I don't put much stock in those who make claims like "the next world war will be over water", because we have a massive supply of water (the ocean) and a massive supply of energy (the sun) to power whatever we need to do to make it drinkable.
A floating desalination plant powered by an x000-acre floating solar platform, pumping clean water back to shore, and dispersing slightly saltier water across a wide area, doesn't seem like science fiction to me, and doesn't seem very destructive. The process doesn't even have to be super efficient, we may even end up using old-school techniques like distillation or electrolysis to keep the mechanisms simple.
(granted this helps coastal regions more than inland ones, but moving population-heavy coastal areas to this system will preserve more of the natural water supplies for the inland needs).
California uses 46 billion gallons of water per day.
Supplying 25% of this via desalination would require 36 GW of
thermal-equivalent power. California runs on 30 GW of
electricity, and a total energy budget of 262 GW (thermal;
from oil, gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, etc.—according to the
EIA). That’s a substantial amount for 25% of our water needs.
A "ten dollar glass of water" isn't even the big issue. Agriculture requires water, and expensive water means expensive food. Expensive food means people die, mostly from bullet wounds inflicted by people who are hungry. (I hardly need to provide citations for the number of wars resulting from food shortages)
These types of x-y-z is impossible due to cost assumptions have always been made throughout modern history, and they often end up being wrong. You're judging everything based on today's technology. When in fact technology tends to leap forward massively at times due to necessity, and it's rarely foreseen. The same leaps will happen again and again and again.
Agricultural requires water. But much of the "requirement" is a product of the ready supply and low cost of that water. If fresh water prices rise, the more water-intensive agricultural crops are grown less and become more expensive.
I wonder what the water-used-to-calories-produced ratio is for something like lettuce compared to something like corn or beans. I imagine it's a good number of orders or magnitude higher.
In other words, an increase in the price of fresh water does not necessarily significantly increase the price of feeding yourself, it significantly increases the price of water-intensive crops and likely increases the demand for less water intensive crops.
However, his estimates for the energy required were very conservative, and even if these numbers don't work out with today's water prices, they do make sense at a certain point that is likely lower than one encouraging violence. That effectively provide a cap where we start to go this route if necessary, and the vast supply means that we shouldn't go above that for very long.
Still doesn't sell massive war - shortages are political in regions where people generally have nothing.
Wars - technological ones of the type major powers would fight - are expensive. Far more expensive then any amount of desalinization we would need to build.
It could easily mean massive war, if a war is politically required. One country holding out water supply to another country for whatever reason. Say such a country has a big friend, like say the US?
Not to say it will happen, I believe and hope it wouldn't happen, but it could.
A floating desalination plant powered by an x000-acre floating solar platform, pumping clean water back to shore, and dispersing slightly saltier water across a wide area, doesn't seem like science fiction to me, and doesn't seem very destructive. The process doesn't even have to be super efficient, we may even end up using old-school techniques like distillation or electrolysis to keep the mechanisms simple.
(granted this helps coastal regions more than inland ones, but moving population-heavy coastal areas to this system will preserve more of the natural water supplies for the inland needs).