How are we going to distribute this water? What is the whole concept? Why would we want to take desalinized water and distribute it to such a large degree? Why would we not want to just service those communities that are close to the water and just leave it at that?
The point to be made here is that the world is water stress. And that’s both communities that are at the water’s edge and also communities that are far inland. So, we need to distribute this water to where it isn’t. We have basically used up our allotment of natural fresh water sources to the degree that we now see and hear about places that are actually becoming affected by the drying out of the earth because they have extracted so much fresh water that the ground is sinking.
And so my proposal is that, in order for us to get enough water to draw down the oceans so that our cities are not overwhelmed by the global rise in oceanic sea levels, is to create a global network of aqueducts, water delivery systems to go where they have never gone before.
The technology to do so has been there for a long time. In the United States, we have a pipeline from the very northern end of Alaska all the way to its southern end. That would be analogous to where United States borders Canada all the way down to Texas. If we can pump oil across the entire Alaskan peninsula, then we can pump water across vast distances and do this on a global basis.
I submit that we must do this on a global basis, because if we don’t have complete global participation in this plan there won’t be enough usage of water to make enough a dent in global oceanic rise in sea levels to make a difference. (If only the US, or only France, or only Japan or what have you . . .) This is an occasion where we must get past the thought process that we are different and operate as one human species because we’re all going to be affected.
This has nothing to do with nations or boundaries or sovereignty. This has to do with human species. We’re in for the fight of our lives. Our cities are at risk. Our people are dying.
I propose that we create delivery systems to places like Afghanistan. We saw an article recently from the BBC where they went to the villages north of Kabul to talk to the people to see if they’re lives were any better. They said, “Well, yes, our lives are a little better but we can’t grow anything! We can’t grow anything because we don’t have any water.” We can pump water to Afghanistan, make it a fertile ground. We can pump water into the plains of the United States. We can pump water all over the African continent and provide water for people who are dying.
With this water we can do so much, but the aqueduct system is critical.
