194
America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow
(www.nytimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
194 points (97.5% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5212 readers
485 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
We need nuclear power stations all along the coast converting sea water into fresh water.
And a string of nuclear power stations to pump the water where it needs to be...
And small nuclear power generators to power all the maintenance cars and trucks.
Don't forget the nuclear powered, air conditioned suits! Might as well make them bullet 'proof' while we're at it.
You joke, but we actually do need desalination plants — starting yesterday. Water will be the new oil soon.
Yes, we definitely do. We are already seeing the result of not thinking ahead in the southwest. I’m not really joking about the plants. We need nuclear plants to provide the clean energy to desalinate on the levels we need to sustain agriculture and cities without contributing to global warming.
... or maybe switch to a less water intensive form of agriculture ?
Edit : I mean, how sustaining a wasteful practice with a huge wasteful infrastructure is progress ?
We can and should do both.
Maybe we should, but I'm not sure we can - because one (nuclear + desalination) acts as a disincentive to the other (actually chaning practice).
Also, building a nuclear reactor takes a lot of time (do we have it ?), changing agricultural practices can start right now and scale progressively.
And then we can pour the nuclear waste back into the sea! Just kidding 😂 I'm not anti-nuclear
Hopefully by then Nevada is a barren wasteland uninhabited by nimbys so we can get the Yucca Mountain project started.
Just to be sure this is sarcasm, right ?