It is time to get worried, very worried, about water, writes Michael Harris, a highly awarded journalist and documentary maker, on The Tyee:
A global water crisis will leave half of the world’s food production at risk in the next 25 years, according to a report from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water published just this month. The planet’s water systems are under “unprecedented stress.”
Canadians have been lulled into a false sense of water security, and with good reason. This country has been blessed with 20 per cent of the world’s total freshwater resources. But what is less well known is that half of that resource is non-renewable. And approximately 60 per cent of Canada’s fresh water actually flows north towards the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay, away from the southern border of the country where 85 per cent of our water-loving population lives.
Facing a water crisis in their own country, American politicians look to Canada as a quick fix. Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced he had a plan to alleviate severe water shortages in California. He said British Columbia had “essentially a very large faucet.” You would have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north. “And you turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive.”
Read his concern and his call for a national debate on The Tyee
