A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
Interesting list. Unfortunately for the author, the people who will actually solve the problem - the engineers - already have their act together and aren't particularly interested in what sociologists and theologians have to say about desalination plants...
I think we'll see more and more legal frameworks such as the Great Lakes Compact where the export of water from the region is illegal. Our water-rights laws in the US are totally messed up. For example, in CO (where I live) and UT, it is illegal for you to collect the rainwater that falls on your roof: it belongs to someone else.
>Solving the upcoming water problems is a wholly political problem and not one of engineering
I'm not sure I understand this. Maybe in the sense that if there was peace among nations it would easier to apply the engineering solutions that would solve the water problem?
Even so, directing more resources to water engineering research can be reasonably expected to result in some useful solutions. Few will claim that strengthening political science depts would yield more world peace.
(BTW, the 2nd article contains Reddit-level nonsense. That it is published by academics - I assume? - says more about academia than its subject matter)
No, peace isn't the solution. In the western states, such as CO and UT, the water-rights laws are tangled, messy and arcane. They even predate the statehood and are embedded in the state constitutions.
Effectively, once you turn a pipe on, you can never turn it off. People who have "senior water rights" are allowed under those state laws to make people "upstream" not only stop using water from rivers, but replace the water that they had been using.
Canada has a large number of rivers that flow north into the Arctic sea. From the US perspective, that water is wasted. "We" would like to see it pumped south. However, we wanted a uniform framework of laws governing that. So we forced the Canadians into accepting water-rights laws substantially similar to the western states' laws. Consequently, the Canadians banned such water exports.
If you want to see how screwed up water distribution is in the US. And how political the mess is, then I recommed that you read the book Cadillac Desert.
And as for the anthropik article, several of the points made in that article (and yes, I know it rambles too much) have to do with how Israel needs the water, and how that water is critical to the security of their nation. When the water being pumped out of the aquifers in Gaza became too contaminated for agriculture, then Gaza ended up getting returned to Palestinian control (and now about all that grows are flowers and hatred). If you look at the "security barrier" on the West Bank, it seems to follow no political nor demographic map. When you map that security barrier against the aquifer's boundaries, then you get a match.
Water is life. And the Babylonians had to struggle with salt deposits in their cropland. As their fields got too salty for high yielding crops like citrus and wheat, they had to switch to lower yielding grains like emmer (good luck finding that outside of a health food store) and barley. Some of those fields ended up so salty that they shine in modern day Iraqi sunlight: those are salt deposits from more than 2000 years ago.
Food is life. Water is life. Without both, we die. Therefore they become political.
Solving the upcoming water problems is a wholly political problem
Agreed, but effective politics is a rigorous Machiavellian exercise. Perhaps political science majors would be useful, but again, theology and what not brings nothing to the table.
The problem of whether the irrigation ditch is dug on your land or your neighbor's land is a political problem. The problem of how the water is priced (heavily subsidized by taxpayers, or with full cost of delivering the water passed on to the consumers) is a political problem. Both of these can also be legal problems. Engineers might enjoy their work better in many cases if they understood more about the constraints on their work imposed by other issues dealt with by other specialists.
LOL. Funniest thing I have read in a while. Would be funnier if it weren't true that the retarded postmodernist pussies in certain academic departments actually do think along those lines...
No, its a political problem because it is a money issue not a technology issue.
We can have infinite water if we have nuclear powered reactors running massive desalination plants on the coasts with big pumps pushing it through huge pipes to anywhere you need it.
At the minimum -
- But we can't get past political opposition to nuclear power
- Not in my bad yard! (Desalination plant * nuclear)
- Who is forced to have the pipe run under their home (plus eminent domain issues)
- Are the states paying for it? The federal government?
- Why should I subsidize the people living in the dessert?
Interesting list. Unfortunately for the author, the people who will actually solve the problem - the engineers - already have their act together and aren't particularly interested in what sociologists and theologians have to say about desalination plants...