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Peter Gleick: Wake up – Here is what a real water crisis looks like

Posted by: Maven on July 3, 2009 at 6:52 am

From Peter Gleick at his City Brights blog:

California is in the midst of an ugly debate about water–uglier than normal–because of a confluence of events, including a “hydrologic” drought caused by nature, a longer-term trend to restore some water back to failing ecosystems, and the gross mismanagement of the state’s water, which has been going on for a century, but is affecting us now more than ever.

But despite all of the rhetoric, news stories, name-calling, yelling, and screaming, Californians have very little clue about what a real water crisis looks like. It looks like what’s happening in Australia. Today’s Water Number:

Water Number: 18,000 tons of rice. That is the total rice production from all of Australia last year, compared to the long-term average from 1970 of over 720,000 tons, and the high (in 2000) of over 1.6 million tons. Effectively, Australian rice production has dropped to zero because there is not enough water. And that is only one measure of the severity of their water crisis.

Read more from the City Brights blog by clicking here.

July 3, 2009 · Filed Under Drought, Weather & Snowpack, International Water Issues

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