Day Zero In Cape Town South Africa

"Day Zero" is when millions of homes in Cape Town, South Africa will go without running water. The people of Cape Town are only allowed to use 13 gallons of water per person when people in the United States use about 100 gallons per day per person. It takes 175 liters (46 gallons) to make only one serving of soda and the people of Cape Town are using less than that. Peter Gleick who has spent a substantial amount of time in South Africa did not think that the country would reach "Day Zero". Since there is a rise in the population it is hard to get everyone there with a substantial amount of water. South Africa has about 7 million people without access to water and that number is on the rise.
Image result for cape town south africa drought
How are the people in Cape Town surviving with such little water? Since Cape Town is a coastal city, they plan to have a new water source. They will try to use the ocean. There are also some problems that arise with that. Some say it would be easier to treat and reuse wastewater. This is sad to think about because when the people living in the United States have so much water, it is hard to step back and look at all the people that are living without it. What are some ways that the United States can help supply other countries that are struggling with water and return it to the flourishing town it once was?
Image result for cape town south africa

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deforestation+Animal Killing=The Near Death of a Species

If we do the math for Science Daily's article named, " In 16 years, Borneo lost more than 100,000 orangutans ",  Borneo has lost more than 6,000 orangutans every year, meaning about 17 orangutans die every day. The World Wildlife Fund estimates the current population of Bornean Orangutans to be about only 104,700 individuals, making a loss of more than 100,000 devastating for the population. And as the study in which this article takes its data from took place from 1999 to 2015, meaning that now, in 2018, this number could be much higher. The main cause of this loss was from the destruction of their natural habitat, the rainforest, in favor of palm oil, wood, and wood-based products. Using the age old strategy of "Saying No with your Wallet" sounds like a good idea to stop this, but the area that had the greatest loss of Bornean Orangutans were not these deforested areas, but rather areas where logging restrictions were already in place to save the environment.
Read more

China becoming the World's Largest Carbon Market

Image
China, the largest global emitter of greenhouse gases contributing largely to global rising temperatures, is now trying to make progress toward decreasing this. Where they have begun an emissions trading system that for now covers gas and coal power production. That will include 11 different emissions baselines for plants based on whether power they run on, their size, and other factors.Having this cap on fossil fuels will allow them to take steps toward helping them with their smog epidemic.Other countries should also follow China in their effort to help remedy their emission output. China's plan is a little similar to the EPA's Clean Power Plan that is now planned to be made ineffective.Which could be detrimental to the environment by being able to output more greenhouse gases. In order to go forward, we need more acts put in place for cleaner power and more baseline on emissions that plants are able to put out. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-set-to-debut
Read more

Lack of Animal Movement may Result in A Collapse in Biodiversity

Image
The last couple hundred Przewalski horses surviving off the Mongolian Grasslands. Humans take up around 70% of the earth's land surface area. This causes animals that roam freely throughout their habitat to move significantly less than they would in an unaltered landscape. An article in ScienceDaily says that mammals living in areas inhabited by humans move tow to three times less than those who live in areas untouched by man. When animals move they help important ecological processes such as transporting seeds and other nutrients throughout different areas which supports biodiversity. Additionally, mammalian movement reinforces the food chain by bringing different organisms to an area by way of hunting or being hunted. Thereof, if these animals are not moving as much as they should, biodiversity will plummet leading to the extinction of many plant and animal lives. In order to prevent this we have to make a conscious effort to stop taking more land and begin using the sp
Read more