When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century

Water is the most important substance in life. Our body consists of 70% water. Without drinking water, we die after a few days. Although water seems inexhaustible, the reality is different, due to the current way in which capitalism organized agriculture. Agriculture is used primarily to produce fodder, or even worse : biofuels. Fred Pearce compares a quarter-pound hamburger with a pound of bread. The hamburger needs 11.500 liters of water in its production, whereas a pound of wheat can be produced with 500 liters water. Capitalism still thrives on the belief that the sky is the limit. In the last 50 years, in the Great Plains, a volume of groundwater was pumped up that would need 2.000 years of rainwater to replenish. Pearce focuses also on cotton. Cotton grows best in hot weather, but needs a lot of water to grow. He describes the situation in Egypt, Pakistan and what finally happened to the Aral Sea. The capitalist depletion of our precious water sources for irrigation is actually enhanced by global warming. The glaciers of the Himalaya feed seven of the greatest rivers of Asia : Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Irrawaddy, Mekong and Yangtze. Two billion people depend on those for drinking and irrigating their crops. And the glaciers are melting... The Yellow River has seen its flow diminished with 24 % in comparison to its average flow in the last decade of the 20th century. The Colorado river rises in the Rocky Mountains and cities like Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles depend on it, although there is less and less water in the river. In 2002 the flow was only 15 % of what it was a century ago. What was formerly known as a "big river", the Rio Grande, reaches the Mexican border now without a single drop of water. Fred Pearce also goes on to propose some solutions, like catching rain water. This is certainly helpful, but I think that a change in diet - to less or no meat - is more important.

I write this review with some fear and hesitation, because the stakes are so high to do this book justice. It's THAT important. When the Rivers Run Dry is not just enjoyable to read. It's fascinating, fully engaging, but above all a FRIGHTENING wake-up call how governments, politicians and industry are polluting, mismanaging and squandering the water of virtually all the world's major rivers. Fred Pearce sounds the alarm with incredible passion and intelligence, presenting an environmental issue that deserves the kind of widespread attention Al Gore has brought to the issue of climate change through his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. I highly recommend this book to EVERYONE, with a special request to read this if you can make a difference in the water management policy of your government or your company.

It is impossible to make responsible decisions without decent information. I found this book both readable and extremely informative. On the other hand, it is so filled with information that is a call to awareness of the global crisis facing us that I needed to put it down periodically to avoid depression and/or extreme cynicism. Still, it is an important book to read and I do make better decisions on a daily basis because of it. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who feels that they want to know what's actually going on and doesn't want to be hit with the coming crisis blindsided.

British author Fred Pearce has collected together some of the most interesting, nerve-wracking, disappointing, and infuriating stories and statistics on water politics worldwide into this gripping volume, titled When the Rivers Run Dry. The depth with which Pearce treats the subject and the diversity of angles from which he approaches the issues facing water management (and rather more often the appalling mismanagement) makes this book required reading for those who wish to be environmentally literate. Actually, let me elevate that statement to say instead that this book should be required reading for anyone over the age of 15, regardless of their language or nationality or cultural background. Many people think that water comes from the tap in the same way that milk comes from the carton, and this simplistic ignorance is dangerously impermissible in a supposedly educated society. Pearce's work is illuminating and educational while also being an engaging read, and given the fact that water is even more fundamental to life than oil is, everyone should know much more than they generally do about the water cycle. More to the point, we need to know how that cycle supports human life and civilization, and how it is being disrupted and abused for selfish political gains, economic control, and narrowly commercial self-interest. This abuse is being perpetrated by a handful of breathtakingly arrogant government bureaucrats, working in concert with wonkish engineers disconnected from ecological realities and corporate thieves seeking to commandeer common and collectively-held resources for their own private empires. Prepare to be shocked, dismayed, and appalled as you read about what has happened to the world's rivers, lakes, marshes, and estuaries. Worse yet, you'll likely be disheartened by what is planned for the future. Said future looks grim unless the world's people wake up to what is happening and disallow the destructive centralized planning that is threatening to wreak massive negative change upon what remains of the world's freshwater ecological systems. No nation is exempt from the potable fresh water crisis, although the most immediate and well-publicized dilemmas are occurring in arid and semiarid regions. It is indeed logical that water is one of the most embattled resources in arid regions, but Pearce demonstrates that even rivers in abundantly wet areas suffer under environmental strains as varied as climate change, hydroelectric projects, and pilfering for export to drier neighboring climates. From Cambodia to Israel, and from Mexico to Germany, Pearce dedicates chapters to specific types of water-related problems that will astound you and will hopefully act as a wake-up call to action before it is too late. Lest I give the impression that the book is nothing but doom and gloom, it is important to state that the final few chapters end on a positive note, with success stories and reversals of major and catastrophic disruptions giving