Water Scarcity Quotes

The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC.

We must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still have time to do something about this problem before it is too late…. The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.

Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not - water is political, and litigious. Transporting water is impractical for both political and physical reasons, so buying up water rights did not make a lot of sense to me, unless I was pursuing a greater fool theory of investment - which was not my intention.

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

Many of the wars this century were about oil, but those of the next century will be over water

Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country...But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers.

In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.

Few if any countries understand the growing importance of water as fully as Turkey does.

One tragic example of the loss of forests and then water is found in Ethiopia. The amount of its forested land has decreased from 40 to 1 percent in the last four decades. Concurrently, the amount of rainfall has declined to the point where the country is rapidly becoming a wasteland.

As with oil, water exploitation raises an inter-generational debt that will be hard to repay.

Fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.

We Americans are churning through fresh water at an alarming and unsustainable rate.

You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst.

According to the U.N., more than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by 2025. Many social scientists predict that the next big wars will be over water. Nevertheless, the average American family blissfully consumes 300 gallons a day, when you add in watering the lawn and washing dishes, clothes, and cars.

The issues that we're having with water are worse and the magnitude is bigger than anything I imagined possible.

Climate change isn't just an environmental issue; it's a technology, water, food, energy, population issue. None of this happens in a vacuum.

Human civilization has been changing the Earth's environment for millennia, often to our detriment. Dams, deforestation and urbanization can alter water cycles and wind patterns, occasionally triggering droughts or even creating deserts.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

The few pounds we spend for an item of clothing isn't the true cost - the real cost is the millions of gallons of clean water that was used to grow the fabric, or the millions of gallons of fresh water that was polluted with toxic chemicals to dye the clothes.

The simple fact is that there is a limited amount of water on the planet, and we cannot afford to be negligent in its use. We cannot keep treating it as if it will never run out.

Israel is a small piece of land. We are not even 1 percent of the Arab space, you know. We don't have water. We don't have oil. Our greatness, if one may say greatness, stems from the fact we had nothing to start with. So we turned to human talent because there weren't natural resources. The Arabs can do it too.

We buy a bottle of water in the city, where clean water comes out in its taps. You know, back in 1965, if someone said to the average person, 'You know in thirty years you are going to buy water in plastic bottles and pay more for that water than for gasoline?' Everybody would look at you like you're completely out of your mind.

Water is the true wealth in a dry land.

Having lived in the arid deserts of Southern California since the 1970s, my interest in water conservation is a very personal concern. Water! The source of life! Some people are squandering the world's most precious resource while others have too little clean water to drink.

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.