Perth's Water Crisis

A news story at BBC on the Australian city of Perth.

The Australian of the year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, once predicted that Perth in Western Australia could become the world's first ghost metropolis, its population forced to abandon the city due to lack of water.
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People consume a lot of energy. It is a car-dependent city with little public transport. Many of the luxury houses overlooking the ocean (known locally as "starter mansions") boast currently fashionable black roofs that soak up the heat in temperatures of up to 42 degrees in summer, and produce a greater need for air conditioning inside.

And, ironically, although it's a desert climate, Perth prides itself on being a garden city, boasting vast expanses of beautifully kept lawns and parks complete with water hungry plants and flowers.

And many residents can extract water for these gardens directly from the aquifer. There are over 150,000 unlicensed boreholes in Perth's back gardens that allow householders unlimited access to groundwater for watering.

Yet the Water Corporation is reluctant to clamp down on private water usage even though before current restrictions people were often watering their gardens in the middle of the day when the water was most likely to evaporate and be wasted.

One gardener we spoke to for Costing the Earth told us that 90% of his water usage is for his garden and that it would break his heart if he ever had to stop watering and give up his beloved green lawns.

Perth is the world writ small. A typical scenario enacted by every generation since, well, since Life began.

My first introduction to this was through Jared Diamond book Collapse, where he discusses how societies collapse due to environmental destruction - the collapse of ancient Indus Valley civilization being a case closer to my home. Jared diamond lists causes like deforestation, overfishing, exhausting water supplies, overpopulation, and more. Readers of Collapse may recall that although the book has a depressing title, it is in the end, a book about hope and regeneration through enlightened action.