Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I think it would be silly for most major countries to fight a great war over water when most of them have access to the ocean. Poor landlocked desert areas may fight over water.
How much sea water could you desalinate for the price of an Iraq War, which is just a minor war? You could get terawatts of nuclear power generating capacity, build aqueducts wherever, and make a new great lake if you felt like it (also, some of those lakes have high salinity).
Meanwhile a large scale fusion generator is under construction in Europe. I am guessing that power will be extremely cheap in 50 years as long as countries like the United States make even semi-sensible decisions (so I guess it's far from in the bag...).
|
This is the argument I've always had. I was also uncertain if he was posting tongue-in-cheek or not.
The problem with water is that it's heavy and you need lots of it in industrial countries. Considering that the Earth is 70% water and a desalinization plant runs a couple of billion dollars for a decently large city with a few million dollars of operating costs, it makes no sense to have a bonkers war nor some super-canal to push water against gravity for thousands of miles.
I think the number one user of water is irrigation, so maybe not irrigating the desert might be a wonderful idea if we wanted to save some water.