - has been the subject
of rancorous disputes. Some projects have met
resistance for decades.
Proponents say India must build many more
reservoirs to meet its growing water and energy
needs. India's founding prime minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, under whose watch the Ukai
Dam was built, called them "modern temples"
of his newly sovereign nation. India has roughly
4,300 large dams, like the one east of Surat,
and an additional 475 under construction.
Critics say that big dams have already proved
too costly and too destructive, submerging
villages and displacing people without
adequate compensation.
They also argue that dams and irrigation canals,
like so much Indian infrastructure, are so poorly
maintained and managed that already they
cannot hold all they are supposed to. According
to government estimates, silt deposits make up
10 percent of total capacity. Because of
declining rains, India today fills up its reservoirs
two out of every three years.
When the Tapi River burst upon Surat on Aug. 7,
its swollen waters broke through an already
fragile concrete embankment near Abdul Bhai
Patel's apartment.
Eventually, the rising waters reduced Mr. Patel's
building to a pile of rubble and brick. His wife,
Zulekha, was among nearly 40 people who were
killed when the building collapsed.
"I screamed," Mr. Patel recalled several days
later, as he picked solemnly through the rubble
in search of his passport. "No one heard me.
There was water all around." The river took away
his only source of income, too - the auto-rick-
shaw that he plied on the streets of Surat.
Downstream, at the industrial park called Hazira,
one of the country's largest natural gas plants
was forced to shut down. Several petrochemical
plants shut down as well. The floodwaters
reached as high as 18 feet at Hazira.
Government engineers who manage dams,
including the Ukai, have the unenviable task of
balancing the competing Indian curses of
drought and deluge.
In dry years, they must take measures to store
as much water as possible in the reservoir. In
wet years, they must guard against drowning
those who live downstream.
Whether state officials at Ukai could have taken
any steps to forestall the flooding remains
uncertain. The officials plead silence, citing a
judicial inquiry under way.
Their critics are not silent. They argue that it
was reckless to wait so long to discharge so
much water, knowing it could submerge the
city in a matter of hours, and they have
pounced on the drowning of Surat as a model
of all that is wrong with the way India uses its
reservoirs.
"I call it a management failure," said M. D.
Desai, a retired state engineer who once
worked at Ukai.
The reservoir was already well over 20 percent
full by the time the rains began in July, critics
note. Meteorological data forecasted heavy
rains in early August. And dam officials should
have known that a full moon, on Aug. 9, would
bring high tides and further pinch the river's
ability to drain into the sea. The Hazira
industrial complex, built on the estuary, also
compromises the river's ability to drain out.
Often, the wasted water is a double hit to
development: Not only does it go unused, it
destroys everything in its path, setting back
both industry and infrastructure. In Surat, the
outpouring of the Ukai Dam snapped
electricity and phone lines, and suspended
train service and commerce.
The Business Standard, an English-language
daily, fumed in an editorial, under the headline
"Man-Made Floods," a few days after the deluge.
"Releasing the water in a rush at the monsoon
time means that the stored water has gone
completely waste, as runoff," it read. "This is
criminal profligacy with a scarce and precious
resource."
Modern India, urban and rural, continues to live
at the whim of the monsoon.
For two-thirds of India's farmers, who have no
access to irrigation, a good monsoon is the
difference between survival and penury. For
fast-growing cities like this one, the monsoon
lays bare the frailties of urban infrastructure.
This year, in the perennially drought-stricken
agricultural region of Vidarbha, in central India,
the monsoon was first tardy and then, unexpec-
tedly furious. Those who had low-lying lands
lost their crops entirely. In the western state of
Rajasthan, a fluke downpour turned desert to
lake.
In the cities, troubles like those in Surat are
spread all around, at accumulating costs.
Last year, one day's unusually heavy rains
brought Mumbai, formerly Bombay and the
country's financial capital, to a standstill.
Trains stopped in their tracks. Cars were
submerged, sometimes with people inside.
Shanties were washed away. All told, 400
people died in the flooding, and then, 60 more,
as cholera and dengue fever festered in its
waterlogged streets.
Civic scrutiny fell on years of neglect and bad
planning: the narrow storm drains bursting
with the city's waste; the slums sitting on the
city's floodplains; and the sprawling complex
of financial services buildings that has eaten
up mangroves.
In Surat, prosperity and population growth
brought a surge of new development on the
river's edge. A city official acknowledged
that expanding construction along the river-
bank had made it impossible to put up
flood walls in some places.
Any lessons will come too late for Tulsi Mistry,
14, and her family. Before dawn, on that fateful
Monday in early August, when news of flooding
first reached the Rivera Row Houses, they
scrambled to higher ground.
>From her perch on the roof, Tulsi watched as
the river rose and devoured her city. A refriger-
ator and washing machine coursed down her
street. A body floated in the park up the road.
Tulsi and her family ended up virtually stranded
on their rooftop terrace for a week. They ate
whatever was left in the pantry and shared
with neighbors. They drank what was stored
in the rooftop tank, forgoing a bath for seven
days.
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html
As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY
Published: August 26, 2007
BEIJING, Aug. 25 - No country in history has emerged as
a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environ-
mental damage that can take decades and big dollops of
public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an
economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its
pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environ-
mental degradation is now so severe, with such stark
domestic and international repercussions, that pollution
poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese
public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling
Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in
its own economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's
leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient
air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of
deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access
to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud.
Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers
breathe air considered safe by the European Union.
Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a
meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the
2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic
in some countries can seem commonplace in China:
industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children
killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local
pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that
large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success. The economy is on
a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth
rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time
in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy
industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of
energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available,
and dirtiest, source.
"It is a very awkward situation for the country because our
greatest achievement is also our biggest burden," says
Wang Jinnan, one of China's leading environmental
researchers. "There is pressure for change, but many
people refuse to accept that we need a new approach
so soon."
China's problem has become the world's problem. Sulfur
dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China's coal-fired
power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and
Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles
originates in China, according to the Journal of
Geophysical Research.
More pressing still, China has entered the most robust
stage of its industrial revolution, even as much of the
outside world has become preoccupied with global
warming.
Experts once thought China might overtake the United
States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse
gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International
Energy Agency has said China could become the
emissions leader by the end of this year, and the
Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said
China had already passed that level.
For the Communist Party, the political calculus is daunting.
Reining in economic growth to alleviate pollution may seem
logical, but the country's authoritarian system is addicted to
fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public,
provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls
demands for political change. A major slowdown could
incite social unrest, alienate business interests and
threaten the party's rule.
But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air
and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest.
Health care costs have climbed sharply. Severe water
shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the
unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries
creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal,
meaning that environmental problems get harder and more
expensive to address the longer they are unresolved.
China's leaders recognize that they must change course.
They are vowing to overhaul the growth-first philosophy
of the Deng Xiaoping era and embrace a new model that
allows for steady growth while protecting the environment.
In his equivalent of a State of the Union address this year,
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made 48 references to
"environment," "pollution" or "environmental protection."
The government has numerical targets for reducing
emissions and conserving energy. Export subsidies for
polluting industries have been phased out. Different
campaigns have been started to close illegal coal mines
and shutter some heavily polluting factories. Major initiatives
are under way to develop clean energy sources like solar
and wind power. And environmental regulation in Beijing,
Shanghai and other leading cities has been tightened
ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
Yet most of the government's targets for energy efficiency,
as well as improving air and water quality, have gone unmet.
And there are ample signs that the leadership is either
unwilling or unable to make fundamental changes.
Land, water, electricity, oil and bank loans remain relatively
inexpensive, even for heavy polluters. Beijing has declined
to use the kind of tax policies and market-oriented incentives
for conservation that have worked well in Japan and many
European countries.
Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often
ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or
factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement
is often tinged with corruption. This spring, officials in Yunnan
Province in southern China beautified Laoshou Mountain,
which had been used as a quarry, by spraying green paint
over acres of rock.
President Hu Jintao's most ambitious attempt to change the
culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known
as "Green G.D.P.," was an effort to create an environmental
yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in
China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or G.D.P.,
to reflect the cost of pollution.
But the early results were so sobering - in some provinces
the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to
zero - that the project was banished to China's ivory tower
this spring and stripped of official influence.
Chinese leaders argue that the outside world is a partner in
degrading the country's environment. Chinese manufacturers
that dump waste into rivers or pump smoke into the sky make
the cheap products that fill stores in the United States and
Europe. Often, these manufacturers subcontract for foreign
companies - or are owned by them. In fact, foreign invest-
ment continues to rise as multinational corporations build
more factories in China. Beijing also insists that it will accept
no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which
would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues
that rich countries caused global warming and should find a
way to solve it without impinging on China's development.
Indeed, Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their
way to prosperity and worried about environmental damage
only after their economies matured and their urban middle
classes demanded blue skies and safe drinking water.
But China is more like a teenage smoker with emphysema.
The costs of pollution have mounted well before it is ready
to curtail economic development. But the price of business
as usual - including the predicted effects of global warming
on China itself - strikes many of its own experts and some
senior officials as intolerably high.
"Typically, industrial countries deal with green problems
when they are rich," said Ren Yong, a climate expert at the
Center for Environment and Economy in Beijing. "We have
to deal with them while we are still poor. There is no model
for us to follow."
In the face of past challenges, the Communist Party has
usually responded with sweeping edicts from Beijing.
Some environmentalists say they hope the top leadership
has now made pollution control such a high priority that lower
level officials will have no choice but to go along, just as
Deng Xiaoping once forced China's sluggish bureaucracy
to fixate on growth.
But the environment may end up posing a different political
challenge. A command-and-control political culture
accustomed to issuing thundering directives is now under
pressure, even from people in the ruling party, to submit to
oversight from the public, for which pollution has become a
daily - and increasingly deadly - reality.
Perpetual Haze
During the three decades since Deng set China on a
course toward market-style growth, rapid industrialization
and urbanization have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese
out of poverty and made the country the world's largest
producer of consumer goods. But there is little question that
growth came at the expense of the country's air, land and
water, much of it already degraded by decades of Stalinist
economic planning that emphasized the development of
heavy industries in urban areas.
For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies
for about two-thirds of its energy needs. It has abundant
supplies of coal and already burns more of it than the United
States, Europe and Japan combined. But even many of its
newest coal-fired power plants and industrial furnaces
operate inefficiently and use pollution controls considered
inadequate in the West.
