In China, where one and a quarter billion people live, the Yellow River, which is longer than the Missouri, dried out for the first time in 1972. Since 1985 it has run dry for part of the year every year. In 1997 it was dry for 226 days. By 2025, water scarcity will affect more than a billion people worldwide. Despite that threat, per capita water consumption is rising twice as fast as the world population.
People already use more than half of the available surface freshwater on Earth.
Last month, the International Joint Commission had a public meeting here in Gary on the possibility of diverting water from the Great Lakes to other areas with less water. Most people who live around here don't want that to happen. But it will become increasingly harder to hoard our lake water as more and more regions around the world start to go dry. Now let's turn to food. The availability of water and food are connected, because it takes water to produce food.