An eight-ounce plastic bottle of drinking water retails for somewhere between US$1 & $1.50 if you purchase at retail.
With bulk rate you get a better deal monetarily, as for the quality of the drinking water, I cannot speak to that.
But water quality is hardly what I want to talk about today, so there is that.
So at the rate of say US$1 per bottle, a gallon container should cost approximately US$8. Of course, again, because a gallon is considered bulk-buying the cost is exponentially less.
A gallon of gasoline retails for somewhere between US$2-$3, on the east coast of the United States, I imagine it may be a little more pricey on the west coast nevertheless the cost of drinking water is now greater than the cost of gasoline.
Who would have thunk it?[sic]
For years now I have been telling friends and family members that the next major conflict to engulf the world will probably be over clean drinking water.
As scientist continue to warn about the danger climate change poses to our planet, it is not difficult to see how rising ocean levels could contaminate freshwater sources.
Droughts and wildfires caused by deforestation and changing temperatures will force nations to compete more aggressively for the precious commodity.
The general consensus is that 71% of the earth’s surface is water, additionally, water also exists in the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in icecaps and glaciers, in the ground as soil moisture and in aquifers, and even in you and your dog, according to one expert.
Nevertheless, not all of that water is drinkable water, and as we are all well aware, we each use a lot of water in our every day lives.
Estimates vary, but each person uses about 80 – 100 gallons of water per day. Are you surprised that the largest use of household water is to flush the toilet, and after that, to take showers and baths? With about 7.7 billion people on the planet, the need for clean drinking water is a growing one even as water becomes less abundant.
According to [Sciencedaily], about 70% of water flow reaching Egypt is derived from the Blue Nile and Atbara River, both sourced in Ethiopia. Over the past 200 years, rapidly increasing human activity has seriously altered flow conditions of the Nile. Emplacement in Egypt of barrages in the 1800s, construction the Aswan Low Dam in 1902, and the Aswan High Dam in 1965 has since altered water flow and distribution of nourishing organic-rich soil in the delta.
Egypt’s population has recently swelled rapidly to about 90 million, with most living in the soil-rich Lower Nile Valley and Delta. These two areas comprise only about 3.5% of Egypt’s total area, the remainder being a mostly sandy desert. Due to much-intensified human impact, the delta no longer functions as a naturally expanding fluvial-coastal center. Less than 10% of Nile water now reaches the sea, and most of the nutrient-rich sediment is trapped in the delta by a dense canal and irrigation system.
According to the [Financialtimes], For centuries, the banks of the Nile have been home to farms producing rice as well as cotton and wheat. But now water shortages, soil degradation, and pollution have created a crisis that has undermined agriculture in the delta, which is struggling to support millions of impoverished farmers.
According to [Researchgate], Water scarcity has direct implications for food security in arid regions. Egypt faces an escalating situation of water scarcity, as its renewable freshwater resources are fixed and the population is growing rapidly. The per capita supply of freshwater is already dangerously low and predicted to plummet even further by the year 2025.
Under British colonial rule, a 1929 treaty reserved 80 percent of the Nile’s entire flow for Egypt and Sudan, then ruled as a single country. That treaty was reaffirmed in 1959. Usually upstream countries dominate control of a river, like the Tigris and Euphrates, which are much reduced by the time they flow into Iraq from Turkey and Syria. The case of the Nile is reversed because the British colonials who controlled the region wanted to guarantee water for Egyptian agriculture. The seven upstream countries — Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda — say the treaty is an unfair vestige of colonialism, while Egypt says those countries are awash in water resources, unlike arid Egypt, which depends on just one.[Thenewyorktimes]
In a July 2017 article, titled How Egypt Is Slowly Losing Its Hold Over the Nile River [worldpoliticsreiew] said; Currently, more than 430 million people live across the 11 countries that make up the Nile Basin: Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Eritrea. The population of the Nile Basin is likely to jump to nearly 1 billion by 2050.
The upstream countries “can’t wait forever for Egypt to get onboard,” says Aaron Wolf, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University.
As the Amazon burns, wildfires become a staple across California, massive storms wipe out entire population, killing thousands and the polar ice caps continue to melt at a record pace, it has become clear that the climate crisis is not some abstract issue of the future it is here.
Clean drinking water will become more and more valuable even as it becomes more scarce.
Each and every one of the 7.7 billion of us have a responsibility to be more coignizant of this crisis and do our part in conserving this precious commodity.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid researcher, and blogger.
He is a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog chatt-a-box.com.
He’s also a contributor to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs free of charge, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest podcast all free to you of course.