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Sure wish it would rain so I could git me a sausage

Or: seven billion reasons to think twice about water
food_glenda1

In our zone, where running the tap endlessly as we rinse a plate or brush our teeth is as natural as what seems like our endlessly running rivers, it's pretty hard to wrap our heads around the scary idea of water scarcity.

But while here in the coastal rainforest it seems at times like we are drowning in water, movers and shakers around the world are wrestling with a water crisis.

Like how about the exquisitely beautiful city of Sana'a in Yemen, home to 1.7 million people — that's half a million more than the Greater Vancouver area. It's on its way to the unthinkable, at least unthinkable in modern times when we pride ourselves on being able to solve anything — the first capital city in the world to run out of water.

Many of its neighbouring cities aren't far behind. Likewise Kansas City, which, like Sana'a, depends on a fast draining but slowly replenishing — ever more slowly as rainfall patterns and snow packs change — "fossil" aquifer for water.

It all comes down to a wild double-whammy of a nexus, starting with the ever-increasing and increasingly urbanized bunch of us humans demanding more and more stuff.

Then there's the climate change we've induced, exacerbating weather extremes and shifting typical rainfall patterns. Like how about those brush fires in tinder-dry southern Alberta this January? Brush fires? In Canada? in January?

And, just this week on the last day of winter, which your average weather-watching Canuck would typically expect to be a tender spring day, Winnipeg busts 100-year records and hits a scorching 20+ C, when 0 C is more normal, while here on the coast we face record snowfalls and slushy blizzards screaming "winter" when it should be spring.

On top of all this sits our lovely blue water, toiling quietly away as supporter of all life on Earth, including sitting at the intersection of the two vital production systems we humans have come to depend on.

Sure, you probably thought of food production and water. But how many of us with our iSomethings think about energy and water? And I'm not talking about your basic hydroelectricity here.

You can't move water without energy and you can't create energy without water. So never mind your gold, your platinum, your rare earths like tantalum and yttrium used in today's "vitals" like computer chips, capacitors and solar cells.

"Water is fast becoming the world's most precious resource in terms of energy supply and food security," said Samir Brikho at the recent GLOBE 2012 conference in Vancouver, a hub of business and sustainability.

Brikho is the chief executive with AMEC, one of the world's largest engineering and project management companies with something like $50 billion worth of projects annually in everything from nuclear power to wind for customers like BP and Shell. In 2006 the company decided to focus on water.

Think about it: you need water for just about everything.

Freshwater consumption worldwide has more than doubled since World War II and is expected to rise another 25 per cent by 2030, mostly due to population pressures, according to the Water Scarcity and Climate Change report by The Pacific Institute out of Oakland, California.

In France and the southern US, nuclear reactors are idle because of a lack of water. At IBM, semi-conductor plants use some 10-15 million gallons of water every day, water purer than drinking water. In the US alone, 39 per cent of all freshwater use is for electricity. In India, Pepsi and Coca-Cola lost their operating licences because of water shortages.

As for food security, water is king.

Each year, 110,000 cubic kilometres of rain fall on Earth. Not more than two-thirds of that is absorbed into the soil; this is called green water, as in, green for growing.

One-third of that giant block of rainfall runs into rivers, lakes and aquifers like the ones under Sana'a and Kansas City as well as the huge aquifer under the Fraser Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in Canada. This is called blue water, as opposed to green, and only 25 per cent of it is accessible.

Of that relatively small slice of blue water, growing food for humans uses two-thirds. And of that food, by all accounts we waste two-thirds, not just as mouldy leftovers in the back of the fridge, but in transit, lousy warehousing and handling practices, and ploughed-under crops because prices weren't high enough.

It takes 140 litres of water to produce one itty bitty cup of coffee — water to grow the beans, wash and process them, and get them into your coffee grinder.

It takes 500 litres of water to produce 550 grams of cheese. A whopping 1,745 litres to make a single sausage. And 70 litres to grow an apple.

The One Drop.org people estimate it takes 2,000 to 5,000 litres of water to produce what the average person eats in one day. Even their "low-water" recipes average about 600 litres of water per serving. (This is the kind of life-cycle assessment sustainability experts are bringing to the table.)

According to the experts who sat on the water panel at GLOBE, there really should be no water crisis, if only we "stop doing the stupid stuff." To start, about 14 per cent of all fresh water is lost through leaky pipes. Then there's all that wasted food.

What can you do about all this? Start by simply thinking about water and stop taking if for granted. Try a low-water recipe from One Drop.org and think about the thousands of litres of water that went into that chili verde you'll have for dinner.

Consider your leaders, on a community level and beyond. Is their position on water smart or "stupid", and what can you do about it?

Pay attention to the Canadian Water Summit, to be held in Calgary this June, just north of those brush fires that roared through a tinder-dry southern Alberta in January.

Finally, on this, World Water Day, March 22, I make us all a wish based on an expression used at GLOBE that Japanese students in Whistler might recognize: jizoku kano na kai hatsu, the possibility of continued existence.

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who drinks a lot of water.