For the first quarter of my book I read just about the whole first section which consisted of pages 1-65.
The main focus of the first section of the book is how the global changes that are taking place could have huge consequences for our water and food security. It also places an emphasis on how these changes could especially have an adverse effect on developing countries. This is due to the fact that poverty levels are typically pretty high in developing countries and this causes them to have a difficult time adjusting to the rapid global changes that are happening. Some of the other major topics covered in the first section include:
- · How our world’s water resources are under stress
- · How food security is out of reach for so many due to the high increase of the price of food
- · What is causing such dramatic global change
- · How global climate change will affect our water and food security
There was sooooooooo much that I learned in this first section. Some of the most interesting things I learned were:
- · Between 1960 and 2000, global freshwater use increased at a rate of about 20% but because of uneven distribution, today only 15% of the world’s population lives with relative water abundance. ONLY 15%!!
- · Annually there are 2.2 million deaths due to unsafe drinking water, and of those deaths, the majority are children.
- · Average daily calorie availability in North America and Europe remains 50% higher than sub-Saharan Africa, and a person in North America and Europe consumes on average eight times more meat than a person living in sub-Saharan Africa.
- · The US is the second largest groundwater user
There was a 2 page abbreviations and acronyms index at the beginning of the book so I had to do a lot of looking back to see what the author was referring to, but other than that there wasn’t a ton of things I had to look up. Some of the things I did look up include:
- · Eutrophication eutrophia healthy, adequate nutrition, development (Greek) eutrophe (German) is a scientific term describing the overfertilization of lakes with nutrients and the changes that occur as a result, i.e. the primary productivity of the waterbody.
- · Evapotranspiration (ET) is a term used to describe the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the Earth's land surface to atmosphere.
- · Mariculture is a specialized branch of aquaculture involving the cultivation of marine organisms for food and other products in the open ocean, an enclosed section of the ocean, or in tanks, ponds or raceways which are filled with seawater.
I couldn’t believe HOW many things this book is making me think about. When I think about global warming, I don’t think about how many things adversely affect one another. The smallest increase in temperature year after year affects the amount of rainfall annually, which in turn affects the moisture of the soil and also how much water is available, which in turn affects the crops, and the list goes on and on. Another thing to think about is the fact that there has been huge issues regarding biotechnology and bioengineering but the book brings up great points about how that might be the only way to keep up with our growing population. It is also very scary to think about how wasteful we really are with our water and how we take it for granted because we have such easy access. I think that this is one of the biggest issues that need to be addressed. The book talks about how perhaps policies need to be put in place to help with this and I think that that is a great idea. So what if some people can’t water their lawns or their golf courses every single day? Would it really be that bad?
