Yeah, we’re not going to run out of water, we’re just going to have to stop using it because it isn’t there anymore.
Raising prices is what running out of things looks like in a free market. That’s supply and demand.
Desalination at a national scale will require desalination plants that don’t exist yet. No amount of money is going to get them on line when they aren’t, all raising the price does is lower demand.
Getting those desalination plants built in time so there isn’t wide-spead crop failure is, as the article says, a race.
The reason we don’t desalinate is because it isn’t worth bothering with it. As water reserves get lower, more extreme restrictions are brought in. I don’t think we saw anything more extreme than a hosepipe ban so far although some areas were considering moving to the next step. Last time I looked into it (varies by region IIRC) there were like 5 or so steps of escalating restrictions with the last one being mains shut off and you have to collect water from a distribution point.
I can’t wash my yacht or water my golf course for a few weeks != we have ran out of water.
Yeah, we’re not going to run out of water, we’re just going to have to stop using it because it isn’t there anymore.
Raising prices is what running out of things looks like in a free market. That’s supply and demand.
Desalination at a national scale will require desalination plants that don’t exist yet. No amount of money is going to get them on line when they aren’t, all raising the price does is lower demand.
Getting those desalination plants built in time so there isn’t wide-spead crop failure is, as the article says, a race.
The reason we don’t desalinate is because it isn’t worth bothering with it. As water reserves get lower, more extreme restrictions are brought in. I don’t think we saw anything more extreme than a hosepipe ban so far although some areas were considering moving to the next step. Last time I looked into it (varies by region IIRC) there were like 5 or so steps of escalating restrictions with the last one being mains shut off and you have to collect water from a distribution point.
I can’t wash my yacht or water my golf course for a few weeks != we have ran out of water.