How much clean, drinkable water is left on Earth and what is being done to combat an eventual shortage?
In: Earth Science
There is 1.386 billion km³ (333 million cubic miles), of water on Earth. The issues of drinking water are mostly about cost. People expect water to be almost free, on average it costs $0.004 per gallon. It that price, supplies are scarce. At higher prices, there is plenty.
Clean drinking water is not a global issue, however it is a bunch of local issues. The amount of clean drinking water available is only affecting the local water systems. So it does not make sense to measure how much clean drinking water is available in Switzerland when you are looking at the water levels in the US. And secondly clean drinking water is a renewable resource that replenishes fairly often. The problem is therefore not that we have a lack of clean drinking water but that the clean drinking water does not reach the people who need it but is instead used for other things along the way.
Water is the earth’s infinitely renewable resource. Everything we use it for it returns to the water cycle in one state or another. We don’t use it up like fossil fuels.
What limits good clean available drinking water is the economics to pump, treat, transport it from a source to all that need it. The true marvel of our time is how many people in the world have been pulled out of extreme poverty and cities/country governments have enough capital to put infrastructure in place. Available drinking water is improving, not running out.
That’s not to say there are not severe proplems to work out. Jakarta is quickly sinking into the sea largely from too much groundwater usage. Again its economics, sources are available but its cheaper and more reliable to drill your own well and ignore regulations than count on the govt for water supply. We hae tons of regional issues but its not an overall consumption of water.
You do understand the earth will never run out of clean water right? We can make it really effectively from ocean water. It’s places that don’t have water near them that suffer not the planet as a whole.
It amuses me that people think we will run out of water somehow as if every drop we use is gone forever.
It is a 100% cycle, what you use, goes back into the ecosystem. The “problem” is population and locations of population. Even then, there is desalination if things get strained.
No water is ever lost, not a single drop.
It is ridiculously easy to generate potable water, and guarantee it will be there for millenia. The reason it is a problem today is because there is not a single government out there that is managing their stormwater correctly. I write a lengthy paper on it [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QFRCaNya-6SBTBGAMG8fAqXRGktS_E9LjsRshAC-Fos/edit?usp=sharing) (WIP, and not Eli5). In fact, most authorities and Universities are teaching a destructive method agriculture that destroys watersheds and pollutes them.
If you are wondering if it is so simple, why are we not doing it? There have been a few ancient cultures who did do it correctly, such as in central America, but they were killed off, and the knowledge did not carry on.
Tl;Dr with stone tools, or machines, you can inexpensively and permanently *geonengineer the land to become a waster storage mechanism, and filter.*
Water just listed as a commodity so that is a game changer in all your scenarios. In time the game will only get worse due to the futures traders and the filling of orders .
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