When the Rivers Run Dry
The Global Water Crisis and How to Solve It
-
- $24.99
-
- $24.99
Publisher Description
We cannot live without water. But with 7.5 billion people competing for this single unevenly-distributed resource, the planet is drying up.
In When the Rivers Run Dry, Fred Pearce explores the growing world water crisis, from Kent to Kenya. His powerful reportage takes us to places where waterways are turning to sand before they reach the ocean; where fields are parched and crops no longer grow; where once fertile ground has turned to desert; where wars are fought over access to water and cultures are dying out. But he offers us hope for the future - if we can radically revolutionise the way we treat water, and take personal responsibility for the water we use.
This landmark work, from a respected and accomplished scientist, will transform the way we view the water in our reservoirs and rivers, and change the way we treat the water in our taps.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran science writer Pearce (Turning Up the Heat) makes a strong and scary case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. With a drumbeat of facts both horrific (thousands of wells in India and Bangladesh are poisoned by fluoride and arsenic) and fascinating (it takes 20 tons of water to make one pound of coffee), the former New Scientist news editor documents a "kind of cataclysm" already affecting many of the world's great rivers. The Rio Grande is drying up before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico; the Nile has been dammed to a trickle; reservoirs behind ill-conceived dams sacrifice millions of gallons of water to evaporation, while wetlands and floodplains downriver dry up as water flow dwindles. In India, villagers lacking access to clean water for irrigation and drinking are sinking tube wells hundreds of feet down, plundering underground supplies far faster than rainfall can replace them the same fate facing the Ogallala aquifer of the American Midwest. The news, recounted with a scientist's relentless accumulation of observable fact, is grim. Maps.
