Desalination is a Viable Response to Water Crises

While desalination is a possible response to water shortages, in my opinion it is not the best option. Here is a list of reasons why I think that desalination is not a viable solution to water crises: 1. Energy costs The start-up costs of building a new desalination plant are very high. Many countries that are not as economically developed do not always have the ability to spend large amounts of money on desalination plants so it is clearly not a viable solution to manage a water crisis because it can be too expensive so desalination is not a suitable method of dealing with water scarcity. Desalination requires a large amount of energy. While the price of oil and gas has been quite low in recent months, the cost of desalination has fallen as well. Despite this, in the future the world will start to run out of oil and we should expect the price of oil and gas to increase substantially compared to today’s prices. This means that in the future, it will not be economically viable to continue to desalinate water because the running costs of desalination plants will likely become a lot higher and be too expensive to be a long term solution to water crises. 2. Air Pollution Most desalination plants use fossil fuels to heat the saline water to it can be turned into drinkable water. As I previously mentioned, desalination requires a large amount of energy which means that producing drinkable water via desalination is going to result in a large amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. The resulting change in the global climate will submerge large amounts of land due to rising sea levels as a result of the melting ice caps. Thousands of people who live along the coastlines will be displaced which means that desalination is not a sustainable response to water crises. 3. Ecological impacts Desalination will create a lot of waste products including salt and other chemicals which needs to be disposed of somewhere. Dumping this salt into water sources like the ocean will have massive ecological problems because the increased salinity of the water will kill aquatic life. This can cause economic problems like a decline in the fishing and tourism industries for example due to the environmental damage. Even if the waste products are dumped on land, it will still have ecological problems for land based life instead so desalination is going to cause environmental problems wherever the wasted salt is left. Also, when the saline water is pumped into the desalination plants, aquatic organisms tend to get sucked up along with the water. Plankton, fish eggs and larvae are among some of the things that are killed during the desalination process, many of which are vital for the aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, desalination is disrupting ecosystems that can impact humans as well through a decline in tourism and fishing which I mentioned previously. To conclude, desalination is an expensive solution to water crises and will have global problems to both humans and animals as it is damaging to the environment which is why I do not think that desalination is a viable response to water crises.