Chapter 8. Water, Electricity and Pollution.
Water, Electricity and Pollution are so closely intertwined that it is practically impossible to consider any one of them individually. Electricity pumps our water supplies, yet a great deal of electricity is generated using oil or natural gas as the fuel and this inevitably produces pollution. Some electricity is powered from our dammed up rivers that also provide drinking water for our cities and irrigation for our crops. Electricity powers the oil pumping and refining systems, yet the emissions from our power stations and industry pollute the water supply.
Here again there is no simple answer to any of the problems that are inherent in this situation. However before the supply of natural gas and oil begins to falter we will have to develop other methods of generating electricity. We will also have to seek new sources of energy that will be required if we are to keep the water flowing to our cities as long as possible. Two facts cannot be disputed. First the supplies of gas and oil are finite and even if new sources are discovered, they will be exhausted within the lifetime of many of us. Second, the continuously growing population is bringing that day ever nearer. In other words we have less and less time to plan the lifestyle that will allow our children to live with the reduced, fixed amount of energy available from replaceable resources. This planning of course becomes much more difficult as the population grows, because this amount of energy cannot be increased.
We have to accept the fact that within the lifetime of many us living today, we will consume all of the oil and most of the natural gas that exists on this planet. Whether that time is 40 or 50 years is really quite immaterial. In spite of the extremely vocal opposition against the use of atomic energy, this may well be the only source of power that will be readily available for some time to come, and will probably have to fill the gap until other sources are developed. What is vitally important is for us to accept the hard fact that eventually our civilization will have to function using only the replaceable sources of energy that exist in the world. The rate at which these resources can be replaced is finite and there is little or nothing that man can do to change this.
We have to determine just how many people the world can sustain based on this rate of replacement. The only sources of replaceable power are from the sun, wind, rivers, the earth and the ocean. With oil and gas totally depleted, and the end of the supply of coal and possibly atomic power rapidly approaching, we have to calculate just how much electricity we can generate from these sources. Eventually they will be the only sources of power readily available. The estimates to date vary wildly and more work needs to be carried out to provide reasonably accurate figures. For example it has been proposed that wind power alone can produce all the energy needed by the USA, but the estimate does not say what population level this figure is based on. We also have to recognize that like many other natural sources of energy, wind power is not constant but varies according to the weather. This then infers that some form of power storage will have to be developed to assure a stable supply, and we have to consider the inter connections that will be required between the various "wind-farms". We also have to know the land area required for the wind power system, including power storage, and just how much this will leave for growing food, timber and other necessary supplies.
Tidal power has been tried experimentally for many years but has to date never proved economically feasible. With the increase in the price of natural oil and gas and their eventual depletion, this may change and tidal power may offer a sound source of energy. One British scientist claims that by constraining the waters between the North of Scotland and the Orkney Isles, enough tidal power could be generated to supply all of the U.K. This however remains to be proven. Solar power offers a potentially clean source of energy, but here again, up till this time it has not provided an economic alternative to fossil fuels, and requires a comparatively large land area for it’s installation. Here again, as the cost of fossil fuels steadily increases, solar power may appear a much more practical option.
As with wind power, the variability of solar energy, not only between day and night, but with clouds and sunshine, demands that an appropriate power storage system be developed if the supplies are to remain constant. The connections between the generation sites and the storage system then become of utmost importance. The storage systems complicate the issue, and to date several systems have been tried but no truly efficient method of storing energy in large quantities has been developed. For example In the UK pumped water storage was tried experimentally. Excess power was used to pump water into a lake high up in the mountains of Scotland. When power was required the water was taken from the lake, generating hydroelectric power. High speed flywheels operating in a vacuum have been suggested as a storage system, or using the excess electricity to generate hydrogen that can then be used to power internal combustion machines. At the moment however there is no unanimous decision as the best method of storing power.
We must also accept the fact that in the far distant future, unless we are careful in the recycling of our scrap materials, there may be insufficient copper, steel or other metals to make the generators and the power lines. In that case, unless science has invented some alternatives we may eventually have to function without electricity. However this is so far into the future that for the moment we will not even consider this problem, although it shows the need to recycle all our materials to keep that day as far away as possible..
Water is required by our society for many purposes, but two are absolutely essential. To provide the moisture that is necessary to grow our crops, and to provide clean drinking water. There is no worldwide shortage of water but it is unevenly available and to move water from one place to another requires a considerable amount of energy and in the near future all of this energy will have to come from our limited renewable resources. Some of our most important farming districts lie in areas with a limited water supply, and are currently irrigated from underground aquifers demanding the use of considerable energy for pumping the water. In order to increase food production these aquifers have been pumped relentlessly and as a consequence are severely depleted. In these areas we may no longer be able to provide the power required to pull water from these deep wells and we will have to limit our use to the amount of water that nature can provide in the form of rain. In many cases we will soon totally deplete the deep aquifers and it will take many years for them to regenerate. Inevitably these actions will reduce the amount of food that we can continue to grow in these fields.
In some of the dryer areas of the world, it is only through the use of large amounts of energy that the major centers of population are provided with water. Israel for example has dramatically drawn down the aquifer that for centuries provided water, and new sources have had to be developed including the de-salination of sea-water. In some of the Arabian states this is the only method of producing drinking water, and it is difficult to see how this can be continued when the supplies of oil and natural gas that power these systems are exhausted. These problems have come about simply because of the tremendous growth in the population of these areas.
