Space on Earth: How Thinking Like an Astronaut Can Help Save the Planet
10 SPACE ON EARTH CHAPTER 1 WATER INSPIRATION Make Every Drop Count The Trouble Down Here Close your eyes and imagine our planet Got it Chances are your brain is painting a picture of Earth from outer space looking like one of those big bouncy balls you played with when you were younger Back in the 1990s before you were born a scientist named Carl Sagan saw a photograph of Earth taken from the space probe Voyager 1 and gave our planet a nickname the pale blue dot What he saw when he looked at that photo was a whole lot of blue the blue of our oceans and seas and lakes A whopping 71 percent of Earth’s surface is covered in water So there should be plenty to go around right Look quickly and it would seem so but looks can be deceiving We need to remind ourselves that we don’t have a never-ending supply of water and to start treating it as the precious resource it really is
EVAPORATION The Water Cycle Wait a minute you might be saying Something's not adding up What about the water cycle Isn't Earth's water con- stantly recycled Okay you have a point Water is in some ways a pretty renew- able resource That's because the same water evaporates into the sky and falls as rain over and over and over again So we kind of do have a never ending PRECIPITATION SNOWMELT LAKE EVAPORATION GROUNDWATER FLOW PERCOLATION TRANSPIRATION OCEAN There is the same amount of water on Earth right now as there was when Earth was formed 1 GALLON 2-3 TABLESPOONS 1/3 CUP If the world's water supply totaled 1 gallon 3.75 liters the amount of fresh water would be about one third of a cup 80 millimeters The amount of usable fresh water the stuff we can access would be about two to three tablespoons 30-45 milliliters supply of water don't we Well yes and no While we're not likely to run out in the near future we might soon have a harder time finding water we can actually use Supply and Demand Only 3 percent of all that ancient Earth water is fresh water not saltwater and 2.5 percent of that is out of our reach Some of it is trapped in polar ice caps glaciers or soil And thanks to our grow- ing impact on the planet a bunch of the water we can access is polluted making it unsafe to use 1. WATER INSPIRATION Make Every Drop Count 11
Climate change isn’t helping As the planet warms rivers lakes and aqui fers are drying up and more than half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared Weather patterns are changing too causing water shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others And then of course there’s us a global population that grew by more than 800 million between 2010 and 2020 all cre ating an ever-greater demand for water to drink grow food and cook with play in and on and power our industries It’s a Girl Thing Women and girls can be especially hard-hit by water scarcity and sanita tion issues In many parts of the world women are responsible for getting water to the home In sub-Saharan Africa for exam ple women and girls walk an average of 6 kilometers 3.7 miles hauling 20 kilograms 44 pounds of water each day This doesn’t leave much energy for other activities like attending school or working a paid job As well girls who have started menstruating may drop out of school if there is no access to clean water or washrooms A lack of clean water during childbirth also contributes to high rates of disease 12 SPACE ON EARTH
1 WATER INSPIRATION Make Every Drop Count 13 1 BILLION people don’t have access to clean drinking water 2.7 BILLION find water scarce for at least one month a year 2.4 BILLION people deal with inadequate sanitation 1 MILLION people mostly children die each year from illnesses associated with poor water quality and sanitation BY 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population will live in a water stressed country Down the Drain A high demand for water coupled with a limited and shrinking supply might be manageable if we were using the water we do have wisely But many of us are not The not-so-water-wise leave taps running while they brush their teeth or run the water in the shower for ages before they get in and they can take their time when it comes to fixing leaky faucets or toilets And then there’s the water it takes to make all the stuff we use and own Creating a single pair of jeans for example uses about 10,932 liters 2,888 gallons of water while producing a 2 liter 0.5 gallon bottle of soda takes between 680 and 1,242 liters 180 and 328 gallons That’s a whole lot of water going going gone Add it all up and you’ve got a global water crisis what many experts consider to be one of the top 10 threats to our civilization Some countries don’t have enough water to grow the food needed to feed their population Others struggle to control diseases that show up when unclean water is used for drinking cook ing and bathing And this isn’t just a problem in low-income nations Several U S states are facing water shortages and lack of access to clean drinking water is a big problem in many First Nations communities in Canada No wonder one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to provide universal access to clean water and sanitation by 2030 To make that happen we need to be much more careful about how we manage our water resources BREAKING IT DOWN
