About 1970 when I was in seminary I ended up having lunch one day
with Buckminster Fuller along with a number of seminary deans, college
presidents and a few students from the 3 seminaries and 3 colleges in Dubuque,
Iowa. If you don’t know who Buckminster Fuller is he is the man who invented
the geodesic dome among many other inventions, he wrote 30 books, he had no
college degrees, though he attended Harvard for a bit before getting kicked out
with partying with a vaudeville troop and was a genius in every sense of the
word.
He was the first truly metropolitan person I ever knew, equally at
home in any part of the world and with anyone. He was a truly amazing human
being. He also looked a bit like a geodesic dome as witnessed by this picture.
He only ate steak and fruit he told us, which I found interesting. I remember
when I pastored my first church I made a geodesic dome from wire and wooden
dowels and use it as a children’s sermon. I said it was a picture of God, as it
would be exactly the same to matter where you put it in outer space or the
bottom of an ocean; it was a totally independent entity. It was a stupid
children’s sermon as neither the kids nor the parents likely had a clue as to
what point I wanted to make.
When he asked what he was going to talk about that day, he said he
didn’t know as he never prepared remarks, so what he said, would be a surprise
and interesting to him. What he ended up talking about was oil. He told us that
oil would be the next major conflict area in the world; that wars would be fought
over it and it would dominate world economics and politics. He was obviously
correct.
* *
* *
If Bucky were around today (he died in 1983), and if he were asked
what the next major issue in the world that will dominate economics, politics
and life itself in the future, I think he would say water. Now folk believe
that 70.8% of the world is covered with water. Ninety-seven and five tenths of
that water is in the oceans, 2.5% is in fresh water lakes and water frozen in
the glaciers. That means 97% of the water is too salty for human or
agricultural use, much of the rest in unattainable in ice caps and the like
which brings us to the point that only 1%
of the global water supply is liquid and fresh and 98% of that is
groundwater.
Here is more scary information. The Ogallala Aquifer, which is one
of the world largest sources of fresh water, sits under Texas, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota covers 100,000
square miles. It provides water to irrigate 15 million acres of crops and of
course, it provides drinking water. Currently that aquifer is being drained at
the rate of 800 gallons of water per minute. If you take the about of water
drained from Ogallala it would be about the 2/3rds of the water in Lake Erie.
It used to be 240 deep and is now on average 80 feet deep. Nothing, nada, nil
is being done to stop this loss. Scientists conclude there is nothing we can do
to stop its entire depletion only methods to cushion its affect.
We know the weather is weird and we have lots of droughts;
according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences the U.S. interior is the
driest it has been in 500 years.
Today we use approximately 148 trillion gallons of fresh water each
year in this country. We cannot sustain that rate of consumption. 36 states
already have water shortages. Lake Mead, which supplies about 85% of water to
Las Vegas, has dropped about 5.6 trillion gallons. California has about 20
years of water left and New Mexico about 10 years. Around 40% of our rivers and
46% of our lakes are so polluted they are unfit for human consumption.
On a global level water use has quadrupled over the last 100 years
and is increasing. 1.6 billion people are “water-stressed” and according to the
USAID 1/3rd of the people on earth will face chronic water shortages
by 2025. I could go on and on or just go here.
For the more visually minded I suggest clicking here to find an excellent video about the water
shortages that threaten us this century. Go to the bottom of the article to
click on the video.
It reminds me of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel
Coleridge:
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did
shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Not to be totally pessimistic you can go to this site . For some possible solutions including desalination technology and
recycling of municipal wastewater (only 2.3% now) which could be used for
irrigation. Lots of things can be done by individuals with efficient water
heaters and things of that nature. We also need to develop multinational
treaties about water sharing.
There have to be many solutions to begin to work on this issue,
which should have started necessary. But it is one of those un-newsworthy
issues that does not get reported. Like oil we will likely not deal with the
issue and end up in conflicts and wars over water as we did and do over oil,
dressing it up in all types of other concerns.
Will this be our future?
P
Post Script: This is also part of the issue not addressed in the current fracking debate. A typical fracing well uses 5 millions gallons of water much of which is left in the well after it is depleted and so polluted it can never be used again.
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