Expanding car ownership, heavy traffic and low-grade
gasoline have made autos the leading source of air pollution
in major Chinese cities. Only 1 percent of China's urban
population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe
by the European Union, according to a World Bank study
of Chinese pollution published this year. One major pollutant
contributing to China's bad air is particulate matter, which
includes concentrations of fine dust, soot and aerosol particles
less than 10 microns in diameter (known as PM 10).
The level of such particulates is measured in micrograms
per cubic meter of air. The European Union stipulates that
any reading above 40 micrograms is unsafe. The United
States allows 50. In 2006, Beijing's average PM 10 level
was 141, according to the Chinese National Bureau of
Statistics. Only Cairo, among world capitals, had worse
air quality as measured by particulates, according to the
World Bank.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal and fuel oil, which
can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well
as acid rain, are increasing even faster than China's
economic growth. In 2005, China became the leading source
of sulfur dioxide pollution globally, the State Environmental
Protection Administration, or SEPA, reported last year.
Other major air pollutants, including ozone, an important
component of smog, and smaller particulate matter, called
PM 2.5, emitted when gasoline is burned, are not widely
monitored in China. Medical experts in China and in the
West have argued that PM 2.5 causes more chronic
diseases of the lung and heart than the more widely
watched PM 10.
Perhaps an even more acute challenge is water. China has
only one-fifth as much water per capita as the United States.
But while southern China is relatively wet, the north, home to
about half of China's population, is an immense, parched
region that now threatens to become the world's biggest
desert.
Farmers in the north once used shovels to dig their wells.
Now, many aquifers have been so depleted that some
wells in Beijing and Hebei must extend more than half a
mile before they reach fresh water. Industry and agriculture
use nearly all of the flow of the Yellow River, before it
reaches the Bohai Sea.
In response, Chinese leaders have undertaken one of the
most ambitious engineering projects in world history, a
$60 billion network of canals, rivers and lakes to transport
water from the flood-prone Yangtze River to the silt-choked
Yellow River. But that effort, if successful, will still leave the
north chronically thirsty.
This scarcity has not yet created a culture of conservation.
Water remains inexpensive by global standards, and
Chinese industry uses 4 to 10 times more water per unit
of production than the average in industrialized nations,
according to the World Bank.
In many parts of China, factories and farms dump waste
into surface water with few repercussions. China's environ-
mental monitors say that one-third of all river water, and
vast sections of China's great lakes, the Tai, Chao and
Dianchi, have water rated Grade V, the most degraded
level, rendering it unfit for industrial or agricultural use.
Grim Statistics
The toll this pollution has taken on human health remains
a delicate topic in China. The leadership has banned
publication of data on the subject for fear of inciting social
unrest, said scholars involved in the research. But the
results of some research provide alarming evidence that
the environment has become one of the biggest causes
of death.
An internal, unpublicized report by the Chinese Academy
of Environmental Planning in 2003 estimated that 300,000
people die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly of
heart disease and lung cancer. An additional 110,000
deaths could be attributed to indoor air pollution caused by
poorly ventilated coal and wood stoves or toxic fumes from
shoddy construction materials, said a person involved in
that study.
Another report, prepared in 2005 by Chinese environmental
experts, estimated that annual premature deaths attributable
to outdoor air pollution were likely to reach 380,000 in 2010
and 550,000 in 2020.
This spring, a World Bank study done with SEPA, the
national environmental agency, concluded that outdoor air
pollution was already causing 350,000 to 400,000 premature
deaths a year. Indoor pollution contributed to the deaths of
an additional 300,000 people, while 60,000 died from
diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases
that can be caused by water-borne pollution.
China's environmental agency insisted that the health
statistics be removed from the published version of the
report, citing the possible impact on "social stability,"
World Bank officials said.
But other international organizations with access to Chinese
data have published similar results. For example, the World
Health Organization found that China suffered more deaths
from water-related pollutants and fewer from bad air, but
agreed with the World Bank that the total death toll had
reached 750,000 a year. In comparison, 4,700 people died
last year in China's notoriously unsafe mines, and 89,000
people were killed in road accidents, the highest number
of automobile-related deaths in the world. The Ministry of
Health estimates that cigarette smoking takes a million
Chinese lives each year.
Studies of Chinese environmental health mostly use
statistical models developed in the United States and
Europe and apply them to China, which has done little
long-term research on the matter domestically. The results
are more like plausible suppositions than conclusive findings.
But Chinese experts say that, if anything, the Western
models probably understate the problems.
"China's pollution is worse, the density of its population
is greater and people do not protect themselves as well,"
said Jin Yinlong, the director general of the Institute for
Environmental Health and Related Product Safety in Beijing.
"So the studies are not definitive. My assumption is that they
will turn out to be conservative."
Growth Run Amok
As gloomy as China's pollution picture looks today, it is
set to get significantly worse, because China has come to
rely mainly on energy-intensive heavy industry and urbani-
zation to fuel economic growth. In 2000, a team of econo-
mists and energy specialists at the Development Research
Center, part of the State Council, set out to gauge how much
energy China would need over the ensuing 20 years to
achieve the leadership's goal of quadrupling the size of the
economy.
They based their projections on China's experience during
the first 20 years of economic reform, from 1980 to 2000.
In that period, China relied mainly on light industry and
small-scale private enterprise to spur growth. It made big
improvements in energy efficiency even as the economy
expanded rapidly. Gross domestic product quadrupled,
while energy use only doubled.
The team projected that such efficiency gains would
probably continue. But the experts also offered what they
called a worst-case situation in which the most energy-
hungry parts of the economy grew faster and efficiency
gains fell short.
