Peter Gleick: Improving Water Infrastructure with Dam Building, but for Whose Benefit?

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Whether, where, and how to build new dams: the old Western debate.

Peter Gleick: Farm Water Success Stories

The Pacific Institute has just released a new report, California Farm Water Success Stories, including a separate video, describing a variety of different examples of innovation in California's agricultural sector showing the way toward more efficient water management and use.

Peter Gleick: Water Scofflaws — Go Soak your Heads (Under a Low-flow Showerhead)

After years of inaction, blatant and willful violations of federal law, and lack of enforcement by previous administrations, the U.S. Department of Energy has just announced that they intend to pursue enforcement actions against the manufacturers of water-using appliances that violate national water and energy savings laws that have been on the books for nearly 20 years.

Peter Gleick: Turf Wars

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Climate change is expected to bring less precipitation and more extreme droughts to certain parts of the world, causing electricity shortages in hydro-reliant countries.

Perspective: Waters, Wars, Wheat, Watts, Waste and Wasta Add Up to Syria’s Liquid Worries

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Syria's economics, history, politics, diplomacy, and culture have often been defined in a large part by water. This has been the case since this area was part of the Eblan civilization, or about 2500 BC, onward. But let's look at some more recent facts and events.

Peter Gleick: Water Fountain Victory — the Cavs Cave

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OK, my crystal ball is often cloudy, but in my last post just two days ago, I predicted that the decision by the Cleveland Cavaliers to remove the drinking water fountains from the Quicken Loans Arena (the Q), ostensibly for health reasons, would ultimately be reversed.

Peter Gleick: Bottled Water Wars, and the War on Tap Water

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In a month or two, I have a new book coming out from Island Press called Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. Look for it at your local... well, wherever you buy books now.

A Reader’s Insight: Tapping Into Young Americans to Stop the Water Crisis

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Over the past two decades, the global economy has witnessed extraordinary, previously unimaginable technological advances and scientific feats. Money and complicated business propositions change hands virtually. Meanwhile medical science defies death and disease on a daily basis, as the worldwide web enables instant communication across oceans. Despite these tremendous advancements in life and technology, the greatest issue we face is our depleting water supply.

Perspective: Water, Energy, Economy, Poverty, and Haiti

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The average Haitian has been living the life of a disaster victim even before the earthquake. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Its human development and other indices were about what one would find in some of the poorest sub-Saharan countries. Mismanagement, corruption and just plain venality have forever been human-caused security earthquakes in this sad country.

Peter Gleick: Where to find one million acre-feet of water for California.

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Californians have improved their efficiency of water use over the past 25 years. The state's economy and population have grown. But total water use has not grown, and per person, each Californian uses far less today. This improvement in efficiency has saved the state's collective rear end. So far.

Peter Gleick: Water for Haiti, Now

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Information on the disaster in Haiti is only slowly coming out, but it is clear that the magnitude and extent of the catastrophe is vast, in a land seemingly cursed by endless environmental destruction.

Peter Gleick: Water, Climate Change, and International Security

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It would be nice if water resources fell neatly into national political boundaries. It would be nice if countries that shared water resources cooperated more. It would be nice if climate change wasn't a growing threat to the stocks and flows of water around the world.