Australia today = the Southwest by 2050

Lessons the United States can learn from the drought in Australia

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 3:44 PM on 04 Mar 2008

Read more about: Australia | severe weather | water crisis | desertification

The brutal drought has ended over large parts of Australia -- and consumers are obsessively reducing their demand for water -- and yet water "prices are set to double in the next five to 10 years," Water Services Association Australia executive officer Ross Young told a drought briefing in Canberra.

The focus on water conservation has never been higher:

Water is a dinner table topic. People are quite passionate about water and they are quite concerned about water in the context of climate change.

And the results are impressive:

Average daily summer water use in Melbourne during the 1990s was 1,631 litres, compared with 1,092 litres at the end of last month.

But doubled prices are still inevitable in the coming years, "as the industry funds the significant capital works programs -- some $30 billion over the next five to 10 years just in new water sources for urban Australia."

Since scientists tell us we're turning the west into a desert, much greater water conservation, tens of billions of dollars on water infrastructure, and much higher water prices are also inevitable there.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For story: Australia today = the Southwest by 2050
6 Comments | Post a Comment

Pheonix are you listening?

This means you!! Quit squandering water or your day of reckoning will be coming awfully soon. I once saw them building lakefront property development in Pheonix. They were piling up sand to build the lakes.

Hubris always has a price.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 5:14 PM on 04 Mar 2008

Water use in Brisbane, Australia

In my city, personal water use is capped at 140 litres per day. This is basically half the personal water consumption before water restrictions.

When the water restrictions came in to force people recognised the need to conserve water and dutifully complied. Life went on basically unchanged except for a few minor behavioral changes to conserve water eg they stopping compulsively watering lawns that didn't actually need to be watered.

The water restrictions spawned a new water harvesting industry and now many homes have water tanks to collect rainwater for clothes washing and toilet flushing, further conserving precious drinking water.

Why not cap energy use in a similar manner? The water restrictions have shown that the sky didn't fall in and that people can adapt very quickly with a minimum of pain and create new industries at the same time.

by elbarto at 5:40 PM on 04 Mar 2008

There are limits even to GAB

perhaps it's a good idea to limit mining The GAB (Great Artesian Basin) despite its colossal size, it too is subject to limits!

http://edro.wordpress.com/nuking-earth/

by LGT at 8:00 PM on 04 Mar 2008

The mining mindset is the problem

The GAB is but one example. Civilisation is mining the Earth. There is nary a single activity that humans do that is not simply "mining" an available resource.

by elbarto at 8:33 PM on 04 Mar 2008

Australia is still waiting for sustantial rains

The extreme dry has eased in much (but not all of Australia). However, we have not seen enough rainfall allow our largest river system - the Murray Darling Basin - to recover. We have been so dry for so long that the soils throughout the interior are so parched and aquifers so low that we need extraordinary rainfall to get enough runoff to make the system flow properly.

More info:

by picoallen at 1:15 AM on 05 Mar 2008

Man charged over 'lawn watering' death

Forget road rage, we've got water rage!

* news article

by picoallen at 5:43 PM on 05 Mar 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.