The problem with people

Source: NASA. Click on the map to be taken to the Earth Observatory

AS SACRAMENTO legislators work on bills this week to assure the future of California’s water supply, Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute points to the elephant in the living room. Population growth. He writes in this week’s San Francisco Chronicle:

The amount of water on Earth is fixed. We’re not losing it to space and we’re not getting more (with negligible exceptions) … But population is not fixed. It is growing, and growing rapidly in some places. As a result, the amount of water available per person (“per capita”) is declining.

To keep reading Peter Gleick in the San Francisco Chronicle, click here.

UPDATE: 10/21/2009 For part two of Gleick’s series on population and fresh water, click here.


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