That worst-case situation now looks wildly optimistic.
Last year, China burned the energy equivalent of 2.7
billion tons of coal, three-quarters of what the experts had
said would be the maximum required in 2020. To put it
another way, China now seems likely to need as much
energy in 2010 as it thought it would need in 2020 under
the most pessimistic assumptions.
"No one really knew what was driving the economy,
which is why the predictions were so wrong," said Yang
Fuqiang, a former Chinese energy planner who is now the
chief China representative of the Energy Foundation, an
American group that supports energy-related research.
"What I fear is that the trend is now basically irreversible."
The ravenous appetite for fossil fuels traces partly to an
economic stimulus program in 1997. The leadership,
worried that China's economy would fall into a steep
recession as its East Asian neighbors had, provided
generous state financing and tax incentives to support
industrialization on a grand scale.
It worked well, possibly too well. In 1996, China and the
United States each accounted for 13 percent of global
steel production. By 2005, the United States share had
dropped to 8 percent, while China's share had risen to
35 percent, according to a study by Daniel H. Rosen
and Trevor Houser of China Strategic Advisory, a group
that analyzes the Chinese economy.
Similarly, China now makes half of the world's cement
and flat glass, and about a third of its aluminum. In 2006,
China overtook Japan as the second-largest producer of
cars and trucks after the United States.
Its energy needs are compounded because even some
of its newest heavy industry plants do not operate as
efficiently, or control pollution as effectively, as factories
in other parts of the world, a recent World Bank report said.
Chinese steel makers, on average, use one-fifth more
energy per ton than the international average. Cement
manufacturers need 45 percent more power, and ethylene
producers need 70 percent more than producers elsewhere,
the World Bank says.
China's aluminum industry alone consumes as much energy
as the country's commercial sector - all the hotels,
restaurants, banks and shopping malls combined, Mr. Rosen
and Mr. Houser reported.
Moreover, the boom is not limited to heavy industry. Each
year for the past few years, China has built about 7.5 billion
square feet of commercial and residential space, more
than the combined floor space of all the malls and strip malls
in the United States, according to data collected by the
United States Energy Information Administration.
Chinese buildings rarely have thermal insulation. They
require, on average, twice as much energy to heat and
cool as those in similar climates in the United States and
Europe, according to the World Bank. A vast majority of
new buildings - 95 percent, the bank says - do not meet
China's own codes for energy efficiency.
All these new buildings require China to build power plants,
which it has been doing prodigiously. In 2005 alone, China
added 66 gigawatts of electricity to its power grid, about
as much power as Britain generates in a year. Last year,
it added an additional 102 gigawatts, as much as France.
That increase has come almost entirely from small- and
medium-size coal-fired power plants that were built quickly
and inexpensively. Only a few of them use modern,
combined-cycle turbines, which increase efficiency, said
Noureddine Berrah, an energy expert at the World Bank.
He said Beijing had so far declined to use the most
advanced type of combined-cycle turbines despite having
completed a successful pilot project nearly a decade ago.
While over the long term, combined-cycle plants save money
and reduce pollution, Mr. Berrah said, they cost more and
take longer to build. For that reason, he said, central and
provincial government officials prefer older technology.
"China is making decisions today that will affect its energy
use for the next 30 or 40 years," he said. "Unfortunately, in
some parts of the government the thinking is much more
shortsighted."
The Politics of Pollution
Since Hu Jintao became the Communist Party chief in 2002
and Wen Jiabao became prime minister the next spring,
China's leadership has struck consistent themes. The
economy must grow at a more sustainable, less bubbly pace.
Environmental abuse has reached intolerable levels. Officials
who ignore these principles will be called to account.
Five years later, it seems clear that these senior leaders are
either too timid to enforce their orders, or the fast-growth
political culture they preside over is too entrenched to heed
them.
In the second quarter of this year, the economy expanded
at a neck-snapping pace of 11.9 percent, its fastest in a
decade. State-driven investment projects, state-backed
heavy industry and a thriving export sector led the way.
China burned 18 percent more coal than it did the year before.
China's authoritarian system has repeatedly proved its
ability to suppress political threats to Communist Party
rule. But its failure to realize its avowed goals of balancing
economic growth and environmental protection is a sign
that the country's environmental problems are at least partly
systemic, many experts and some government officials say.
China cannot go green, in other words, without political change.
In their efforts to free China of its socialist shackles in the
1980s and early 90s, Deng and his supporters gave lower-
level officials the leeway, and the obligation, to increase
economic growth.
Local party bosses gained broad powers over state bank
lending, taxes, regulation and land use. In return, the party
leadership graded them, first and foremost, on how much
they expanded the economy in their domains.
To judge by its original goals - stimulating the economy,
creating jobs and keeping the Communist Party in power -
the system Deng put in place has few equals. But his
approach eroded Beijing's ability to fine-tune the economy.
Today, a culture of collusion between government and
business has made all but the most pro-growth government
policies hard to enforce.
"The main reason behind the continued deterioration of the
environment is a mistaken view of what counts as political
achievement," said Pan Yue, the deputy minister of the
State Environmental Protection Administration. "The crazy
expansion of high-polluting, high-energy industries has
spawned special interests. Protected by local governments,
some businesses treat the natural resources that belong to
all the people as their own private property."
