Comment by very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net on What are the most climate stable areas on earth?

IE what are the areas we should be seeking to migrate as many people as possible to before shtf.

I never understood why a water pipeline isn’t built from the great lakes to the west coast, wouldn’t it be cheaper than desalination and solve the water scarcity problem?

Just pump billions of gallons 6000 feet uphill bro

Easy as apple pie

I mean that’s a good way to spend excess renewable energy, keep it in a reserve of water at the top of a mountain when there’s excess energy, use power turbines to recapture the energy when it comes down.

That is usually done with 2 nearly-adjacent reservoirs on a mountainside, where you only have to install a couple hundred meters of pipe. It’s completely different from something that would run all the way across a continent.

What you are suggesting is that we create a river that runs uphill, powered by the electric grid. It’s not very feasible. Canals make sense but this does not.

Bullshit! America, Canada, providences, states, and cities have no legitimate claim to one of the largest bodies of fresh water on earth. It belongs to humanity and should be treated as such, that means distributing it whereever necessary.

The aral sea was destroyed after the collapse of the soviet union, I have no doubt the united states would fuck up a monumental project like diverting water from the great lakes but a communist society might see it as a means to fight climate change, or at the very least keep people from dying from lack of water. Maybe we should ask is the great lakes worth more than the rest of north america, I don’t think it is.

If piping out the Ogallala Aquifer isn’t a sustainable solution for agriculture, with it looking to run dry within twenty years, how is using the great lakes anything more than a bandage that will enable unsustainable agricultural practices to continue until those ecosystems are also destroyed?

It’s either that or let tens of millions of people die, it’s no permanent solution but considering the energy costs of desalination it may be the least environmentally damaging option.

Tens of millions of people will have to relocate, and billions of people will have to learn how to survive while consuming drastically less.

“But I’ll diiiiiiiiie if I can’t have 3 meals with meat, 1 liter of soda, a pack of cigarettes, 2 gallons of gasoline, and AC 30° below outdoor temperature each and every day!”

3 gallons of water per person per day is not a death sentence.

Not everywhere needs that strict water rationing, what about the very few parts of the globe that have an excess of fresh water?

My point was that you can survive on 3 L of water per day.

We have overstretched our carrying capacity in numerous places around the globe. The solution is not to employ technology, the solution is to change our relationship with our environment.

As other people have said, “just running a big pipeline thousands of miles” could have unforeseen ramifications, and as different people have said, what appears to you as an “excess” of fresh water is something that ecosystems are founded upon.

As someone who lives in a region where freshwater is plentiful and is predicted to stay plentiful for the next century or more, I know this sounds a bit selfish of me. But then again, my region can support lots of water refugees; with a little intelligent planning we could probably support upwards of 500 people per square mile, without fossil fuels or daily imported goods.

you would end up with thousands of miles of pipes filled with invasive zebra mussels, they spread like crazy and really fuck water infrastructure

And the alternative might just be no water.

Scandinavia also has environmental issues with the forests becoming more and more like monoculture tree plantations, which makes them less resilient in many ways.

Something that scares me is there is so much useless housing in urban, suburban, and rural areas that simply isn’t built to last, or is built in areas where humans shouldn’t be living. All of that sprawl is going to have to be abandoned and brand new sprawl built in more climate suited areas. The whole urban/suburban/rural trichotomy is fucked and all three are entirely flawed ways for humans to live in society.

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What are the most climate stable areas on earth?

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