Water water everywhere . . .

Inalienable life certainties – death, taxes and England being piss poor in football. With morally bankrupt billionaires avoiding dues, they have plenty of cash to jettison themselves into space, living forever in a cryochamber circling Mars. That’s two down. Maybe they’ll regenerate in the year 3041, about tea time, just as Lichtenstein non-binary Brownies thwack six past the super-bots of England.

Watching England Football

Population growth was a certainty, now I’m a little unsure. The average household in the UK used to be 2.4 children, meaning every adult couple had two heirs and a bit. Basically, a growing population. Now the UK fertility rate is 1.7. Europe is at 1.5. Japan is even lower still. By reducing poverty, increasing education, giving women autonomy over their own bodies and throwing a few billionaires at the sun, the planet’s population will naturally reduce. Sounds like a lot of thirsty work though, ammarite? Well, we’re running out of water too.

Only 2.5% of the water on the planet is freshwater - stuff we can drink or use to cook, clean, feed animals, grow crops i.e. live with. Johannesburg ran out of water in 2020. California is running out too, which is impacts everyone as they’re the sixth largest contributor to GDP in the world. Britain certainly has famous amounts of rain, but isn’t exempt either: 3 weeks of sunshine and hose-pipe bans begin. There is though good news! Ish. Good news ish.

Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, hits record low, June 2021. It's a crucial water supply for 25m people

99% of the planet’s freshwater is locked in glaciers and snowfields. So, with a warming climate, we’ll have more available. Huzzahh!! Most of that though will flow directly into the sea. Boo! Islands are already disappearing in the Pacific. The answer may be renewables powering desalination plants. More water means more growth, means more trees, means more oxygen. We breathe oxygen. See? Good news!

Australia, always a fierce advocate of doing fu** all, has already set its stall out. We can survive quite well as long as 90% of us die: with its current desalination plants, we can water perhaps 10-11% of the population including some pigs, cattle, sheep etc. So, if England bored everyone to death every week, we are covered. Happy Sunday!

Lots of love for the week, Richie xx

P.S. Gorau Chwarae Cyd Chwarae, Cymru am byth . . . C'mon, Wales!!

Australia Desalination water full-capacity: 20% of Adelaide is roughly 0.34m, 33% of Melbourne’s 4.8m (0.96m), ~ 40% of Perth at 0.85m, 27% of South East Queensland (1.026m), Sydney 19% of roughly 5m (0.95m). Not so good for Cairns, Darwin or Alice Springs eh?

References:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/05/30/whats-really-behind-europes-decline-its-the-birth-rates-stupid/?sh=2beeb4d6267c
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/freshwater-crisis
https://waterdesk.org/2021/06/running-out-of-water-and-time-how-unprepared-is-california-for-2021s-drought
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/american-state-bigger-economy-than-india/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_desalination_plants_in_Australia
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=EU
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hoover-dam-reservoir-hits-record-low-sign-extreme-western-us-drought-2021-06-10/