Happy World Water Day!

A message from friends at Replyforall here!

Target 7c of the Millenium Development Goals reads:
"Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation."

Let's focus on the "safe drinking water" bit.

Some statistics:
Only about 2.5% of the Earth's water is fresh water (for ~6 billion people)
An average American uses 150 gallons of water each day, while a person in the developing world struggles to find 5 gallons.
Over one billion people still use unsafe water sources.
The highest numbers of people without access to clean water are in Asia.
Unsafe water kills more people than all forms of violence combined, including war.
[factoids from WHO, unicef - read more to see why water's so important]

My friend, Nami, who has guestblogged before, wrote a great blog post for 1Sky a few summers ago.  I remember it well not only because it was a great post, but because some a-hole left a nasty comment (to which I posted a nasty response in return).

Anyway, one effect of climate change is that it will make people thirstier.  As if to slap us all in the face, another effect of climate change is that fresh water supplies will decrease as sea levels rise. Fresh water will more likely fall as rain rather than snow making it harder to collect (spring snowmelt won't be a reliable source if there's not enough snow). Fresh water levels will also decrease as evapotranspiration losses increase.

So, how can we avoid disaster?!
Obviously, we all need to conserve. 100 ways to conserve here.
Becker and Posner had a blogpost about economic responses here.
And of course, a blog that I've mentioned in the past: Aguanomics!

Anyway, that's all for tonight kids. I am amazed by those who can blog so often. I don't have the discipline. I'm always getting caught up in real life...

Response from Professor Case! (Of the Case-Shiller Index)

Response from Professor Case @ Wellesley regarding Nami's question on my previous post:
Thanks, Professor!

Question: wait, what about this in america, now? http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/08/research-on-homeownership-rate-through.html
from homeowners to renters?
explain plz

Response from Professor Case:

In 1989, Greg Mankiw and David Weil wrote a paper called "the baby boom the baby bust and the housing market." It made a big splash because it said the housing market would collapse in the U.S. during the 90's. He found a very strong correlation between household formation and house prices. Since the baby boomers were housed and the baby bust meant fewer households would be formed, he called for a big bust. Needless to say he was wrong. The 1990's and 2000's saw the biggest boom ever. I wrote a paper called "Land Prices and House Prices in the United States" published in an NBER volume edited by Jim Poterba some years ago, taking issue with Mankiw's result. I am attaching a copy. The real issue is how long will the boomers stay in their houses? I suspect they will stay a long time. They also buy houses like we buy cars...many own more than one. Consumer confidence is also not a strong predictor of behavior. Look at pages 40-45....Finally they forgot immigration....in the 1990 census we discovered about 10 million folks that we didn't know we had.... I also wrote the attached paper fpr Brookings

soooo

...contrary to what you read, there may no be such a big housing market effect...Quigley and I also find that falling house prices don't lower spending

Karl E. "Chip" Case