← Back to context

Comment by iamnothere

18 hours ago

We’ve also already depleted many aquifers past the point of recovery.

We have too many people to hydrate, too many crops to water in order to feed them, and not enough water. At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy.

Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.

9 comments

iamnothere

Reply
atmavatar  17 hours ago

We're also not even attempting to be smart about our water usage, particularly when it comes to agriculture. Growing crops in a desert that require significant amounts of water to grow is already pretty bad, then exporting the bulk of those crops overseas adds insult to injury.

Of course, all that is made possible by our pants-on-head stupid water rights laws.

Y-bar  10 hours ago

> At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy.

This might be true, but desalination is not without it's own externalities (not counting energy usage). The primary one I am thinking of is the increase in salinity and heat in the local area killing sea life. These issues may be possible to avoid with limited use of desalination today, but a significant increase in volume may reach a point where things like dilution and cooling by mixing does not have the desired effect.

tencentshill  16 hours ago

Solar energy is abundant in the places desalination is most needed. The market will balance out once that becomes apparent to constituents. They will vote to fund solar, politics are only a temporary impediment.

autoexec  15 hours ago

> At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy.

We'll also need somewhere to put all that salt. It'd be best to stop the largest wastes of the clean water that we have. We have plenty of water for people and food. We just have to stop the wasteful practices of industry and force them to be more efficient and responsible even though it will eat into their profits.

parineum  17 hours ago

> Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.

I suspect what we'll actually do is what we always do. Innovate our way into a higher standard of living while simultaneously elevating the poorest people out of poverty and finding novel ways to feed, clothe and house our population.

It's funny how persistent malthusians are in the face of evidence to the contrary.

  • iamnothere  16 hours ago

    We’ll see what that looks like in the face of demographic decline and increasingly expensive oil.

    It’s possible that some kind of technological miracle rescues us, but it seems more likely to me that we follow the pattern of catabolic collapse seen in the Bronze Age, Easter Island, and Europe in the Dark Ages. Civilization may rebound, sure, but humans have a history of overextension followed by decline (as do all animals).

    • autoexec  15 hours ago

      A very small number of people are taking (and often wasting) the majority of the worlds wealth and resources and harming everyone else in the process. We could probably stave off that decline for a lot longer if we did something about the leeches accelerating our collapse.