Water Shortages Pose Greatest Threat to US Economic Growth

Paul B. Farrell of MarketWatch, has warned that by 2024, water shortages and pollution will pose the greatest threats to the US, potentially ending all economic growth and the future security of the US.

Scientific American undertook a study to research this idea, and determined that in order to prevent this from happening, the government would have to invest $60 trillion; a bit of a tall order, seeing as though global GDP is only 70 trillion.

As the planet slowly warms, a giant reservoir of methane begins to thaw under the East Siberian Sea permafrost, an event that if allowed to worsen, would act as an economic time bomb with the potential to devastate the global financial system.

In 2012 a drought across the US ruined crops. (treehugger)

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Unfortunately, despite the fact that 97% of scientists now agree that climate change is real, many big oil supporters, and their pet politicians, refuse to accept the truth.

Clive Hamilton, the Australian Professor of Ethics, wrote that “sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming ... It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when our death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

Ernst & Young has estimated that “20% of the world’s undiscovered but recoverable oil and natural-gas resources” are located under the frozen layer of methane in the Arctic, and that big oil’s determination to access these fields poses a serious threat to the stability of the methane and risks its potential release.

Bill McKibben told Foreign Policy that it may already be too late to stop this climate change time bomb.

By the time the impact of global warming is too obvious for anyone to negate, it will be too late to do anything about it; and already we seem to be reaching that tipping point.

Related article: What to Expect in the Warsaw Climate Change Talks

In a Rolling Stone article, ‘Goodbye Miami,’ it was written that, “by century’s end, rising sea levels will turn the nation’s urban fantasy land into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin.” Other US cities at risk are; New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston, Norfolk, Galveston, Texas, Tampa, and even California’s Silicon Valley.

Jeff Goodell, the contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, stated: “Want to know what global warming has in store for us? Just go to Australia, where rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent. Australia is the canary in the coal mine ... What is happening in Australia now is similar to what we can expect to see other places in the future.”

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-new-60-trillion-deadliest-enemy-2013-08-14?pagenumber=2

By. James Burgess of Oilprice.com