How will we continue to get fresh water to agricultural land that is land-locked in the future? Agriculture accounts for something like 69% of fresh water use. Many agricultural regions in the US and elsewhere are landlocked. The Oglalla aquifer is being pumped out much faster than it is being replenished. All the low-flush toilets in the world won’t make a difference here (at least I don’t see how they can). What can be done about this situation in the US? In other regions?
Well, for the most part water i not really that hard to come by. It’s just limited. People will switch over to something more efficient as the time comes. Beef instead of grain*. New forms of agriculture are using less water and using it better.
*Vegetarians like to claim that meat is much less “efficient” than grains. This is true and false. It takes more land to raise beef, but you usually find that the land can’t be used for grain or vegatable crops anyhow. Herding is alsoless damaging to the environment than farming.
I don’t know if we have enough range land to feed the country and quite a lot of agriculture is devoted to feed. I suppose we can live on processed algae and coal tar by-products, but I don’t know how affordable that will be, nor do I know the water requirements.
The manager of the the largest single source of water in the USA is the federal government, specifically the US Forest Service. However, unless environmental issues are addressed now (clear-cutting, strip mining, hydraulic fracturing methods, etc.) it remains to be seen just how much fresh water is actually available for human consumption from public lands.
Can’t we just develop desalination technology to the point where it’s more feasible for our use? Federal funding, gigantic desalination plants, water pipelines to move it, etc?
The ocean would seem to be an endless supply of water, plus, if global warming holds true and sea levels continue to rise we would have even more water.
I vaguely recall that desalination is costly, difficult to do or both. What are the technological hurdles there?
The notion of “sustainable development” is a contradiction. There is no such thing.
We cannot individually and indefinitely continue to use less and less resources. There is only one answer and that is to stop population growth. Everything else is a patch and trying to ignore and delay the inevitable. We need to get to zero population growth PDQ.
I wonder if eventually houses will have two plumbing systems. One would be the traditional drinking water - also used for bathing and cleaning - and a gray water system for toilets and lawns/garden. There’s no reason I need gallons the world’s cleanest water to drop a deuce or urinate.
I was recently in Nebraska for two weeks on business. I was struck by the endless corn fields in eastern Nebraska, as you move west it transitions into cattle and irrigated crops. I don’t remember the town name but as I continued driving west it was almost all ranches and feed lots.
I 'm sure that they know a hell of a lot more about growing crops and raising cattle then the majority of SDMB posters.
In short, I think when corn and other crops are no longer viable in a certain area they tend to adapt.