Mr. Hu has tried to change the system. In an internal
address in 2004, he endorsed "comprehensive environ-
mental and economic accounting" - otherwise known as
"Green G.D.P." He said the "pioneering endeavor" would
produce a new performance test for government and party
officials that better reflected the leadership's environmental
priorities.
The Green G.D.P. team sought to calculate the yearly
damage to the environment and human health in each
province. Their first report, released last year, estimated
that pollution in 2004 cost just over 3 percent of the gross
domestic product, meaning that the pollution-adjusted
growth rate that year would drop to about 7 percent from
10 percent. Officials said at the time that their formula used
low estimates of environmental damage to health and did
not assess the impact on China's ecology. They would
produce a more decisive formula, they said, the next year.
That did not happen. Mr. Hu's plan died amid intense
squabbling, people involved in the effort said. The Green
G.D.P. group's second report, originally scheduled for
release in March, never materialized.
The official explanation was that the science behind the
green index was immature. Wang Jinnan, the leading
academic researcher on the Green G.D.P. team, said
provincial leaders killed the project. "Officials do not like
to be lined up and told how they are not meeting the
leadership's goals," he said. "They found it difficult to
accept this."
Conflicting Pressures
Despite the demise of Green G.D.P., party leaders
insist that they intend to restrain runaway energy use
and emissions. The government last year mandated
that the country use 20 percent less energy to achieve
the same level of economic activity in 2010 compared
with 2005. It also required that total emissions of mercury,
sulfur dioxide and other pollutants decline by 10 percent
in the same period.
The program is a domestic imperative. But it has also
become China's main response to growing international
pressure to combat global warming. Chinese leaders
reject mandatory emissions caps, and they say the
energy efficiency plan will slow growth in carbon dioxide
emissions.
Even with the heavy pressure, though, the efficiency goals
have been hard to achieve. In the first full year since the
targets were set, emissions increased. Energy use for
every dollar of economic output fell but by much less than
the 4 percent interim goal.
In a public relations sense, the party's commitment to
conservation seems steadfast. Mr. Hu shunned his usual
coat and tie at a meeting of the Central Committee this
summer. State news media said the temperature in the
Great Hall of the People was set at a balmy 79 degrees
Fahrenheit to save energy, and officials have encouraged
others to set thermostats at the same level.
By other measures, though, the leadership has moved
slowly to address environmental and energy concerns.
The government rarely uses market-oriented incentives
to reduce pollution. Officials have rejected proposals to
introduce surcharges on electricity and coal to reflect the
true cost to the environment. The state still controls the
price of fuel oil, including gasoline, subsidizing the cost
of driving.
Energy and environmental officials have little influence
in the bureaucracy. The environmental agency still has
only about 200 full-time employees, compared with
18,000 at the Environmental Protection Agency in the
United States.
China has no Energy Ministry. The Energy Bureau of
the National Development and Reform Commission,
the country's central planning agency, has 100 full-time
staff members. The Energy Department of the United
States has 110,000 employees.
China does have an army of amateur regulators.
Environmentalists expose pollution and press local
government officials to enforce environmental laws.
But private individuals and nongovernment organi-
zations cannot cross the line between advocacy and
political agitation without risking arrest.
At least two leading environmental organizers have
been prosecuted in recent weeks, and several others
have received sharp warnings to tone down their
criticism of local officials. One reason the authorities
have cited: the need for social stability before the
2008 Olympics, once viewed as an opportunity for
China to improve the environment.
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/world/asia/28water.html
Beneath Booming Cities, China's Future Is Drying Up
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: September 28, 2007
SHIJIAZHUANG, China - Hundreds of feet below ground,
the primary water source for this provincial capital of more
than two million people is steadily running dry. The under-
ground water table is sinking about four feet a year.
Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the
local groundwater.
Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having
a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year.
Population is rising. A new upscale housing development
is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with
pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the
Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points
in the city's water table.
"People who are buying apartments aren't thinking about
whether there will be water in the future," said Zhang
Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public
awareness about the city's dire water situation.
For three decades, water has been indispensable in
sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has
made China a world power. Now, China's galloping,
often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the
country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is
rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened
severely in north China - even as demand keeps rising
everywhere.
China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and
minerals to keep its economic machine humming.
But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water
usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders
will increasingly face tough political choices as cities,
industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced
water supply.
One example is grain. The Communist Party, leery of
depending on imports to feed the country, has long
insisted on grain self-sufficiency. But growing so much
grain consumes huge amounts of underground water
in the North China Plain, which produces half the country's
wheat. Some scientists say farming in the rapidly urban-
izing region should be restricted to protect endangered
aquifers. Yet doing so could threaten the livelihoods of
millions of farmers and cause a spike in international
grain prices.
For the Communist Party, the immediate challenge is
the prosaic task of forcing the world's most dynamic
economy to conserve and protect clean water. Water
pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major
incident occurs every other day. Municipal and indus-
trial dumping has left sections of many rivers "unfit for
human contact."
Cities like Beijing and Tianjin have shown progress
on water conservation, but China's economy continues
to emphasize growth. Industry in China uses 3 to 10
times more water, depending on the product, than
industries in developed nations.
"We have to now focus on conservation," said Ma Jun,
a prominent environmentalist. "We don't have much
extra water resources. We have the same resources
and much bigger pressures from growth."