In this country, the water supply for the city of El Peso has relied for many years on the underground aquifer that also supplies the neighboring Mexican city of Juarez. This aquifer has been drawn down until some wells have had to be closed. The Rio Grande river has become so polluted and so much water is taken for agriculture that both cities are facing a major water shortage in the coming years. Without the power to pump, filter and treat the water, these cities face a difficult future. No one even mentions the fact that the population of these cities has rocketed in the past few years, and there is never any suggestion that the population of this desert area should be limited to a number that can be adequately sustained by the replaceable water supplies.
With a supply of electricity that is limited to that generated from replaceable resources, it may be necessary to limit the way that water is used in non-essential purposes. It seems likely that here in the USA we will be able to provide sufficient water for drinking and personal requirements, except in some of the dryer western states, especially in the more densely populated cities. One of the first forms of population control may well be to limit the number of people living in these centers, simply because of the cost in energy that is required to provide an adequate water supply. We have recently seen the outcry regarding the "globalization" of water and the use of commercial, profit making, companies to develop and maintain water supplies. Not too many years ago there was enough water for most purposes readily available and free for the taking. With the ever increasing population and the ever growing pollution, it is becoming more and more costly to provide safe water. Most water supplies now require that the water be filtered or chemically treated to prevent the transmission of disease. Water often has to be brought from long distances or pumped from deep aquifers. Gone are the days when digging a well or taking the bucket to a stream provided drinking water.
Our present overpopulation is polluting the water supply in many areas and if we can reduce the number of people living in those places we will obviously ease this situation. However until we can arrive at an acceptable number, and enforce this limitation of the population, we have to recognize the cost in both replaceable and non-replaceable resources to control this pollution level. It will only be when the population is lessened that we will be able to relax the very tight environmental restrictions that are presently applied to these areas.
Today it is impossible to pick up any newspaper without seeing several articles relating to the degree of pollution that is damaging our environment. These range from the worldwide "global warming" that is threatening to cause melting of the ice cap at the North and South poles, to local smog from automobiles. One recent study shows that pollution from automobiles eventually kills more people than those who die from car accidents. Not only is pollution damaging to the animal and plant life of our world, it is costing us resources that we can ill afford, in an attempt to limit the harm it is causing. From catalytic converters on our automobiles to filters in factory smoke stacks, and filtration systems in our drinking water supplies, these attempts to reduce the problems caused by pollution totally ignore the basic cause. Too many people struggling for the limited resources of our world inevitably generate this pollution both directly can indirectly.
The pollution levels must certainly be corrected, but we never see any sign of concern for the ultimate cause of all of this pollution, indeed it seems to be taboo to even suggest the fact that there are too many people in the world. There is a certain degree of contamination that nature can accept and correct without any assistance from mankind, but we have now far exceeded that limit and all our corrective actions are essential. Unfortunately most of these demand the use of power, and other limited materials. We are not solving the problem, merely delaying the ultimate results of overpopulation by consuming our non-replaceable resources at an ever-increasing speed.
The effects of "greenhouse gasses" on the increasing "global warming’ are well known and the subject of considerable debate at the very highest levels of government. What is never even mentioned is the heating effect of another few million people. Yet here is a direct source of warming of the environment. We have all experienced the rising temperature when there is insufficient ventilation in a room full of people. We all know how hot we can get when we wear too many clothes. The heat that each of us generates is added to the environment twenty-four hours a day, and is the equivalent of switching on several large electric light bulbs for every person added to the population. For every additional million people in the world, the heat generated is equivalent to switching on several thousand electric heaters. Irrespective of whether we believe that smoke stack gasses affect the temperature of the environment, there can be no doubt that more people in the world means more direct heating of the environment.
Similarly all human beings directly generate waste that amounts to millions of tons every day. This is not a pleasant subject of conversation, but has to be considered. Some human waste is duly processed and the effluent is then pumped into the rivers and oceans. While this does not normally contain any directly dangerous materials, it can and does affect the water composition, causing changes to the plant, fish and animal life as the latest report on pollution in the oceans explains. However by far the largest amount of waste is merely deposited into the earth and it is left to the bugs in the soil to eventually break this waste down into harmless and useful products. There is a limit to the amount of waste that the earth can effectively break down, and of course using a sewage system requires power and the expenditure of non-replaceable resources. Even then the effluent has ultimately to be pumped into our rivers and oceans where it often causes pollution problems.
It becomes very obvious that as the number of people in the word increases, we reach a point at which the natural system can no longer take care of this waste. Depending on our ability to generate enough electricity from renewable resources, we may or may not be able to provide sewage systems to all needing this service. This then is another area where the number of people in this world has a very direct effect on the consumption of non-replaceable resources, and in turn our ability to use the replaceable resources efficiently has a direct effect on the number of people the world can support indefinitely.
From the examples discussed above there can be no doubt whatever that overpopulation is consuming the world’s non-replaceable resources at an unacceptable rate. If this continues then we will have little or no time to configure our civilization to function with only our replaceable resources. The result will be chaos as peoples fight for the limited resources. If however we can control the number of people in the world, we may still have an opportunity to make the change in a controlled, civilized and efficient manner.