Thirsty Alarmism

28Oct07

Over the past few weeks, there has been widespread (for an environmental issue) news coverage of the progressing Georgia drought. The actual drought is spread over several states, but the tidbit that got national attention was the realization that Atlanta only has less than three months of water left, with little rain on the extended forecast. Over three million people are facing a severe water shortage, the kind that begins with browning lawns and ends with boiling pasta in bottled water because the faucets have run dry.

Extended droughts lead to cascading problems. The initial impacts will be isolated and economic, with agriculture and landscaping taking hits. Water dependent manufacturing will also wilt under what are likely to be tightening government restrictions. If supplies continue to dry up, short-term solutions such as shipping in water will be used. These methods are hugely expensive, whether the costs are passed directly to consumers or if the government picks up the tab and adds it to existing debt. A much bigger issue could be electricity. Power plants require large amounts of water for cooling, and under drought conditions may have to lower output or even shutdown, this is a region with little spare generating capacity. Much of our modern infrastructure is highly dependent on the surrounding infrastructure working as planned. The systems were designed to be robust, but persistent underinvestment over decades has significantly weakened them (as seen in the blackout of 2003).

There will also be some significant health and environmental problems. Beyond the people shunted into poverty and losing health insurance as businesses close, water shortages tend to result in reduced water quality, resulting in negative health consequences. As a growing portion of the available water is siphoned off for consumption, river flows decline and becomes increasing saline, which in the extreme leads to severe environmental consequences. A great example of this can be seen in the likewise drought-ridden West, where the Colorado River rarely reaches the Gulf of California. Georgia is calling for the Army Corp of Engineers to cut reservoir outflows, water legally required to be sent downstream to preserve several endangered species.

Two things stand out to me about this situation: how long the problem has been developing and the number of people shrugging off the warnings as alarmist. Decades of population growth in the south, rising per capita water consumption, a lack of planning and leadership ignoring the warnings and ignoring the solutions all contributed to the problem. Such overconfidence is bred from ludicrous but widely believed fallacy that markets can overcome shortages of natural resources, with solutions flowing in abundance from a modest increase in prices. That belief in the market is also one of the driving forces beyond those quick to shout accusations of alarmism.

It’s easy to reject the alarmist sentiment, particularly when the events foretold seem far removed from the current status quo and so many alarms have proven false in the past. What gets forgotten is that the only reason many past disasters were only avoided because some people heeded the result of alarmists. Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb” in 1968, was widely panned for his predictions of mass starvations in the near future. What is rarely mentioned is that the only thing that prevented his vision of the 1970s was the Green Revolution.

Rejecting alarmist thinking is comforting. Comforting, but dangerous. It is worth remembering that many potential disasters have been prevented only by the efforts of those heeding the alarmists calls. Perhaps more important is realizing that when something inevitable, such as water shortages in a region undergoing a population boom while largely ignoring conservation, hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t negate the fact that it will happen in the future.

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Human Thought   |