In the past, the Communist Party has reflexively turned
to engineering projects to address water problems,
and now it is reaching back to one of Mao's unrealized
plans: the $62 billion South-to-North Water Transfer
Project to funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward
every year along three routes from the Yangtze River
basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if
fully built, would be completed in 2050. The eastern
and central lines are already under construction; the
western line, the most disputed because of environ-
mental concerns, remains in the planning stages.
The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water
it can get. An economic powerhouse with more than
200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends
on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. Other
countries, like Yemen, India, Mexico and the United
States, have aquifers that are being drained to
dangerously low levels. But scientists say those below
the North China Plain may be drained within 30 years.
"There's no uncertainty," said Richard Evans, a hydro-
logist who has worked in China for two decades and
has served as a consultant to the World Bank and
China's Ministry of Water Resources. "The rate of
decline is very clear, very well documented. They will
run out of groundwater if the current rate continues."
Outside Shijiazhuang, construction crews are working
on the transfer project's central line, which will provide
the city with infusions of water on the way to the final
destination, Beijing. For many of the engineers and
workers, the job carries a patriotic gloss.
Yet while many scientists agree that the project will
provide an important influx of water, they also say it
will not be a cure-all. No one knows how much clean
water the project will deliver; pollution problems are
already arising on the eastern line. Cities and industry
will be the beneficiaries of the new water, but the
impact on farming is limited. Water deficits are
expected to remain.
"Many people are asking the question: What can they
do?" said Zheng Chunmiao, a leading international
groundwater expert. "They just cannot continue with
current practices. They have to find a way to bring the
problem under control."
A Drying Region
On a drizzly, polluted morning last April, Wang
Baosheng steered his Chinese-made sport utility
vehicle out of a shopping center on the west side of
Beijing for a three-hour southbound commute that
became a tour of the water crisis on the North China
Plain.
Mr. Wang travels several times a month to Shijiaz-
huang, where he is chief engineer overseeing con-
struction of three miles of the central line of the water
transfer project. A light rain splattered the windshield,
and he recited a Chinese proverb about the precious-
ness of spring showers for farmers. He also noticed
one dead river after another as his S.U.V. glided over
dusty, barren riverbeds: the Yongding, the Yishui, the
Xia and, finally, the Hutuo. "You see all these streams
with bridges, but there is no water," he said.
A century or so ago, the North China Plain was a
healthy ecosystem, scientists say. Farmers digging
wells could strike water within eight feet. Streams
and creeks meandered through the region. Swamps,
natural springs and wetlands were common.
Today, the region, comparable in size to New Mexico,
is parched. Roughly five-sixths of the wetlands have
dried up, according to one study. Scientists say that
most natural streams or creeks have disappeared.
Several rivers that once were navigable are now
mostly dust and brush. The largest natural freshwater
lake in northern China, Lake Baiyangdian, is steadily
contracting and besieged with pollution.
What happened? The list includes misguided policies,
unintended consequences, a population explosion,
climate change and, most of all, relentless economic
growth. In 1963, a flood paralyzed the region, prompt-
ing Mao to construct a flood-control system of dams,
reservoirs and concrete spillways. Flood control
improved but the ecological balance was altered as
the dams began choking off rivers that once flowed
eastward into the North China Plain.
The new reservoirs gradually became major water
suppliers for growing cities like Shijiazhuang. Farmers,
the region's biggest water users, began depending
almost exclusively on wells. Rainfall steadily declined
in what some scientists now believe is a consequence
of climate change.
Before, farmers had compensated for the region's
limited annual rainfall by planting only three crops every
two years. But underground water seemed limitless
and government policies pushed for higher production,
so farmers began planting a second annual crop,
usually winter wheat, which requires a lot of water.
By the 1970s, studies show, the water table was
already falling. Then Mao's death and the intro-
duction of market-driven economic reforms spurred
a farming renaissance. Production soared, and rural
incomes rose. The water table kept falling, further
drying out wetlands and rivers.
Around 1900, Shijiazhuang was a collection of
farming villages. By 1950, the population had
reached 335,000. This year, the city has roughly
2.3 million people with a metropolitan area
population of 9 million.
More people meant more demand for water, and the
city now heavily pumps groundwater. The water table
is falling more than a meter a year. Today, some city
wells must descend more than 600 feet to reach
clean water. In the deepest drilling areas, steep
downward funnels have formed in the water table
that are known as "cones of depression."
Groundwater quality also has worsened. Wastewater,
often untreated, is now routinely dumped into rivers
and open channels. Mr. Zheng, the water specialist,
said studies showed that roughly three-quarters of
the region's entire aquifer system was now suffering
some level of contamination.
"There will be no sustainable development in the
future if there is no groundwater supply," said Liu
Changming, a leading Chinese hydrology expert
and a senior scholar at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences.
A National Project
Three decades ago, when Deng Xiaoping shifted
China from Maoist ideology and fixated the country
on economic growth, a generation of technocrats
gradually took power and began rebuilding a country
that ideology had almost destroyed. Today, the top
leaders of the Communist Party - including Hu
Jintao, China's president and party chief - were
trained as engineers.
Though not members of the political elite, Wang
Baosheng, the engineer on the water transfer
project, and his colleague Yang Guangjie are of
the same background. This spring, at the site
outside Shijiazhuang, bulldozers clawed at a
V-shaped cut in the dirt while teams of workers in
blue jumpsuits and orange hard hats smoothed
wet cement over a channel that will be almost as
wide as a football field.
