Water, Climate, and Society

Abstract

Water, for drinking, bathing, sanitation, agri culture, industry, and habitat preservation, is a necessity of life. Among the many ramifi cations of climate change, the form, content, and distribution of the earth's are changing in ways that fundamentally affect society and the environment. Social scientists in growing numbers are turning to problems of climate change and society: from drought, famine, and flooding to rising sea levels and wholesale migrations. There is no more nor less on the planet today than there was at the time of Noah's flood. The cycle assures that the molecule moves from solid to liquid to gas through transpiration, evaporation, and precipitation, but never increases. Seventy one percent of the earth's surface is ocean and the oceans contain ninety-seven percent of the world's water. With two percent stored in glaciers and ice caps, less than one percent of the world's remains in lakes, rivers, springs, and aquifers for potential human use (excluding prospective desalination, of which more below). That one percent suf ficed for the needs of most societies when the world's population stood at one or two or three billion but becomes exiguous as we reach seven billion in the next few years. The U. N. reports that half the world's population is without ready access to adequate for drinking and sanitation. And, of course, access is unequal internationally: per capita daily consumption for all uses is 12 gallons in Africa, 22 gallons in Asia, 88 gallons in the United Kingdom and 153 gallons in the United States. Yet growing scarcity is pre dicted for all regions of the world, a looming water according to the U.N. Archaeological evidence shows that soci eties have previously experienced drastic effects of climate change. Ancient cities and canal systems have gone to dust. Once fertile irrigation societies in Mesopotamia and Cen tral Arizona succumbed to growing accu mutations of salt and silt. The spectacular Chaco Canyon civilization in New Mexico abandoned its hub and satellite cities when the w t rs stopped flowing-a fate dupli cated in the great Mayan droughts. Today th Africa Sahel, a strip of land 4400 miles long and 500 miles wide from Sudan to Sene gal, has been migrating south bringing the Saharan climate to once habitable land. The Colorado plateau is presently experiencing a decade-lo g drought (2005 was exceptionally wet followed by a return to the driest months n record in early 2009) that threatens the delivery f and power from the Hoov r and Glen Canyon dams that sustain southern California, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and a h st of other s uthwestern communities. Will the cont mp ary crisis bring the kind of s cietal uin documented in the his toric record or will some combination of environmental policy and equitable resource allocation make it possible for all societies to live within nature's providence? That is the question underpinning the works reviewed here. Dead Pool, the main title of James Lawrence Po ell' compelling book, refers to the condit on in which Lake Mead or Lake Powell may fall to levels of the low st outlet works, meaning that the Hoov r and Gl n Canyon dams no longer produce hydroelec tric power and their storage reservoirs are Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West, by James Lawrence Powell. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008. 283pp. $27.50 cloth. ISBN: 9780520254770.