Fred Pearce is the author of
When the Rivers Run Dry.
Pearce, a longtime editor for New Scientist, who is now an environmental consultant for the magazine, calculates that it takes 40 gallons of water to grow the ingredients for the bread in a single sandwich, not to mention 265 gallons to produce a glass of milk and 800 gallons for a hamburger. And that's just what's for lunch. Don't get him started on what you wear to this water-rich feast. Even a simple cotton T-shirt bearing some hopeful green slogan like "Save the Bay" is a huge water user. Pearce figures it takes 25 bathtubs-full of water to grow the scant 9 ounces of cotton for such a shirt.
Water is the ultimate renewable resource, literally falling from the sky back to earth after it evaporates. And since it's so heavy and cumbersome to move great distances, it's also a local resource. Yet, start quantifying the water embedded in foods and goods, the "virtual water" as economists call it, and water is fast becoming a global commodity like oil. There's Brazilian water in the coffee beans grown for an American latte; there's Pakistani water in the cotton in that T-shirt.
In "When the Rivers Run Dry," Pearce finds a growing strain on many local water resources around the globe, as the world's population grows. As he visits dozens of countries, he sees rivers that have been so diverted, depleted and dried out, such as the Rio Grande, that they no longer conform to their original map locations. Pearce reports that the fallout from the competition for water resources is enormous, exacerbating tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank and even accidentally poisoning villagers by the millions in India and Bangladesh.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/04/25/pearce/
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