"I've been to the Hoover Dam, and I really admire the
people who built that," said Mr. Yang, the project
manager. "At the time, they were making a huge
contribution to the development of their country."
He compared China's transfer project to the water
diversion system devised for southern California
in the last century. "Maybe we are like America in
the 1920s and 1930s," he said. "We're building
the country."
China's disadvantage, compared with the United
States, is that it has a smaller water supply yet
almost five times as many people. China has about
7 percent of the world's water resources & roughly
20 percent of its population. It also has a severe
regional water imbalance, with about four-fifths of
the water supply in the south.
Mao's vision of borrowing water from the Yangtze
for the north had an almost profound simplicity, but
engineers and scientists spent decades debating
the project before the government approved it, partly
out of desperation, in 2002. Today, demand is far
greater in the north, and water quality has badly
deteriorated in the south. Roughly 41 percent of
China's wastewater is now dumped in the Yangtze,
raising concerns that siphoning away clean water
northward will exacerbate pollution problems in the
south.
The upper reaches of the central line are expected
to be finished in time to provide water to Beijing for
the Olympic Games next year. Mr. Evans, the World
Bank consultant, called the complete project
"essential" but added that success would depend
on avoiding waste & efficiently distributing the water.
Mr. Liu, the scholar and hydrologist, said that
farming would get none of the new water and that
cities and industry must quickly improve wastewater
treatment. Otherwise, he said, cities will use the new
water to dump more polluted wastewater. Shijiaz-
huang now dumps untreated wastewater into a
canal that local farmers use to irrigate fields.
For years, Chinese officials thought irrigation
efficiency was the answer for reversing ground-
water declines. Eloise Kendy, a hydrology expert
with The Nature Conservancy who has studied the
North China Plain, said that farmers had made
improvements but that the water table had kept
sinking. Ms. Kendy said the spilled water previously
considered "wasted" had actually soaked into the
soil and recharged the aquifer. Efficiency erased
that recharge. Farmers also used efficiency gains
to irrigate more land.
Ms. Kendy said scientists had discovered that the
water table was dropping because of water lost by
evaporation and transpiration from the soil, plants
and leaves. This lost water is a major reason the
water table keeps dropping, scientists say.
Farmers have no choice. They drill deeper.
Difficult Choices Ahead
For many people living in the North China Plain, the
notion of a water crisis seems distant. No one is
crawling across a parched desert in search of an
oasis. But every year, the water table keeps
dropping. Nationally, groundwater usage has almost
doubled since 1970 and now accounts for one-fifth
of the country's total water usage, according to the
China Geological Survey Bureau.
The Communist Party is fully aware of the problems.
A new water pollution law is under consideration that
would sharply increase fines against polluters.
Different coastal cities are building desalination
plants. Multinational waste treatment companies are
being recruited to help tackle the enormous waste-
water problem.
Many scientists believe that huge gains can still be
reaped by better efficiency and conservation. In
north China, pilot projects are under way to try to
reduce water loss from winter wheat crops. Some
cities have raised the price of water to promote
conservation, but it remains subsidized in most
places. Already, some cities along the route of the
transfer project are recoiling because of the planned
higher prices. Some say they may just continue
pumping.
Tough political choices, though, seem unavoidable.
Studies by different scientists have concluded that
the rising water demands in the North China Plain
make it unfeasible for farmers to continue planting
a winter crop. The international ramifications would
be significant if China became an ever bigger
customer on world grain markets. Some analysts
have long warned that grain prices could steadily
rise, contributing to inflation and making it harder
for other developing countries to buy food.
The social implications would also be significant
inside China. Near Shijiazhuang, Wang Jingyan's
farming village depends on wells that are more than
600 feet deep. Not planting winter wheat would
amount to economic suicide.
"We would lose 60 percent or 70 percent of our
income if we didn't plant winter wheat," Mr. Wang
said. "Everyone here plants winter wheat."
Another water proposal is also radical: huge, rapid
urbanization. Scientists say converting farmland into
urban areas would save enough water to stop the
drop in the water table, if not reverse it, because
widespread farming still uses more water than urban
areas. Of course, large-scale urbanization, already
under way, could worsen air quality; Shijiazhuang's
air already ranks among the worst in China because
of heavy industrial pollution.
For now, Shijiazhuang's priority, like that of other
major Chinese cities, is to grow as quickly as
possible. The city's gross domestic product has
risen by an average of 10 percent every year since
1980, even as the city's per capita rate of available
water is now only one thirty-third of the world average.
"We have a water shortage, but we have to develop,"
said Wang Yongli, a senior engineer with the city's
water conservation bureau. "And development is
going to be put first."
Mr. Wang has spent four decades charting the
steady extinction of the North China Plain's aquifer.
Water in Shijiazhuang, with more than 800 illegal
wells, is as scarce as it is in Israel, he said. "In Israel,
people regard water as more important than life itself,"
he said. "In Shijiazhuang, it's not that way. People are
focused on the economy."
.
.
--
(David P.)
> (David P.) wrote:
> > The main cause of the Population Bubble is also
> > excessive credit, i.e., saying that everyone is a
> > valuable asset as long as they live.
> > L I K E H E L L T H E Y A R E ! !
> > Hordes are no longer viable, due to infirmity,
> > and become a drag on the system.
