We don't have enough water!

Our generation has the most important tasks to solve that our previous generation left us behind. Unfortunately, most of them are ugly and troublesome. One of the most severe problems that we have is water deficiency. Now, I’m not talking about water in general, because approximately, 70% of Earth is made out of water. To be honest, we have more than enough water.

Speaking of the ratio of water in Earth, Earth is like our body because for those who don’t know, humans are also made up of 70% of water. This leads me to think Earth is a living creature and that is why we have to treat our planet well, but not only that, Earth is the only place where we can live in the Universe. I mean, we can’t live in Mars or travel hundreds of years through space to settle in an Earth-like planet that those super genius scientists discovered.

As I was saying, Earth is mostly made up of water; however, 98% of them categorized as Ocean Water. If anyone attempted to drink ocean water while they were having fun in Miami Beach, it tastes disgusting-mostly salty. But, I’m not saying that we can’t drink Ocean water, because there is always a way. Astoundingly, there is a system that really sagacious and smart scientists created, which is called desalination. As everyone would have anticipated, this system removes salt from ocean water and turns it into potable water.

There is two ways to do it. First is to vaporize a large amount of water, condense the massive steam which will, amazingly, become fresh water. Unfortunately, compared to a trivial amount of water that is generated, there is too much waste that proves its inefficiency. Another way is to utilize reverse osmosis. This method uses incredibly high pressure which will allow the salt water to leave its salt behind and join the fresh water. However, this is extremely expensive. Therefore, no country actually uses desalination, except for Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other few dry and torrid countries.

Suddenly, a thought popped up in my head like a light bulb (what a cliché), why do we have to use desalination to make fresh water? When did we ever possess so less amount of water that we have to use human technologies to change ocean water?

One is population growth. Candidly, this is not our fault. I mean, we all can have sex right? Imagine having sex and having a baby is illegal! Surprisingly, that is exactly what China executed in the past. In order to decrease their explosive population growth during 1970s and 1980s, the government introduced one child policy in 1979, banning most families, minorities exempted, to have more than one child. If the family was found to have multiple children, they had to suffer expensive fines. Although China altered to two-child policy, this yet shows how China is deeply concerned with such large number of population. However, we have to know the purpose of one-child policy.

For those countries with high number of population have great potential to develop and become a strong country. Such as South Korea, despite of its tiny land, because they possess high population, it is one of the leading countries in the world.

During 1997-1998, South Korea experienced a terrible finance crisis. Without doubt, it was their most difficult time as a country because they couldn’t repay the loans they borrowed from IMF (International Monetary Fund). Luckily, South Korea had a large number of people and they were willing to sacrifice for their country as they began to use less, recycle and donate private asset to their country which allowed them to fully repay IMF. This led South Korea to achieve “The miracle of Han river”. Between 1960 and 2006, their economy expanded and grew enormously from 30 billion dollars to trillions of dollars. From “The miracle of Han river”, we need to acknowledge that if South Korea didn’t have as many people they had possessed, the miracle wouldn’t have happened.

However, China prevented their population to grow. Why? The main reason was because of the rapidly polluting environment due to high population. Air was filled with toxic gas that colored the sky with grey. Many say that smog covered the city for months. But most importantly, their water was being heavily polluted. A large quantity of water that China held was now undrinkable. They sacrificed the potential of economic growth to protect their own water. This demonstrates how important water is.

Another reason is the excessive use and wasting of water. Unlike poor developing countries, rich developed countries can afford to gather incredibly large quantity of water. This is why for instance the people in America; don’t suffer severe potable water deficiency. However, this also doesn’t mean, U.S.A is overfilled with water. Definitely not! They depleted most of their aquifer which is one of the biggest water resources U.S.A possess. In California, due to lack of rain and water, they are undergoing a severe drought. Also farm lands in Kansas and Texas are experiencing difficulties with the lack of water to farm. Unfortunately, general people do not understand this situation which leads them to use more than enough water and even waste their water. In order to stop that, we MUST educate people in developed countries about our water deficiency problem. Although it might be expensive, it won’t cost as much as our future problem if we continue this ominous and naïve path.

Water is the most important resource for any life to survive. Earth is a unique planet that consists water. We mustn’t use excessive amount of water, we mustn’t pollute our water and we mustn’t waste our water. We, humans, learn from our mistake. But one mistake we must not do is to pollute Earth. Unfortunately, we won’t have time to regret and fix Earth when we do.