{"id":63379,"date":"2022-08-26T06:38:23","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T11:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63379"},"modified":"2022-08-26T06:38:23","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T11:38:23","slug":"chinas-water-crisis-could-trigger-global-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63379","title":{"rendered":"China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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China’s water crisis is nothing new, but it’s gotten worse – and is now on the ‘brink of catastrophe‘<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0could trigger a global catastrophe<\/strong>, according to\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Dried-up riverbed of Jialing river, a Yangtze tributary, China, August 2022
\nThomas Peter \/ Reuters<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Given the country\u2019s overriding importance to the global economy, potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China\u00a0would rapidly reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the world<\/strong>\u00a0and create\u00a0economic and political turbulence for years to come<\/strong>. -Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For starters, there’s no substitute for water – which is essential for food production, electricity generation and sustaining all life on earth.<\/p>\n

In China, which consumes\u00a0ten billion barrels of water per day<\/strong>\u00a0(approximately 700x its daily oil consumption),\u00a0decades of economic and population growth have pushed northern China’s water system to unsustainable levels<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the per-capita water supply around the North China Plain at the end of 2020 was\u00a0nearly 50% below the UN’s definition of acute water scarcity<\/strong>\u00a0at\u00a0253 cubic meters<\/strong>. Other major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, are at similar (or lower) levels.<\/p>\n

For comparison, Egypt had per-capita freshwater resources of\u00a0570 cubic meters<\/strong>, and has nowhere near as large of a manufacturing base as China.<\/p>\n

Not fit for human consumption<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also worrisome, is that\u00a019% of China’s surface water is not fit for human consumption<\/strong>\u00a0according to\u00a0China\u2019s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Roughly 7% was deemed\u00a0unfit for any use at all<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Groundwater was worse – with around 30% considered unfit for consumption, and 16% unfit for any use.<\/p>\n

In order to utilize this water, Beijing will need to make major investments in treatment infrastructure, which will require a significant increase in electricity usage in order to power the equipment.<\/p>\n

Working against progress is China’s farming and industrial industries, which dump contaminants into the country’s groundwater – potentially setting the stage for decades of additional impairments.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe China’s water crisis is nothing new, but it’s gotten worse – and is now on the ‘brink of catastrophe‘\u00a0and\u00a0could trigger a global catastrophe, according to\u00a0Foreign Affairs. Dried-up riverbed of Jialing river, a Yangtze tributary, China, August 2022 Thomas Peter \/ Reuters Given the country\u2019s overriding importance to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[130,324,769,866,4318],"class_list":["post-63379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-china","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-sustainability","tag-water","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63380,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63379\/revisions\/63380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}