>
> I'm not aware of bubbles in nations where there are these so-called
> 'hordes' you speak of.
Many States Seen Facing Water Shortages
By BRIAN SKOLOFF : Associated Press Writer
Oct 26, 2007 : 9:24 pm ET
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- An epic drought
in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions.
Florida doesn't have nearly enough water for its
expected population boom. The Great Lakes are
shrinking. Upstate New York's reservoirs have
dropped to record lows. And in the West, the
Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each
year. Across America, the picture is critically
clear -- the nation's freshwater supplies can no
longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states
will face water shortages within five years
because of a combination of rising temperatures,
drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste
and excess.
"Is it a crisis? If we don't do some decent
water planning, it could be," said Jack Hoffbuhr,
executive director of the Denver-based
American Water Works Association.
Water managers will need to take bold steps
to keep taps flowing, including conservation,
recycling, desalination and stricter controls
on development.
"We've hit a remarkable moment," said
Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the
Natural Resources Defense Council. "The
last century was the century of water
engineering. The next century is going to
have to be the century of water efficiency."
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water
supply could be staggering. Experts
estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle
new supplies could cost the nation $300
billion over 30 years.
"Unfortunately, there's just not going to be
any more cheap water," said Randy Brown,
Pompano Beach's utilities director.
It's not just America's problem -- it's global.
Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry
spell, and population growth in urban centers
of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources.
Asia has 60 percent of the world's population,
but only about 30 percent of its freshwater.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a United Nations network of
scientists, said this year that by 2050 up to
2 billion people worldwide could be facing
major water shortages.
The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons
of water in 2000, the latest figures available
from the U.S. Geological Survey. That
includes residential, commercial, agriculture,
manufacturing and every other use -- almost
500,000 gallons per person.
Coastal states like Florida and California
face a water crisis not only from increased
demand, but also from rising temperatures
that are causing glaciers to melt and sea
levels to rise. Higher temperatures mean
more water lost to evaporation. And rising
seas could push saltwater into underground
sources of freshwater.
Florida represents perhaps the nation's
greatest water irony. A hundred years ago,
the state's biggest problem was it had too
much water. But decades of dikes, dams
and water diversions have turned swamps
into cities.
Little land is left to store water during wet
seasons, and so much of the landscape has
been paved over that water can no longer
penetrate the ground in some places to
recharge aquifers. As a result, the state
is forced to flush millions of gallons of
excess into the ocean to prevent flooding.
Also, the state dumps hundreds of billions
of gallons a year of treated wastewater into
the Atlantic through pipes -- water that could
otherwise be used for irrigation.
Florida's environmental chief, Michael Sole,
is seeking legislative action to get munici-
palities to reuse the wastewater.
"As these communities grow, instead of
developing new water with new treatment
systems, why not better manage the
commodity they already have and produce
an environmental benefit at the same time?"
Sole said.
Florida leads the nation in water reuse by
reclaiming some 240 billion gallons annually,
but it is not nearly enough, Sole said.
Floridians use about 2.4 trillion gallons of
water a year. The state projects that by 2025,
the population will have increased 34 percent
from about 18 million to more than 24 million
people, pushing annual demand for water to
nearly 3.3 trillion gallons.
More than half of the state's expected popula-
tion boom is projected in a three-county area
that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and
Palm Beach, where water use is already
about 1.5 trillion gallons a year.
"We just passed a crossroads. The chief
water sources are basically gone," said John
Mulliken, director of water supply for the South
Florida Water Management District. "We really
are at a critical moment in Florida history."
In addition to recycling and conservation,
technology holds promise.
There are more than 1,000 desalination
plants in the U.S., many in the Sunbelt, where
baby boomers are retiring at a dizzying rate.
The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant
is producing about 25 million gallons a day of
fresh drinking water, about 10 percent of that
area's demand. The $158 million facility is
North America's largest plant of its kind.
Miami-Dade County is working with the city
of Hialeah to build a reverse osmosis plant to
remove salt from water in deep brackish wells.
Smaller such plants are in operation across
the state.
Californians use nearly 23 trillion gallons of
water a year, much of it coming from Sierra
Nevada snowmelt. But climate change is
producing less snowpack and causing it to
melt prematurely, jeopardizing future supplies.
Experts also say the Colorado River, which
provides freshwater to seven Western states,
will probably provide less water in coming
years as global warming shrinks its flow.
California, like many other states, is pushing
conservation as the cheapest alternative,
looking to increase its supply of treated
wastewater for irrigation and studying
desalination, which the state hopes could
eventually provide 20 percent of its freshwater.
"The need to reduce water waste and ineffic-
iency is greater now than ever before," said
Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator
for water at the EPA. "Water efficiency is
the wave of the future."
.
.
--
(David P.)
> “Saving” Social Security: A Neoliberal Recapitulation of
> Primitive Accumulation, by Alan G. Nasser
>
> http://monthlyreview.org/1200nass.htm
Social Security will work just fine, in perpetuity,
as long as we institute limited longevity!
.
.
--
Rod Speed
Nope, some allow enough migrants to fix that problem.
> But we won't engage it. Politicians, the media and public
> "intellectuals" of all political stripes refuse to acknowledge
> generational conflicts and the need to make choices,
> some possibly unpopular. Let someone else make them,
> years from now when (of course) they will be much tougher.
Wrong when there are enough migrants to fix the problem.