When The Rivers Run Dry: What Happens When Our Water Runs Out? by
Fred Pearce
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EAN: 9781903919583
Format: Paperback
Published: 2 Apr 2007
Other Editions:
Hardback
Synopsis
Do you know how much water you use each day – not just the 5 litres you may drink, or the 150 litres you guzzle to cook, wash, and flush the toilet with. It takes around 500 litres of water to grow the wheat to produce a loaf of bread. A staggering 11,000 litres to feed enough cows to make a quarter-pound hamburger. You could take 25 baths in the water it takes to grow the cotton for just one T-shirt. The South East of Britain has less water per capita than the Sudan or Ethiopia and while there is less and less rain our demand grows. Slowly but surely we’re draining our rivers and hillside springs dry. Much more alarming, we import huge volumes of water in our dockside deliveries of wheat, beef, rice. And while our water crisis is relatively tranquil, it is repeated – often in vastly more dangerous form – across the world.
That we face a world-wide crisis is no idle threat. Pearce’s 15-year research into water issues has taken him all over the world. His vivid reportage reveals the personal stories behind failing rivers, barren fields, desertification, floods and water wars. His book gives a clear and terrifying picture of the consequences if no remedial action is taken, but also a brilliantly challenging explanation of the steps we must take to ensure the ‘blue revolution’ the world desperately needs.
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When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce has been selected as one of the Top 50 Sustainability Books as voted for by the University of Cambridges Programme for Sustainability Leadership alumni network involving over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. Find out more here
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What the critics say
If ever a book has been written that demands to be read it is this one. This is that rare thing - a journey through a hugely important and complex subject in the company of a natural storyteller who makes you feel intelligent.
- Tim Smit
Of all the travel books I have ever read this is the most frightening, the most inspiring and the most important...A book every politician must be made to read and understand.
- David Bellamy
Environmental journalist Fred Pearce's book, When the Rivers Run Dry could not be better timed
- Robin McKie, The Observer
...Pearce argues powerfully that unless mankind can rethink its whole attitude towards the use and misuse of resource, the consequence could be famine, pestilence and even war for huge numbers of human beings.
- Trevor Grove, Daily Mail
Veteran science writer Pearce (Turning Up the Heat) makes a strong - and scary - case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. With a drumbeat of facts both horrifc...and fascinating...the former New Scientist news editor documents a 'kind of cataclysm' already affecting many of the world's great rivers.
- Publishers Weekly
Editor's Comments
Summer 2007 is predicted to be the hottest UK summer ever, and 2007 to be another year of global drought. If you wish to be informed about this most pressing environmental issue, there is just one book to read. Critically acclaimed, referenced by everyone writing on the subject,
When the Rivers Run Dry is an outstanding work of overwhelming importance.