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America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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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.