Australia today = the Southwest by 2050

Lessons the United States can learn from the drought in Australia 6

drybed-small.jpgThe brutal drought has ended over large parts of Australia -- and consumers are obsessively reducing their demand for water -- and yet water "prices are set to double in the next five to 10 years," Water Services Association Australia executive officer Ross Young told a drought briefing in Canberra.

The focus on water conservation has never been higher:

Water is a dinner table topic. People are quite passionate about water and they are quite concerned about water in the context of climate change.

And the results are impressive:

Average daily summer water use in Melbourne during the 1990s was 1,631 litres, compared with 1,092 litres at the end of last month.

But doubled prices are still inevitable in the coming years, "as the industry funds the significant capital works programs -- some $30 billion over the next five to 10 years just in new water sources for urban Australia."

Since scientists tell us we're turning the west into a desert, much greater water conservation, tens of billions of dollars on water infrastructure, and much higher water prices are also inevitable there.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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  1. Pangolin's avatar

    Pangolin Posted 10:14 am
    04 Mar 2008

    Pheonix are you listening?This means you!! Quit squandering water or your day of reckoning will be coming awfully soon. I once saw them building lakefront property development in Pheonix. They were piling up sand to build the lakes.
    Hubris always has a price.

    Put the Carbon Back

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  2. elbarto Posted 10:40 am
    04 Mar 2008

    Water use in Brisbane, AustraliaIn my city, personal water use is capped at 140 litres per day. This is basically half the personal water consumption before water restrictions.
    When the water restrictions came in to force people recognised the need to conserve water and dutifully complied. Life went on basically unchanged except for a few minor behavioral changes to conserve water eg they stopping compulsively watering lawns that didn't actually need to be watered.
    The water restrictions spawned a new water harvesting industry and now many homes have water tanks to collect rainwater for clothes washing and toilet flushing, further conserving precious drinking water.
    Why not cap energy use in a similar manner? The water restrictions have shown that the sky didn't fall in and that people can adapt very quickly with a minimum of pain and create new industries at the same time.

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  3. LGT Posted 1:00 pm
    04 Mar 2008

    There are limits even to GABperhaps it's a good idea to limit mining The GAB (Great Artesian Basin) despite its colossal size, it too is subject to limits!
    http://edro.wordpress.com/nuking-earth/  

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  4. elbarto Posted 1:33 pm
    04 Mar 2008

    The mining mindset is the problemThe GAB is but one example. Civilisation is mining the Earth. There is nary a single activity that humans do that is not simply "mining" an available resource.

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  5. Craig Allen's avatar

    Craig Allen Posted 6:15 pm
    04 Mar 2008

    Australia is still waiting for sustantial rainsThe extreme dry has eased in much (but not all of Australia). However, we have not seen enough rainfall allow our largest river system - the Murray Darling Basin - to recover. We have been so dry for so long that the soils throughout the interior are so parched and aquifers so low that we need extraordinary rainfall to get enough runoff to make the system flow properly.
    More info:



    The Annual Australian Climate Statement for 2007

    Murray System Drought Outlook, March 2008 (PDF)

    News article - Murray-Darling Basin outlook remains 'grim'

    News article - Cool summer for Australia, but La Nina fails to deliver big rains

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  6. Craig Allen's avatar

    Craig Allen Posted 10:43 am
    05 Mar 2008

    Man charged over 'lawn watering' deathForget road rage, we've got water rage!
    * news article

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